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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

Posts by Nicholas J. Cull

LETTER FROM MOSCOW
NOV 13, 2008 - 12:00PM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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It is a confession for a historian of the Cold War to admit that he had never visited Russia until last week, and that is the case for me. I nearly went in 1975 but the “evil forces of capitalism” contrived to scrap the educational cruise ship on which my family and I were booked. I saw something of the Eastern bloc in Czechoslovakia and East Berlin in the 1980s; I had Russian friends, and even published on Russian subjects, but never having seen Russia for myself was a significant gap in my experience. And quite an experience it turned... FULL TEXT
 
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RUSSIA TODAY: VIEWS FROM MY HOTEL ROOM
OCT 30, 2008 - 2:33PM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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When awake with jet lag in a hotel far from home, the traveler naturally turns to the TV remote. So it was for me in Moscow this week, when a few absent minded clicks brought me face to face with Russia Today (RT)– the English language news channel and flagship for contemporary Russian public diplomacy. The channel did not come highly recommended. It had raised eyebrows with recent magazine advertisements adorned with a portrait of Stalin holding a quill and that caption: “Stalin wrote romantic poetry” and the tag line “Proud to be different”. (Type Russia Today Stalin into Google... FULL TEXT
 
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PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN ACTION AT WILTON PARK
OCT 9, 2008 - 11:46AM PDT
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
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Today was the final day of the third Wilton Park conference on public diplomacy in the UK. Those in attendance included a mix of practitioners and academics from large and small nations, including several people associated with the CPD blog – Ashraf Haidari (who spoke brilliantly for Afghanistan), Ali Fisher, Simon Anholt, and myself. Countries represented included Romania, Mozambique, Vietnam, British Virgin Islands, Liechenstein, and Mexico. Nations with teams present included Canada, Denmark, and the USA.

The conference - artfully managed by Julia Purcell - succeeded in palpably moving the PD ball forward, with much discussion of new technology and... FULL TEXT
 
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TAKING TURNER TO CHINA
OCT 1, 2008 - 1:38PM PDT
Posted by John Worne
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It's been great to get such thoughtful comments on our International Relations Spectrum. One way for me to understand other perspectives would be to take a piece of our work at the British Council and look at how we could frame it. Here's a case study to take views on what it could be for – in terms of intentions - and how we could/should describe it and deliver it to maximize its impact.

I'll deliberately exaggerate for effect, but let's imagine you can take a J.M.W. Turner exhibition to China in three different guises:

A cultural diplomacy (CD) guise;... FULL TEXT
 
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THE SPECTRUM OF SPECTRUMS: A REVIEW OF THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS POSITIONING SPECTRUM
SEP 26, 2008 - 10:34AM PDT
Posted by Ali Fisher
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John Worne’s International Relations Positioning Spectrum (IRPS), and Nick Cull’s response provide interesting perspectives on the Cultural Relations / Public Diplomacy ‘divide’ and how work in the field is to be articulated. The IRPS appears a useful tool at the national level to help mediate in interdepartmental turf wars. However, the IRPS contains national peculiarities, specifically the difficulty the British Council faces in articulating its position, making it unlikely to become transferable internationally. This is best divided into two sections, first discussing the spectrum itself and second how this reflects the difficulty of articulating the position of the British Council.... FULL TEXT
 
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