PD Book Reviews http://uscpublicdiplomacy.com/index.php/library/ This unique collection contains reviews of recent and classical publications of interest to the public diplomacy community reviewed by public diplomacy practitioners and scholars. en USC Center on Public Diplomacy Copyright 2008 2008-07-11T00:00:00-08:00 This volume of The Annals follows four previous volumes, reviewed in this issue in a reflective essay by Nancy Snow, which the American Academy of Political and Social Science has published on various aspects of the subject now widely called public diplomacy or, for short, PD.  The topics of the earlier Annals issues were the U.S. image abroad (1954), international education (1961), the exchange of persons (1976), and the Fulbright experience (1987).  The present volume edited by Geoffrey Cowan and Nicholas J. Cull of the University of Southern California, with its active Center for the study of the subject, is more comprehensive.  It includes essays on international broadcasting, place branding, and the distinctive PD initiatives of Cuba and Venezuela as well as the People’s Republic of China and, principally, the United States.  Several essays engage in “theorizing public diplomacy,” by attempting to fit it into larger conceptual frameworks.  The volume is rich in historical and institutional information, with ample scholarly references.  With its broad range of coverage, and its scope of ambition, the Cowan-Cull Annals volume on “Public Diplomacy in a Changing World” may well become a landmark, as a valuable reference work and a current assessment of an expanding field. The “field” of public diplomacy is not one that is easy to circumscribe, or to define.  Many attempts have been made to say exactly what “public diplomacy” is ever since Ambassador Edmund A. Gullion, as Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, institutionalized the term in 1965 when he established The Edward R. Murrow Center for the Study and Advancement of Public Diplomacy.  By now, the general meaning of PD—the purposeful use of the press and other communications media and links with elements in the populations of other countries mainly in order to influence their governments, in ways that traditional diplomacy cannot—is fairly well known and understood.  The basic idea, which of course existed “before Gullion,” has proved seminal.  As Bruce Gregory in his essay ("Public Diplomacy: Sunrise of an Academic Field") in the Annals volume attests, there has been considerable growth of the subject, with an increase in the number of “practitioners” teaching public diplomacy and related courses, “strengthening a trend” that began with the creation of the Murrow Center. The acceptance of public diplomacy as an academic field has not resolved a fundamental issue within it.  This is the question—not just a definitional one—of whether it is the government that conducts it (with diplomacy of any kind being considered properly, even legally, an official function) or whether private persons and groups (individual citizens as well as corporations, unions, churches, universities, foundations, service organizations, and other NGOs) can, as “diplomats,” play in the field too.  Are the latter responsible?  Are they accountable?  Are they as effective as they say they are?  Feelings can run high on these points, although both sides of the PD “ownership” divide now increasingly recognize the need for public-private partnership, both at home and abroad.  The explanation of the détente is partly a widespread realization that governments can’t do everything.  It also reflects a conceptual development within public diplomacy itself:  as necessarily going beyond one- or even two-way image projection or verbal persuasion to real relationship-building through involvement in joint action alongside foreign counterparts—the “diplomacy of deeds,” it has been called.  “Moving from Monologue to Dialogue to Collaboration” is how Geoffrey Cowan and Amelia Arsenault describe this development in an essay.  By working together—in natural disaster reconstruction tasks, for example—the initiative, the responsibility, and the credit for a positive outcome can be shared.  The exact balance of governmental and non-governmental involvement in such operations, however, can be a very delicate matter.  Nicholas Cull in his historical taxonomy of the entire subject of public diplomacy in the Annals volume identifies the subtle factor of “the appearance of a wholly different relationship to government,” in varying situations, as a key to whether PD will flourish, particularly with regard to the “credibility” of a message or mission. The problem can be stated more philosophically:  Is it the State, acting on the basis of a doctrine of National Interest, that is determinative of a country’s relations with the world?  Or is it Society, a country’s People themselves (in the American case, a highly diverse population with ethnic and other ties with others elsewhere) that explains and validates a country’s interaction with others?  It is indeed the identity of “the nation” as well as its interest that should and, increasingly, does drive most national PD programs.  “Diplomacy” thus can become truly an international relationship, and not merely an interstate relationship. Cowan and Cull in their editorial preface to the volume implicitly bridge—perhaps even consciously finesse—the above who-owns-PD issue by defining public diplomacy as “an international actor’s attempt to advance the ends of policy by engaging with foreign publics” (emphasis added).  This brief definition allows for the possibility of autonomous involvement in PD by non-state players.  Similarly, Eytan Gilboa in a theoretical essay recognizes “the growing interdependence among all actors.” It may be noticed that Cowan and Cull, perhaps not wholly intentionally, limit the “public diplomatic” field in their definition to policy-related matters—as distinct from, for instance, international commercial transactions or tourist travel.  Their formulation begs the primary question, however, of whose policy—whose message-content—is being advanced. Among the essays in the Annals volume there is a wide difference in perspective regarding this fundamental question.  Yiwei Wang in a frank and revealing essay on “Public Diplomacy and the Rise of Chinese Soft Power” observes that “the Chinese political system operates under the principle of democratic centralism”—State control.  He appears himself to favor increased governmental centralization, or integrated management, of diplomacy, including public diplomacy, even while pointing out that Chinese diplomats, accepting Zhou Enlai’s dictum “wai shi wu xiao shi” (there is no small issue in foreign affairs), have tended in obedience to be “overcautious.” China’s diplomatic system is so “complicated by many departments and groups,” which Wang identifies in his essay, that it is difficult for China to “make long-term strategic arrangements to practice public diplomacy.” In the past Beijing has emphasized “high politics” and neglected “grass-roots politics.” The Chinese often have been surprised therefore when, for instance, “the White House sends goodwill gestures to China” and “the U.S. Congress expresses hostility.” In order to “make the world accept the rise of Chinese power”—evidently its policy goal—the Chinese government “has to go beyond the traditional model of diplomacy,” suggests Wang, and “to initiate public diplomacy to engage foreign civil society”—thus to accomplish “the historic transition from soft power to a soft rise.” The originator of the now-universal blanket term “soft power,” Joseph S. Nye, Jr., in an essay also appears to hold an essentially State-based concept of PD—one of the ways of “getting others to want the outcomes that you want,” i.e., through co-optation rather than coercion.  The “you” in Nye’s formulation refers, of course, not just to the United States.  Countries without “hard power” (military strength or heavy economic assets) also can use PD to exercise “soft power.” It is not always clear, however, that such countries have “the assets that produce such attraction,” and thus possess any kind of “power” at all.  (My own view is that “power” is a misnomer in diplomacy, in any case.) Revolutionary Cuba has mainly just its colorful traditional culture to offer, as well as its more recently developed though under-resourced medical services.  Venezuela, however, has the asset of oil, which the Chávez government can offer cheaply or even give away in the name of its “Bolivarian” ideals.  “If taken too far,” as Michael J. Bustamante and Julia E. Sweig advise in their intricate and interesting essay contrasting the PD initiatives of these two dissident countries, “populist generosity can appear openly patronizing, a conundrum the United States has often faced with its own foreign aid programs.” Peter van Ham, in a lively essay on the currently fashionable idea of place branding, with reference particularly to the 27-member-country European Union, observes that “the EU may be viewed as the ultimate affluence brand.” It has resources to spare.  It is still, however, perceived as a “civilian power,” without the military assets or the political capacity needed for it to achieve its full potential.  Van Ham wonders:  Can the EU alter its image—its “brand”?  He situates place branding within the wider spectrum of “postmodern power,” and suggests that identities can be consciously constructed.  (He, like several of the volume’s other authors, shows a strong intellectual interest in constructivism.) The EU has “a powerful logo” but it has something more, van Ham stresses:  a commitment to law, civility, and mutual trust, and therefore a moral quality and a potential normative influence.  “Surely, European political life is not perfect,” he allows, “but for Arabs, Asians, and Africans alike, the EU model may serve as a powerful dream for their own regions.” The European Union is essentially still an intergovernmental rather than collective political space.  It therefore has to be diplomacy as well as cross-national elite and mass communication that “constructs” it.  When the European Constitutional Treaty failed to achieve a sufficient number of ratifications, the European Commissioner for Communications, Margot Wallström, launched Plan D—Debate, Democracy, Dialogue—in order better to connect the EU with its citizens.  There remains nonetheless a general reluctance to create “a European masterbrand,” for that would compete with national identities and solidarities.  Furthermore, in a fast-globalizing international economy, it might obliterate the niche advantages that localities and their residents might now have or be able to develop in order to survive and prosper. Opposition to top-down diplomacy, whether at the national or the supranational governmental level, emerges most strongly in the Annals volume in the essay by the sociologist Manuel Castells, titled “The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance.” For Castells “public diplomacy” is, quite simply, “the diplomacy of the public.” That is, it is something to be conducted by people themselves.  In practice, “the People” may be activists who are engaged in movements for indigenous rights, sustainable development, the anti-personnel landmines ban, abolition of nuclear weapons, and other existential forms of peace and justice.  “Because people have come to distrust the logic of instrumental politics,” he observes, “the method of direct action on direct outputs finds increasing support.” Far from advocating a strengthening of governmental diplomacy, Castells places his faith in “the formation of a global civil society and a global network state”—that is, “de facto global governance without a global government.” Despite this profound difference of philosophical stance, Castells is not different in his understanding of the basic idea of PD from other contributors to the Annals volume, nearly all of whom recognize and approve the rise of people power.  The leitmotif of the volume is the need for better public opinion research—the bedrock of public diplomacy.  Nicholas Cull stresses the importance of “listening,” including targeted polling in other countries.  In the business of place branding, as Peter van Ham emphasizes, the “consumer” is king.  For Monroe E. Price, Susan Haas, and Drew Margolin in their essay on international broadcasting, the “audience” is all-important, and communications technologies should be chosen according to it, as well as to the policy mission.  Giles Scott-Smith in an essay discussing exchange programs and international relations theory focuses on “opinion leaders” and “the multiplier effect” of their roles abroad as “interpreters” within their societies. In the “Changing World” for Public Diplomacy of this Annals volume, with its new technologies, shifting power structures, and diffusing information, PD strategies must be “smart,” as Joseph Nye and also Ernest J. Wilson III argue in their contributions to the Cowan-Cull collection.  The world itself has “become smarter,” Wilson explains, owing to the spread of education, the increased availability of media outlets, the new affluence and sophistication of elites in China and other fast-developing countries, and, not least, the force of democracy.  From the perspective of the United States government, the new “smartness” of target audiences abroad has become, paradoxically, an embarrassment and a constraint, Wilson interestingly comments.  “The spread of democratic practices has meant that foreign leaders also have less leeway than in the past to act as American surrogates, as stand-ins for American power from over the horizon.” However, Wilson acknowledges, today’s more democratic world also offers hope and presents new opportunities.  For diplomacy, the Changing World means becoming more open, more public, and much more communicative.  All diplomacy may never become public diplomacy, as some have suggested, but the world’s public will surely become more “diplomatic.” About the reviewer Alan K. Henrikson is Director of Diplomatic Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, where he recently chaired the Edward R. Murrow 100th Anniversary Conference, “Credible Public Diplomacy—A Lesson for Our Times”.  He is author of What Can Public Diplomacy Achieve? (Clingendael, 2006). Public Diplomacy in a Changing World This volume of The Annals follows four previous volumes, reviewed in this issue in a reflective essay by Nancy Snow, which the American Academy of Political and Social Science has published on various aspects of the subject now widely called public diplomacy or, for short, PD.  The topics of the earlier Annals issues were the U.S. image abroad (1954), international education (1961), the exchange of persons (1976), and the Fulbright experience (1987).  The present volume edited by Geoffrey Cowan and Nicholas J. Cull of the University of Southern California, with its active Center for the study of the subject, is more comprehensive.  It includes essays on international broadcasting, place branding, and the distinctive PD initiatives of Cuba and Venezuela as well as the People’s Republic of China and, principally, the United States.  Several essays engage in “theorizing public diplomacy,” by attempting to fit it into larger conceptual frameworks.  The volume is rich in historical and institutional information, with ample scholarly references.  With its broad range of coverage, and its scope of ambition, the Cowan-Cull Annals volume on “Public Diplomacy in a Changing World” may well become a landmark, as a valuable reference work and a current assessment of an expanding field.

The “field” of public diplomacy is not one that is easy to circumscribe, or to define.  Many attempts have been made to say exactly what “public diplomacy” is ever since Ambassador Edmund A. Gullion, as Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, institutionalized the term in 1965 when he established The Edward R. Murrow Center for the Study and Advancement of Public Diplomacy.  By now, the general meaning of PD—the purposeful use of the press and other communications media and links with elements in the populations of other countries mainly in order to influence their governments, in ways that traditional diplomacy cannot—is fairly well known and understood.  The basic idea, which of course existed “before Gullion,” has proved seminal.  As Bruce Gregory in his essay ("Public Diplomacy: Sunrise of an Academic Field") in the Annals volume attests, there has been considerable growth of the subject, with an increase in the number of “practitioners” teaching public diplomacy and related courses, “strengthening a trend” that began with the creation of the Murrow Center.

The acceptance of public diplomacy as an academic field has not resolved a fundamental issue within it.  This is the question—not just a definitional one—of whether it is the government that conducts it (with diplomacy of any kind being considered properly, even legally, an official function) or whether private persons and groups (individual citizens as well as corporations, unions, churches, universities, foundations, service organizations, and other NGOs) can, as “diplomats,” play in the field too.  Are the latter responsible?  Are they accountable?  Are they as effective as they say they are?  Feelings can run high on these points, although both sides of the PD “ownership” divide now increasingly recognize the need for public-private partnership, both at home and abroad.  The explanation of the détente is partly a widespread realization that governments can’t do everything.  It also reflects a conceptual development within public diplomacy itself:  as necessarily going beyond one- or even two-way image projection or verbal persuasion to real relationship-building through involvement in joint action alongside foreign counterparts—the “diplomacy of deeds,” it has been called.  “Moving from Monologue to Dialogue to Collaboration” is how Geoffrey Cowan and Amelia Arsenault describe this development in an essay.  By working together—in natural disaster reconstruction tasks, for example—the initiative, the responsibility, and the credit for a positive outcome can be shared.  The exact balance of governmental and non-governmental involvement in such operations, however, can be a very delicate matter.  Nicholas Cull in his historical taxonomy of the entire subject of public diplomacy in the Annals volume identifies the subtle factor of “the appearance of a wholly different relationship to government,” in varying situations, as a key to whether PD will flourish, particularly with regard to the “credibility” of a message or mission.

The problem can be stated more philosophically:  Is it the State, acting on the basis of a doctrine of National Interest, that is determinative of a country’s relations with the world?  Or is it Society, a country’s People themselves (in the American case, a highly diverse population with ethnic and other ties with others elsewhere) that explains and validates a country’s interaction with others?  It is indeed the identity of “the nation” as well as its interest that should and, increasingly, does drive most national PD programs.  “Diplomacy” thus can become truly an international relationship, and not merely an interstate relationship.

Cowan and Cull in their editorial preface to the volume implicitly bridge—perhaps even consciously finesse—the above who-owns-PD issue by defining public diplomacy as “an international actor’s attempt to advance the ends of policy by engaging with foreign publics” (emphasis added).  This brief definition allows for the possibility of autonomous involvement in PD by non-state players.  Similarly, Eytan Gilboa in a theoretical essay recognizes “the growing interdependence among all actors.” It may be noticed that Cowan and Cull, perhaps not wholly intentionally, limit the “public diplomatic” field in their definition to policy-related matters—as distinct from, for instance, international commercial transactions or tourist travel.  Their formulation begs the primary question, however, of whose policy—whose message-content—is being advanced.

Among the essays in the Annals volume there is a wide difference in perspective regarding this fundamental question.  Yiwei Wang in a frank and revealing essay on “Public Diplomacy and the Rise of Chinese Soft Power” observes that “the Chinese political system operates under the principle of democratic centralism”—State control.  He appears himself to favor increased governmental centralization, or integrated management, of diplomacy, including public diplomacy, even while pointing out that Chinese diplomats, accepting Zhou Enlai’s dictum “wai shi wu xiao shi” (there is no small issue in foreign affairs), have tended in obedience to be “overcautious.” China’s diplomatic system is so “complicated by many departments and groups,” which Wang identifies in his essay, that it is difficult for China to “make long-term strategic arrangements to practice public diplomacy.” In the past Beijing has emphasized “high politics” and neglected “grass-roots politics.” The Chinese often have been surprised therefore when, for instance, “the White House sends goodwill gestures to China” and “the U.S. Congress expresses hostility.” In order to “make the world accept the rise of Chinese power”—evidently its policy goal—the Chinese government “has to go beyond the traditional model of diplomacy,” suggests Wang, and “to initiate public diplomacy to engage foreign civil society”—thus to accomplish “the historic transition from soft power to a soft rise.”

The originator of the now-universal blanket term “soft power,” Joseph S. Nye, Jr., in an essay also appears to hold an essentially State-based concept of PD—one of the ways of “getting others to want the outcomes that you want,” i.e., through co-optation rather than coercion.  The “you” in Nye’s formulation refers, of course, not just to the United States.  Countries without “hard power” (military strength or heavy economic assets) also can use PD to exercise “soft power.” It is not always clear, however, that such countries have “the assets that produce such attraction,” and thus possess any kind of “power” at all.  (My own view is that “power” is a misnomer in diplomacy, in any case.) Revolutionary Cuba has mainly just its colorful traditional culture to offer, as well as its more recently developed though under-resourced medical services.  Venezuela, however, has the asset of oil, which the Chávez government can offer cheaply or even give away in the name of its “Bolivarian” ideals.  “If taken too far,” as Michael J. Bustamante and Julia E. Sweig advise in their intricate and interesting essay contrasting the PD initiatives of these two dissident countries, “populist generosity can appear openly patronizing, a conundrum the United States has often faced with its own foreign aid programs.”

Peter van Ham, in a lively essay on the currently fashionable idea of place branding, with reference particularly to the 27-member-country European Union, observes that “the EU may be viewed as the ultimate affluence brand.” It has resources to spare.  It is still, however, perceived as a “civilian power,” without the military assets or the political capacity needed for it to achieve its full potential.  Van Ham wonders:  Can the EU alter its image—its “brand”?  He situates place branding within the wider spectrum of “postmodern power,” and suggests that identities can be consciously constructed.  (He, like several of the volume’s other authors, shows a strong intellectual interest in constructivism.) The EU has “a powerful logo” but it has something more, van Ham stresses:  a commitment to law, civility, and mutual trust, and therefore a moral quality and a potential normative influence.  “Surely, European political life is not perfect,” he allows, “but for Arabs, Asians, and Africans alike, the EU model may serve as a powerful dream for their own regions.” The European Union is essentially still an intergovernmental rather than collective political space.  It therefore has to be diplomacy as well as cross-national elite and mass communication that “constructs” it.  When the European Constitutional Treaty failed to achieve a sufficient number of ratifications, the European Commissioner for Communications, Margot Wallström, launched Plan D—Debate, Democracy, Dialogue—in order better to connect the EU with its citizens.  There remains nonetheless a general reluctance to create “a European masterbrand,” for that would compete with national identities and solidarities.  Furthermore, in a fast-globalizing international economy, it might obliterate the niche advantages that localities and their residents might now have or be able to develop in order to survive and prosper.

Opposition to top-down diplomacy, whether at the national or the supranational governmental level, emerges most strongly in the Annals volume in the essay by the sociologist Manuel Castells, titled “The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance.” For Castells “public diplomacy” is, quite simply, “the diplomacy of the public.” That is, it is something to be conducted by people themselves.  In practice, “the People” may be activists who are engaged in movements for indigenous rights, sustainable development, the anti-personnel landmines ban, abolition of nuclear weapons, and other existential forms of peace and justice.  “Because people have come to distrust the logic of instrumental politics,” he observes, “the method of direct action on direct outputs finds increasing support.” Far from advocating a strengthening of governmental diplomacy, Castells places his faith in “the formation of a global civil society and a global network state”—that is, “de facto global governance without a global government.”

Despite this profound difference of philosophical stance, Castells is not different in his understanding of the basic idea of PD from other contributors to the Annals volume, nearly all of whom recognize and approve the rise of people power.  The leitmotif of the volume is the need for better public opinion research—the bedrock of public diplomacy.  Nicholas Cull stresses the importance of “listening,” including targeted polling in other countries.  In the business of place branding, as Peter van Ham emphasizes, the “consumer” is king.  For Monroe E. Price, Susan Haas, and Drew Margolin in their essay on international broadcasting, the “audience” is all-important, and communications technologies should be chosen according to it, as well as to the policy mission.  Giles Scott-Smith in an essay discussing exchange programs and international relations theory focuses on “opinion leaders” and “the multiplier effect” of their roles abroad as “interpreters” within their societies.

In the “Changing World” for Public Diplomacy of this Annals volume, with its new technologies, shifting power structures, and diffusing information, PD strategies must be “smart,” as Joseph Nye and also Ernest J. Wilson III argue in their contributions to the Cowan-Cull collection.  The world itself has “become smarter,” Wilson explains, owing to the spread of education, the increased availability of media outlets, the new affluence and sophistication of elites in China and other fast-developing countries, and, not least, the force of democracy.  From the perspective of the United States government, the new “smartness” of target audiences abroad has become, paradoxically, an embarrassment and a constraint, Wilson interestingly comments.  “The spread of democratic practices has meant that foreign leaders also have less leeway than in the past to act as American surrogates, as stand-ins for American power from over the horizon.” However, Wilson acknowledges, today’s more democratic world also offers hope and presents new opportunities.  For diplomacy, the Changing World means becoming more open, more public, and much more communicative.  All diplomacy may never become public diplomacy, as some have suggested, but the world’s public will surely become more “diplomatic.”

About the reviewer

Alan K. Henrikson is Director of Diplomatic Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, where he recently chaired the Edward R. Murrow 100th Anniversary Conference, “Credible Public Diplomacy—A Lesson for Our Times”.  He is author of What Can Public Diplomacy Achieve? (Clingendael, 2006).

]]> 2008-07-11T00:00:00-08:00 Yale Richmond’s self-described odyssey as a U.S. diplomat through countries on the frontlines of the Cold War parallels in many ways my own, some 30 years later, as a public diplomacy officer serving in Europe, the USSR, and then Russia. Seeing the cover photo of Poles eagerly perusing the latest issue of “Ameryka” magazine, USIA’s premier publication for the Soviet bloc, brought back memories of my monthly rounds of kiosks in Moscow back in 1980 to check on the number of copies of “Amerika” (America Illustrated) delivered to each, as this was an important gauge of U.S.-Soviet relations.  Good relations equaled more copies for sale to Soviet citizens; bad relations meant more copies returned to the Embassy as unsold due to “lack of interest.” Relations were very tense back then, in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics that summer, so the number of copies of “Amerika” returned to the Embassy reached the tens of thousands.  We eventually got them distributed in subsequent years as relations improved, and they took pride of place in cramped communal apartments across the vast Soviet empire, each well-thumbed copy pored over by multiple readers hungry for information about life in the United States. Likewise, Richmond’s account of the USIA touring exhibitions program, which over a 32 year period beginning in 1959 brought 23 major exhibitions to the USSR that were visited by 20 million Soviet citizens, sparked personal memories.  It was as a Russian and Ukrainian-speaking guide on one of those exhibits that I, as a recent college graduate, was introduced to public diplomacy.  That experience led me to a career in the Foreign Service. Although Richmond’s personal memoir gets off to a somewhat slow start in the first chapter on Germany, which bogs down in too much detail on his daily comings and goings, the section on nation building in Laos in the mid-50’s piques interest, and things get going once Richmond arrives in Poland.  He really moves into his element with the vivid descriptions of U.S.-Soviet cultural relations as experienced during his assignment to Moscow in the late 60’s.  Richmond’s recollections of the painstaking work that went into hammering out detailed cultural agreements with the Soviets is insightful, and serves to highlight the key role those accords played in our bilateral relations at the time.  In describing the intense negotiations between the two sides, Richmond quips, “It was an eye for an eye, if not always a truth for a truth.” Assessing the long term impact of these efforts, Richmond points out that, “U.S.-Soviet cultural exchange, conducted over a period of 30 years, helped prepare the way for the end of the Cold War, and at a fraction of the cost of our military and intelligence operations over the same years.” In the words of one Russian musician: “Cultural exchanges were another opening to the West, and additional proof that our media were not telling us the truth.” Recounting his time in Poland in 1959, Richmond describes a PD officer’s dream scenario: “In those years, we had little or no guidance from Washington on what to do in Poland, and didn’t need any.  Opportunities for Public Diplomacy were everywhere, funding was available, and all we had to do was establish the priorities.” It was another era.  And yet, many of the strategies, approaches and programs used to such great effect at that time served us well in subsequent years, and are still relevant today. According to Richmond, the venerable George F. Kennan, in describing the importance of cultural contact in combating anti-Americanism, observed that if we could only convey the value we attach to our cultural life beyond our borders, he “would willingly trade the entire remaining inventory of political propaganda for the results that could be achieved by such means alone.” The sad reality is that even though many experienced officers spoke up about the value of cultural exchange and the ongoing need for a robust public diplomacy effort in the world even with the end of the Cold War, those recommendations fell on deaf ears.  Cultural and exhibit offices were dismantled, publications abolished, libraries and information centers closed, budgets for public diplomacy drastically reduced.  It was time for a “peace dividend,” many politicians said. And even though there was a substantial infusion of resources into Russia and the other countries of the former Soviet Union in the 90’s under the Freedom Support Act, after barely a decade--half a generation-- that funding was severely reduced and redirected to other areas deemed to have a higher priority.  As Minister Counselor for Public Affairs in Moscow from 2001 to 2003, I could see the cumulative impact of our exchanges and information programs on tens of thousands of people across the vast reaches of Russia.  Establishing and nurturing democracy and free markets on the ruins of Communist states requires sustained effort over generations.  Jack Matlock, former Ambassador to the USSR, points out in his forward to this volume that the work done by Yale Richmond and others during the Cold War may not have had an impact that was immediately apparent, but it did lead over time to reform and change, with participants in our exchange programs playing key roles.  So it is today. Making the case for increased spending on “soft power,” Defense Secretary Gates in a speech last November put the matter in stark terms: “This year’s budget for the Department of Defense--not counting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan--is nearly half a trillion dollars.  The total foreign affairs budget request for the State Department is $36 billion--less than what the Pentagon spends on health care alone.” The portion devoted to public diplomacy is only about $974 million.  In a word: we need more resources to do the job. Summing up his Cold War odyssey, Richmond poses these questions: “Will similar public diplomacy practices succeed in the twenty-first century?  Can what worked to defeat communism in the Twentieth Century serve as a model for defeating terrorism and anti-Americanism in the much different world we live in today?” Richmond responds in the affirmative, and I agree, while recognizing the dramatically altered global communications environment.  Given the right number of people and sufficient resources, public diplomacy can continue to play a vital role in serving the national interest, and make friends for the United States around the world.  The most important tools in the public diplomacy officer’s kit have stood the test of time: fostering exchanges of all kinds, from high school to grad students, to young professionals and future leaders across the spectrum; providing credible information about the U.S. via both new and mass media, as well as easy access to resources, through small information centers, that highlight the vibrancy of our democracy; and promoting programs that showcase the best of American culture in the performing and plastic arts, which can serve to break down barriers and create universal human bonds. Richmond’s personal account of how public diplomacy was conducted during the Cold War gives the reader a practitioner’s perspective on this fascinating period in our history, and underscores public diplomacy’s continued importance in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Practicing Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Odyssey Yale Richmond’s self-described odyssey as a U.S. diplomat through countries on the frontlines of the Cold War parallels in many ways my own, some 30 years later, as a public diplomacy officer serving in Europe, the USSR, and then Russia.

Seeing the cover photo of Poles eagerly perusing the latest issue of “Ameryka” magazine, USIA’s premier publication for the Soviet bloc, brought back memories of my monthly rounds of kiosks in Moscow back in 1980 to check on the number of copies of “Amerika” (America Illustrated) delivered to each, as this was an important gauge of U.S.-Soviet relations.  Good relations equaled more copies for sale to Soviet citizens; bad relations meant more copies returned to the Embassy as unsold due to “lack of interest.” Relations were very tense back then, in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics that summer, so the number of copies of “Amerika” returned to the Embassy reached the tens of thousands.  We eventually got them distributed in subsequent years as relations improved, and they took pride of place in cramped communal apartments across the vast Soviet empire, each well-thumbed copy pored over by multiple readers hungry for information about life in the United States.

Likewise, Richmond’s account of the USIA touring exhibitions program, which over a 32 year period beginning in 1959 brought 23 major exhibitions to the USSR that were visited by 20 million Soviet citizens, sparked personal memories.  It was as a Russian and Ukrainian-speaking guide on one of those exhibits that I, as a recent college graduate, was introduced to public diplomacy.  That experience led me to a career in the Foreign Service.

Although Richmond’s personal memoir gets off to a somewhat slow start in the first chapter on Germany, which bogs down in too much detail on his daily comings and goings, the section on nation building in Laos in the mid-50’s piques interest, and things get going once Richmond arrives in Poland.  He really moves into his element with the vivid descriptions of U.S.-Soviet cultural relations as experienced during his assignment to Moscow in the late 60’s.  Richmond’s recollections of the painstaking work that went into hammering out detailed cultural agreements with the Soviets is insightful, and serves to highlight the key role those accords played in our bilateral relations at the time.  In describing the intense negotiations between the two sides, Richmond quips, “It was an eye for an eye, if not always a truth for a truth.”

Assessing the long term impact of these efforts, Richmond points out that, “U.S.-Soviet cultural exchange, conducted over a period of 30 years, helped prepare the way for the end of the Cold War, and at a fraction of the cost of our military and intelligence operations over the same years.” In the words of one Russian musician: “Cultural exchanges were another opening to the West, and additional proof that our media were not telling us the truth.”

Recounting his time in Poland in 1959, Richmond describes a PD officer’s dream scenario: “In those years, we had little or no guidance from Washington on what to do in Poland, and didn’t need any.  Opportunities for Public Diplomacy were everywhere, funding was available, and all we had to do was establish the priorities.”

It was another era.  And yet, many of the strategies, approaches and programs used to such great effect at that time served us well in subsequent years, and are still relevant today.

According to Richmond, the venerable George F. Kennan, in describing the importance of cultural contact in combating anti-Americanism, observed that if we could only convey the value we attach to our cultural life beyond our borders, he “would willingly trade the entire remaining inventory of political propaganda for the results that could be achieved by such means alone.”

The sad reality is that even though many experienced officers spoke up about the value of cultural exchange and the ongoing need for a robust public diplomacy effort in the world even with the end of the Cold War, those recommendations fell on deaf ears.  Cultural and exhibit offices were dismantled, publications abolished, libraries and information centers closed, budgets for public diplomacy drastically reduced.  It was time for a “peace dividend,” many politicians said.

And even though there was a substantial infusion of resources into Russia and the other countries of the former Soviet Union in the 90’s under the Freedom Support Act, after barely a decade--half a generation-- that funding was severely reduced and redirected to other areas deemed to have a higher priority.  As Minister Counselor for Public Affairs in Moscow from 2001 to 2003, I could see the cumulative impact of our exchanges and information programs on tens of thousands of people across the vast reaches of Russia.  Establishing and nurturing democracy and free markets on the ruins of Communist states requires sustained effort over generations.  Jack Matlock, former Ambassador to the USSR, points out in his forward to this volume that the work done by Yale Richmond and others during the Cold War may not have had an impact that was immediately apparent, but it did lead over time to reform and change, with participants in our exchange programs playing key roles.  So it is today.

Making the case for increased spending on “soft power,” Defense Secretary Gates in a speech last November put the matter in stark terms: “This year’s budget for the Department of Defense--not counting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan--is nearly half a trillion dollars.  The total foreign affairs budget request for the State Department is $36 billion--less than what the Pentagon spends on health care alone.” The portion devoted to public diplomacy is only about $974 million.  In a word: we need more resources to do the job.

Summing up his Cold War odyssey, Richmond poses these questions: “Will similar public diplomacy practices succeed in the twenty-first century?  Can what worked to defeat communism in the Twentieth Century serve as a model for defeating terrorism and anti-Americanism in the much different world we live in today?”

Richmond responds in the affirmative, and I agree, while recognizing the dramatically altered global communications environment.  Given the right number of people and sufficient resources, public diplomacy can continue to play a vital role in serving the national interest, and make friends for the United States around the world.  The most important tools in the public diplomacy officer’s kit have stood the test of time: fostering exchanges of all kinds, from high school to grad students, to young professionals and future leaders across the spectrum; providing credible information about the U.S. via both new and mass media, as well as easy access to resources, through small information centers, that highlight the vibrancy of our democracy; and promoting programs that showcase the best of American culture in the performing and plastic arts, which can serve to break down barriers and create universal human bonds.

Richmond’s personal account of how public diplomacy was conducted during the Cold War gives the reader a practitioner’s perspective on this fascinating period in our history, and underscores public diplomacy’s continued importance in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.

]]> 2008-05-12T18:37:00-08:00 As we mark the fifth anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it is worth revisiting that first year of the U.S. occupation.  The Green Zone of Chandrasekaran’s title has come to symbolize the entire Iraq venture, the enclave where America tried to graft its national narrative and institutions onto a Middle Eastern society, and then was surprised at the transplant’s rejection.  In the immediate aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue, it is a time of striking images and—in some corners of the neoconservative world—heady dreams of remaking the Middle East in America’s mold.  It’s the world of the Coalition Provisional Authority or CPA, under “viceroy,” “proconsul,” “presidential envoy,” or simply, as his official title said, Administrator L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer. Enter this world with Rajiv Chandrasekaran and prepare to… laugh.  You know you shouldn’t, but some of his vignettes on the heights of hubris on the Tigris are so outrageously funny that you might weep.  As you should, for the absurd tragicomedy of life in the Green Zone is rendered here as nowhere else.  Funny but never flippant, Chandrasekaran was The Washington Post Baghdad Bureau Chief before, during, and after the invasion. Though there is shooting, this is not a “war story,” and most of the fireworks are from policy conflicts within the blast-proof walls of the American bunker.  “Green Zone Scenes” provide illuminating introductions to each chapter’s theme.  There are good guys and gals who earnestly try to contribute to rebuilding war-torn Iraq, though many are completely out of their depth.  The wounds are mostly self-inflicted, and they are many: the Pentagon prohibits retired general Jay Garner, the original post-conflict czar, from seeing the multi-volume State Department “Future of Iraq” study; free marketeers bent on privatizing Iraqi state-owned industry succeed in adding thousands to the ranks of the unemployed.  “A Deer In the Headlights,” as one chapter is entitled, sums up the willful disregard for area expertise, rejected in favor of ideological certainties. My favorite vignette is on the public diplomacy skills of the CPA’s police chief: “experts concluded that more than 6,600 foreign police advisers should be sent to Iraq immediately.  The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik.” Kerik spent only a couple of months in Iraq before returning to the U.S. and his ill-fated run for Homeland Security Secretary.  At one point he asks an aide, “who the [expletive deleted] are these people?,” referring to a group of Iraqi judges, assembled at the Palace to meet CPA counterparts.  We are not told whether they overheard Kerik. Not all CPA staffers had such bad manners, but the mutual incomprehension was the same.  Stratcomm (Strategic Communications, or the PR shop) had true believers in the civ-mil duo of Dan Senor and Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt; Chandrasekaran highlights one revealing press conference exchange with an Iraqi journalist: Q: General Kimmitt, the sound of American helicopters, which fly so close to the ground, is terrifying young children, especially at night.  Why do you insist on flying so low and scaring the Iraqi people? A: What we would tell the children of Iraq is that the noise they hear is the sound of freedom. [Followed by 15 lines of similar sanctimonious sentiment.] If Bremer was the lord of the Green Zone, Senor was the ruler of the “Green Room,” as the Stratcomm home in the Republican Palace was known.  Senor, says Chandrasekaran, had a “you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us attitude toward journalists.” Chandrasekaran tells of seeing only Fox News switched on in Senor’s office, and notes that Senor joined Fox post-CPA as a paid commentator on Iraq. Public diplomacy professionals will be further interested in the in-depth treatment given to broadcast professional Don North and his efforts to set up the Iraq Media Network (IMN).  This seat-of-the-pants, under-funded, misspent resources tale is emblematic of the entire venture.  Instead of a beacon of press freedom, said North, “to some in the CPA, IMN was a propaganda tool: ‘we’re paying for it, so we can decide what airs.’” Chandrasekaran tells of media budgets blown to airlift in flashy armored Humvees, when North was in dire need of basics like batteries for TV cameras; of a staged “interview” of Bremer by Senor, which the Iraqi IMN staff deemed “agitprop” and refused to air; and of a CPA-imposed daily propaganda show, preempting the IMN news. IMN, North concluded, “had become an irrelevant mouthpiece for CPA propaganda, managed news, and mediocre programs.” In Washington, President Bush talked about “engaging in the battle of ideas in the Arab world.” But in Baghdad, North said, “We have already lost the first round.” As black-comedic as “Emerald City” often is, the overall theme is of lost opportunities.  Decisions—often based solely on received ideological wisdom with no foundation in Middle Eastern realities—are made, and the consequences are tragic.  “A wasted year,” is the verdict of several American and Iraqi insiders. Many excellent books have been written—some admittedly weightier—on the ambiguous venture called “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The strength of “Emerald City” is in its anecdotes, for they provide a human backdrop for well-known events like the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and the descent into anarchic looting.  There are limits to the anecdotal approach, however.  In the chapter entitled “The Plan Unravels,” I wish that Chandrasekaran had tried a bit less to explicate the meanders of Bremer’s various constitutional, electoral, and institutional attempts to impose his imprint on Iraqi politics.  “Emerald City” is best read as a nonfiction novel, and Chandrasekaran makes effective use of a string of interviews with lesser-known CPA staffers, tracing their efforts, whether heroic or misguided. “Emerald City” is above all an antidote to those who still insist on America’s “transformational” role in imposing or inducing culture-changing attitudes in foreign lands.  Chandrasekaran shows the limits of “Strategic Communication,” where the message, no matter how expertly packaged and delivered, is undermined by the realities evident to all.  Chandrasekaran, who quotes T.E. Lawrence, would have preferred that the CPA had read the legendary Arabist’s admonition:  “Do not try to do too much with your own hands.  Better the Arabs do it tolerably well than that you do it perfectly...” In the subsequent five years, the Emerald City’s CPA morphed into the largest American Embassy in the world, the CPA nation builders left their grandiose plans for Iraq behind and jumped on the plane, and Paul Bremer collected his Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Chandrasekaran’s highly credible book shows that for the “diplomacy of the deed” to be effective, humility à la Lawrence is in order. About the reviewer Gerald Loftus is a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer living in Brussels.  He left the U.S. State Department in 2002, after 24 years in North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, last serving as Chargé d’Affaires of the American Embassy in Luxembourg.  Most recently a consultant to the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies and the U.S. Joint Forces Command, he provides advice on the nexus between diplomacy and defense.  His website, Avuncular American, comments on world events as seen by an expatriate in Europe. Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad’s Green Zone As we mark the fifth anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it is worth revisiting that first year of the U.S. occupation.  The Green Zone of Chandrasekaran’s title has come to symbolize the entire Iraq venture, the enclave where America tried to graft its national narrative and institutions onto a Middle Eastern society, and then was surprised at the transplant’s rejection.  In the immediate aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue, it is a time of striking images and—in some corners of the neoconservative world—heady dreams of remaking the Middle East in America’s mold.  It’s the world of the Coalition Provisional Authority or CPA, under “viceroy,” “proconsul,” “presidential envoy,” or simply, as his official title said, Administrator L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer.

Enter this world with Rajiv Chandrasekaran and prepare to… laugh.  You know you shouldn’t, but some of his vignettes on the heights of hubris on the Tigris are so outrageously funny that you might weep.  As you should, for the absurd tragicomedy of life in the Green Zone is rendered here as nowhere else.  Funny but never flippant, Chandrasekaran was The Washington Post Baghdad Bureau Chief before, during, and after the invasion.

Though there is shooting, this is not a “war story,” and most of the fireworks are from policy conflicts within the blast-proof walls of the American bunker.  “Green Zone Scenes” provide illuminating introductions to each chapter’s theme.  There are good guys and gals who earnestly try to contribute to rebuilding war-torn Iraq, though many are completely out of their depth.  The wounds are mostly self-inflicted, and they are many: the Pentagon prohibits retired general Jay Garner, the original post-conflict czar, from seeing the multi-volume State Department “Future of Iraq” study; free marketeers bent on privatizing Iraqi state-owned industry succeed in adding thousands to the ranks of the unemployed.  “A Deer In the Headlights,” as one chapter is entitled, sums up the willful disregard for area expertise, rejected in favor of ideological certainties.

My favorite vignette is on the public diplomacy skills of the CPA’s police chief: “experts concluded that more than 6,600 foreign police advisers should be sent to Iraq immediately.  The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik.” Kerik spent only a couple of months in Iraq before returning to the U.S. and his ill-fated run for Homeland Security Secretary.  At one point he asks an aide, “who the [expletive deleted] are these people?,” referring to a group of Iraqi judges, assembled at the Palace to meet CPA counterparts.  We are not told whether they overheard Kerik.

Not all CPA staffers had such bad manners, but the mutual incomprehension was the same.  Stratcomm (Strategic Communications, or the PR shop) had true believers in the civ-mil duo of Dan Senor and Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt; Chandrasekaran highlights one revealing press conference exchange with an Iraqi journalist:

Q: General Kimmitt, the sound of American helicopters, which fly so close to the ground, is terrifying young children, especially at night.  Why do you insist on flying so low and scaring the Iraqi people?
A: What we would tell the children of Iraq is that the noise they hear is the sound of freedom. [Followed by 15 lines of similar sanctimonious sentiment.]

If Bremer was the lord of the Green Zone, Senor was the ruler of the “Green Room,” as the Stratcomm home in the Republican Palace was known.  Senor, says Chandrasekaran, had a “you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us attitude toward journalists.” Chandrasekaran tells of seeing only Fox News switched on in Senor’s office, and notes that Senor joined Fox post-CPA as a paid commentator on Iraq.

Public diplomacy professionals will be further interested in the in-depth treatment given to broadcast professional Don North and his efforts to set up the Iraq Media Network (IMN).  This seat-of-the-pants, under-funded, misspent resources tale is emblematic of the entire venture.  Instead of a beacon of press freedom, said North, “to some in the CPA, IMN was a propaganda tool: ‘we’re paying for it, so we can decide what airs.’”

Chandrasekaran tells of media budgets blown to airlift in flashy armored Humvees, when North was in dire need of basics like batteries for TV cameras; of a staged “interview” of Bremer by Senor, which the Iraqi IMN staff deemed “agitprop” and refused to air; and of a CPA-imposed daily propaganda show, preempting the IMN news.

IMN, North concluded, “had become an irrelevant mouthpiece for CPA propaganda, managed news, and mediocre programs.” In Washington, President Bush talked about “engaging in the battle of ideas in the Arab world.” But in Baghdad, North said, “We have already lost the first round.”

As black-comedic as “Emerald City” often is, the overall theme is of lost opportunities.  Decisions—often based solely on received ideological wisdom with no foundation in Middle Eastern realities—are made, and the consequences are tragic.  “A wasted year,” is the verdict of several American and Iraqi insiders.

Many excellent books have been written—some admittedly weightier—on the ambiguous venture called “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The strength of “Emerald City” is in its anecdotes, for they provide a human backdrop for well-known events like the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and the descent into anarchic looting.  There are limits to the anecdotal approach, however.  In the chapter entitled “The Plan Unravels,” I wish that Chandrasekaran had tried a bit less to explicate the meanders of Bremer’s various constitutional, electoral, and institutional attempts to impose his imprint on Iraqi politics.  “Emerald City” is best read as a nonfiction novel, and Chandrasekaran makes effective use of a string of interviews with lesser-known CPA staffers, tracing their efforts, whether heroic or misguided.

“Emerald City” is above all an antidote to those who still insist on America’s “transformational” role in imposing or inducing culture-changing attitudes in foreign lands.  Chandrasekaran shows the limits of “Strategic Communication,” where the message, no matter how expertly packaged and delivered, is undermined by the realities evident to all.  Chandrasekaran, who quotes T.E. Lawrence, would have preferred that the CPA had read the legendary Arabist’s admonition:  “Do not try to do too much with your own hands.  Better the Arabs do it tolerably well than that you do it perfectly...” In the subsequent five years, the Emerald City’s CPA morphed into the largest American Embassy in the world, the CPA nation builders left their grandiose plans for Iraq behind and jumped on the plane, and Paul Bremer collected his Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Chandrasekaran’s highly credible book shows that for the “diplomacy of the deed” to be effective, humility à la Lawrence is in order.

About the reviewer

Gerald Loftus is a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer living in Brussels.  He left the U.S. State Department in 2002, after 24 years in North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, last serving as Chargé d’Affaires of the American Embassy in Luxembourg.  Most recently a consultant to the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies and the U.S. Joint Forces Command, he provides advice on the nexus between diplomacy and defense.  His website, Avuncular American, comments on world events as seen by an expatriate in Europe.

]]> 2008-04-24T17:50:00-08:00 Can Bono, Brangelina and Becks Save the World? As I read Andrew F. Cooper’s Celebrity Diplomacy, a first-rate meditation on the role of media stars as international relations players, my mind went back to 2000 and a visit by Bono, lead singer of the mega-group U2, to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  I heard a commotion outside my office on the third floor of the Littauer Center and peered out into the hallway just in time to see a diminutive figure with longish hair disappear around the corner.  Several young women staffers were standing about in a gaga state.  “Did you see?” one breathlessly declared.  “That was BONO!” I had recently heard that Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who headed the Kennedy School’s Center for International Development, had struck up an acquaintanceship with the Irish vocalist; the two shared an interest in the issue of Third World poverty and debt forgiveness as an antidote.  Bono was in fact on his way over to the CID office for a meeting with Sachs.  (For Bono’s June 2001 Harvard Class Day speech, click here .) At the time, the budding relationship between the buttoned-down academic and the flamboyant rock star seemed to many observers, myself included, little more than an bemusing, ephemeral oddity. Those of us who at the time minimized Bono’s social-political commitment as a well-meaning pop musician’s passing fancy were of course proven wrong.  The cover of Celebrity Diplomacy features a photograph taken years later of Bono walking confidently beside President George Bush, a testament to the longevity and seriousness of the singer-activist’s humanitarian efforts, as well as the extraordinary access to the corridors of political power that he has developed.  Unsurprisingly, Bono looms large in Cooper’s analysis of celebrities who seek to play a constructive role in international affairs, whether through an affiliation with intergovernmental institutions like UN-affiliated agencies, NGOs like Greenpeace and Amnesty International, or through freelance efforts of varying sophistication. Cooper’s taxonomy of celebrity diplomacy is straightforward.  “To retain the label of ‘celebrity diplomats’,” he writes, “individuals must not only possess ample communication skills, a sense of mission, and some global reach.  They must enter into the official diplomatic world and operate through the matrix of complex relationships with state officials.” (p. 7) The historic template for celebrity diplomacy was provided by actors Danny Kaye and especially Audrey Hepburn in their work for UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund in the mid-to-late twentieth century.  Today we have the nonpareil Bono, “the talisman of celebrity diplomacy” (p. 36), who has turned out to be preternaturally gifted in the art of navigating and manipulating traditional power precincts, whether the White House, Whitehall, or the World Economic Forum.  Aside from Bono, Cooper offers sharp overviews of the activities and effectiveness of other celebrity diplomats, including former Boomtown Rats lead singer Sir Bob Geldof—mastermind of Live Aid and the “outsider” yang to Bono’s “insider” ying; the surprisingly effective and engaged British footballer David Beckham; the Late Princess Diana; and of course actress Angelina Jolie (also featured on the cover of Celebrity Diplomacy), who has displayed perseverance and braved numerous hardships in her ongoing role as a goodwill ambassador for the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees. As Cooper notes, Jolie is if anything an even more implausible celebrity diplomat success story than was Bono, an actress who “reveled in an image of wild, eccentric behavior via her series of relationships with celebrity men … multiple tattoos, and a variety of other ‘silly self-destructive things.’” (p. 32) But she has been diligent and committed in her efforts, garnering respect from figures like Jeffrey Sachs and former Council on Foreign Relations president Winston Lord, who expressed to me his great admiration for Jolie in a conversation some months back. Along with the celebrity diplomat successes there have been clunkers, such as Gerri Halliwell of the Spice Girls, who quickly lost interest in advocating for the UN on family planning, and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, whose financial problems led her away from pro bono UN activism to concentrate on her contract with Weight Watchers.  And then there are the “loose cannons” (p. 115)—figures like actor Richard Gere and singer-actor Harry Belafonte, and even Princess Di herself, who have both affiliated themselves with official agencies and made transgressive, undiplomatic statements, such as Belafonte’s 2006 denunciation of George W. Bush as “the greatest terrorist in the world” on Venezuelan television in the presence of an approving Hugo Chavez. Nonetheless, Cooper is quite correct in concluding that while celebrity diplomacy is not problem-free, the benefits can be considerable:  “The best celebrity diplomats have figured out far more successfully than their professional counterparts how a sophisticated form of public diplomacy can be operated.” (p. 127) But there is an undiscussed potential dark side to celebrity diplomacy that goes beyond the risk of trivializing or distorting critical issues that concerns contemporary critics of the phenomenon (p. 114).  Celebrity Diplomacy concentrates exclusively on efforts undertaken in support of humanitarian and liberal causes.  African poverty may have made strange bedfellows of George Bush and Bono, but few on the left would argue with the sentiment behind their partnership. But what about when celebrities support vile regimes and programs?  Charles Lindbergh was one of America’s foremost celebrities in the 1930s due to both his history-making solo flight across the Atlantic and the tragic kidnapping and murder of his child.  Lindbergh repeatedly visited Nazi Germany, lauded the Nazis’ accomplishments and the power of the Luftwaffe, received a medal from Air Marshall Herman Goering, and vigorously opposed war between the U.S. and Germany.  In the 1960s Hollywood producer Samuel Bronston established a high-profile movie studio in Franco Spain, where he offered unstinting aid to the international propaganda efforts of the right-wing military dictatorship there via popular epic films like El Cid, pro-Franco documentaries, and promoting U.S. and other international tourism to Spain.  And last year director Steven Spielberg signed on as a leading consultant to China’s communist government for the 2008 Beijing Olympiad, a role he recently relinquished in the face of withering criticism from opponents of Chinese policy toward Sudan and the Darfur genocide like actress Mia Farrow, who warned the director of Schindler’s List that he risked becoming “the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Olympics.” Whether out of ideological affinity (Lindbergh), ruthless instrumentalism (Bronston), or sheer heedlessness (Spielberg), celebrities have periodically placed themselves in the service of heinous, or at least morally dubious, causes. Still, such activities are clearly the exception, not the rule, when it comes to celebrity diplomacy.  The great majority of such efforts conform to a Hippocratic standard:  at worst, they Do No Harm; and the best efforts, like those of Angelina Jolie and Bono, dramatically expand the parameters of what has traditionally thought to be achievable via diplomacy.  Andrew Cooper has done an outstanding job of exploring this brave, not-quite-new world.  Moreover, aside from its substantive virtues, Celebrity Diplomacy displays clear organization, a salutary brevity, and a droll wit (for example, “Bono had to deal with rebukes that his ‘day’ and ‘night’ jobs—even if Bono’s day job was most often performed at night—were at odds with each other.” [p. 42]).  Future scholars of this subject, and I hope there will be many, will owe a great debt to his seminal study. Celebrity Diplomacy Can Bono, Brangelina and Becks Save the World?

As I read Andrew F. Cooper’s Celebrity Diplomacy, a first-rate meditation on the role of media stars as international relations players, my mind went back to 2000 and a visit by Bono, lead singer of the mega-group U2, to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  I heard a commotion outside my office on the third floor of the Littauer Center and peered out into the hallway just in time to see a diminutive figure with longish hair disappear around the corner.  Several young women staffers were standing about in a gaga state.  “Did you see?” one breathlessly declared.  “That was BONO!” I had recently heard that Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who headed the Kennedy School’s Center for International Development, had struck up an acquaintanceship with the Irish vocalist; the two shared an interest in the issue of Third World poverty and debt forgiveness as an antidote.  Bono was in fact on his way over to the CID office for a meeting with Sachs.  (For Bono’s June 2001 Harvard Class Day speech, click here .) At the time, the budding relationship between the buttoned-down academic and the flamboyant rock star seemed to many observers, myself included, little more than an bemusing, ephemeral oddity.

Those of us who at the time minimized Bono’s social-political commitment as a well-meaning pop musician’s passing fancy were of course proven wrong.  The cover of Celebrity Diplomacy features a photograph taken years later of Bono walking confidently beside President George Bush, a testament to the longevity and seriousness of the singer-activist’s humanitarian efforts, as well as the extraordinary access to the corridors of political power that he has developed.  Unsurprisingly, Bono looms large in Cooper’s analysis of celebrities who seek to play a constructive role in international affairs, whether through an affiliation with intergovernmental institutions like UN-affiliated agencies, NGOs like Greenpeace and Amnesty International, or through freelance efforts of varying sophistication.

Cooper’s taxonomy of celebrity diplomacy is straightforward.  “To retain the label of ‘celebrity diplomats’,” he writes, “individuals must not only possess ample communication skills, a sense of mission, and some global reach.  They must enter into the official diplomatic world and operate through the matrix of complex relationships with state officials.” (p. 7) The historic template for celebrity diplomacy was provided by actors Danny Kaye and especially Audrey Hepburn in their work for UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund in the mid-to-late twentieth century.  Today we have the nonpareil Bono, “the talisman of celebrity diplomacy” (p. 36), who has turned out to be preternaturally gifted in the art of navigating and manipulating traditional power precincts, whether the White House, Whitehall, or the World Economic Forum.  Aside from Bono, Cooper offers sharp overviews of the activities and effectiveness of other celebrity diplomats, including former Boomtown Rats lead singer Sir Bob Geldof—mastermind of Live Aid and the “outsider” yang to Bono’s “insider” ying; the surprisingly effective and engaged British footballer David Beckham; the Late Princess Diana; and of course actress Angelina Jolie (also featured on the cover of Celebrity Diplomacy), who has displayed perseverance and braved numerous hardships in her ongoing role as a goodwill ambassador for the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees.

As Cooper notes, Jolie is if anything an even more implausible celebrity diplomat success story than was Bono, an actress who “reveled in an image of wild, eccentric behavior via her series of relationships with celebrity men … multiple tattoos, and a variety of other ‘silly self-destructive things.’” (p. 32) But she has been diligent and committed in her efforts, garnering respect from figures like Jeffrey Sachs and former Council on Foreign Relations president Winston Lord, who expressed to me his great admiration for Jolie in a conversation some months back.

Along with the celebrity diplomat successes there have been clunkers, such as Gerri Halliwell of the Spice Girls, who quickly lost interest in advocating for the UN on family planning, and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, whose financial problems led her away from pro bono UN activism to concentrate on her contract with Weight Watchers.  And then there are the “loose cannons” (p. 115)—figures like actor Richard Gere and singer-actor Harry Belafonte, and even Princess Di herself, who have both affiliated themselves with official agencies and made transgressive, undiplomatic statements, such as Belafonte’s 2006 denunciation of George W. Bush as “the greatest terrorist in the world” on Venezuelan television in the presence of an approving Hugo Chavez.

Nonetheless, Cooper is quite correct in concluding that while celebrity diplomacy is not problem-free, the benefits can be considerable:  “The best celebrity diplomats have figured out far more successfully than their professional counterparts how a sophisticated form of public diplomacy can be operated.” (p. 127) But there is an undiscussed potential dark side to celebrity diplomacy that goes beyond the risk of trivializing or distorting critical issues that concerns contemporary critics of the phenomenon (p. 114).  Celebrity Diplomacy concentrates exclusively on efforts undertaken in support of humanitarian and liberal causes.  African poverty may have made strange bedfellows of George Bush and Bono, but few on the left would argue with the sentiment behind their partnership.

But what about when celebrities support vile regimes and programs?  Charles Lindbergh was one of America’s foremost celebrities in the 1930s due to both his history-making solo flight across the Atlantic and the tragic kidnapping and murder of his child.  Lindbergh repeatedly visited Nazi Germany, lauded the Nazis’ accomplishments and the power of the Luftwaffe, received a medal from Air Marshall Herman Goering, and vigorously opposed war between the U.S. and Germany.  In the 1960s Hollywood producer Samuel Bronston established a high-profile movie studio in Franco Spain, where he offered unstinting aid to the international propaganda efforts of the right-wing military dictatorship there via popular epic films like El Cid, pro-Franco documentaries, and promoting U.S. and other international tourism to Spain.  And last year director Steven Spielberg signed on as a leading consultant to China’s communist government for the 2008 Beijing Olympiad, a role he recently relinquished in the face of withering criticism from opponents of Chinese policy toward Sudan and the Darfur genocide like actress Mia Farrow, who warned the director of Schindler’s List that he risked becoming “the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Olympics.” Whether out of ideological affinity (Lindbergh), ruthless instrumentalism (Bronston), or sheer heedlessness (Spielberg), celebrities have periodically placed themselves in the service of heinous, or at least morally dubious, causes.

Still, such activities are clearly the exception, not the rule, when it comes to celebrity diplomacy.  The great majority of such efforts conform to a Hippocratic standard:  at worst, they Do No Harm; and the best efforts, like those of Angelina Jolie and Bono, dramatically expand the parameters of what has traditionally thought to be achievable via diplomacy.  Andrew Cooper has done an outstanding job of exploring this brave, not-quite-new world.  Moreover, aside from its substantive virtues, Celebrity Diplomacy displays clear organization, a salutary brevity, and a droll wit (for example, “Bono had to deal with rebukes that his ‘day’ and ‘night’ jobs—even if Bono’s day job was most often performed at night—were at odds with each other.” [p. 42]).  Future scholars of this subject, and I hope there will be many, will owe a great debt to his seminal study.

]]> 2008-04-09T18:02:00-08:00 Following the end of the Cold War and the opening up of communications channels for a free flow of information, the United States government played a less active role in promoting a positive image of American culture abroad, perhaps under the assumption that the international appeal of American popular culture would do the job on its own.  One of the unintended consequences of this hands-off approach to public diplomacy has been a rising tide of anti-Americanism, based upon, among other things, the inadequacy of popular culture to provide a full and accurate picture of American society and values.  There is now an increasing consensus that active steps need to be taken in order to counter the international perception of American society as uncultured and unsophisticated.  Reinvestigating the past successes and failures of American cultural diplomacy as described by Penny Von Eschen in her latest book on the “jazz ambassadors” of the Cold War might provide a good starting point for analysis. Von Eschen’s thought provoking book entitled Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, explores how and why the U.S. Department of State sent American jazz artists around the world as cultural ambassadors during the Cold War.  On one hand, Von Eschen argues, the prominence of black artists, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong, as well as integrated bands led by white musicians such as Benny Goodman and Dave Brubeck, helped counter international criticism of racism and segregation in American society.  On the other, jazz music was promoted by the State Department as an exclusively American cultural contribution:  “Unlike classical music, theater, or ballet, jazz could be embraced by U.S. officials as a uniquely American art form.  Government officials and supporters of the arts hoped to offset what they perceived as European and Soviet superiority in classical music and ballet, while at the same time shielding America’s Achilles heel by demonstrating racial equality in action.” Von Eschen’s survey of music as a cultural diplomacy tool begins with Dizzy Gillespie’s tour of the Middle East in 1956 and ends with Clary Terry’s tour of Greece, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India in 1978.  In the context of the Cold War, however, perhaps most significant was the jazz ambassadors’ ability to penetrate the Iron Curtain and establish an influence where little existed in the way of cultural and ideological exchange.  Jazz tours of the Soviet Union appealed to the general public and often cunningly bypassed the Soviet authorities by impromptu public performances and unannounced jam sessions.  During Benny Goodman’s tour of the Soviet Union in 1962, Goodman took out his clarinet in Red Square and mocked the Soviet guards by playing “Pop Goes the Weasel” as they marched by.  There is no better testimony to the success and potent influence of such performances than the response of the Soviet authorities to attempts by Russian jazz musicians to participate in jam sessions or speak with the band members in private.  On the night of their final concert, Benny Goodman’s band looked on as the Soviet police whisked away the local jazz club leader.  Politics and culture intersected in strategic thinking across the Atlantic as well.  Occasionally, American Foreign Service Officers tried to identify Soviet jazz fans that might serve as intelligence contacts.  For example, after Duke Ellington’s tour of the Soviet Union in 1971, the State Department produced a study of jazz clubs in Leningrad, “in order to augment American intelligence on potentially pro-American Soviet citizens.” Even though the jazz ambassadors received warm welcomes almost everywhere they went, Von Eschen is clear to point out that the effect of these cultural programs could be undercut by other methods employed to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals.  She concludes that covert operations to destabilize foreign governments undermined the goodwill generated by the jazz tours, yet her account also shows that the tours encouraged a positive view of American culture independent of American foreign policy. As a professor of African American studies at the University of Michigan, Von Eschen gives special attention to the issue of race.  She attempts to walk the line between lauding jazz musicians as civil rights ambassadors and denouncing the State Department’s exploitation of black artists as pawns in the Cold War.  Von Eschen argues that the State Department relied on black jazz musicians to present a rose-colored image of American race relations, even as Jim Crow laws were still in place.  Yet, even if the musicians did not believe that they were representing a color-blind nation, many African-American jazz artists such as Duke Ellington took great pride in representing their race as well as their nation.  Others, including Dizzy Gillespie, distanced themselves from American nationalism and promoted jazz as a universal world-music. Recognizing the popular appeal of African-American gospel and soul, the State Department joined forces with private promoters such as Newport Jazz Festival founder George Wein and helped send a diverse range of American artists to strategically important areas that would normally be of little interest for commercial tours.  Blues legend BB King traveled to Dakur, Accra, and Lagos in 1970, and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson toured India in 1971.  In addition, George Wein helped organize eclectic jazz tours in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and South America. The strong points of the book include an accessible style and excellent use of primary source documents from U.S. government archives, English language press reports, and first-hand interviews with musicians. Von Eschen’s book is concisely written and laden with informative and enlightening anecdotes.  One of the highlights of the book is Von Eschen’s description of the jazz musical “The Real Jazz Ambassadors,” a work that presents a satirical commentary on the jazz tours co-written by Dave Brubeck and Louis Armstrong in 1960.  The lyrics highlight the irony of black musicians being asked to represent a nation that still endorsed segregation.  The book also highlights American attempts to shape attitudes in the Middle East through cultural diplomacy such as Dave Brubeck’s 1958 tour of the Middle East, which included stops in Afghanistan and Iraq.  In Kabul, Brubeck’s quartet played for a mixed audience of Soviet and American military advisors eager for cultural diversion.  After the concert, a security advisor from California confided to Brubeck that the U.S. government should be more supportive of the arts.  Later in the tour, Brubeck played for employees of an oil company in Baghdad just days before a military coup over-threw the U.S. friendly regime. In her discussion of race, the author walks a fine line between acknowledging the contributions of the jazz tours towards promoting civil rights and democracy and denouncing the abuse of black musicians by the U.S. government. Von Eschen’s arguments about imperialism and espionage are less convincing.  She poignantly draws attention to the contradiction between advocating democracy while supporting oppressive dictatorships abroad, yet her criticism of U.S. policy overlooks Soviet foreign policy by proxies.  Von Eschen’s critique of U.S. “imperial” ambitions makes little effort to respond to opposing points of view, preferring instead to cite like-minded critics.  In addition, more could have been done to represent the views of local non-English language press.  Nonetheless, Von Eschen’s book presents an informative historical survey of jazz in the service of American cultural diplomacy. In the epilogue to her book, Penny Von Eschen laments that contemporary U.S. cultural diplomacy displays ignorance of the lessons of the past, and she warns of the danger of relying on McDonalds and Britney Spears to represent American culture abroad.  Since her book was published in 2004, the U.S. Department of State seems to have learned from the lessons of the Cold War jazz ambassadors.  In 2006, the State Department sponsored a series of jazz concerts to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Gillespie’s first jazz tour and has partnered with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra to send American jazz bands abroad.  Signs such as these are encouraging, but whether future policy makers will truly heed Von Eschen’s call for a “jazz approach” to foreign policy remains to be seen. About the reviewer Matthew Thomas is a Doctoral student in Musicology at the University of Southern California and is currently working on his dissertation, which concerns jazz and cultural diplomacy in the Middle East.  Matt is an avid teacher and gives frequent pre–concert lectures for the Da Camera Society of Mt. St. Mary’s College.  He regularly contributes program notes for the annual Mozart Woche in Salzburg, Austria.  His writings on the folk music of Chechnya have been published in the online journal Resonance and he has presented a paper on the representation of the Crusades in medieval song at the international conference on Music and War in the Czech Republic.  His experience in foreign policy and public relations includes internships with the U.S. Department of State in Vienna, Austria and Hamburg, Germany.  As a professional singer, he performs with the USC chamber choir and works as a soloist and section leader at churches in Los Angeles and Orange County. Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War Following the end of the Cold War and the opening up of communications channels for a free flow of information, the United States government played a less active role in promoting a positive image of American culture abroad, perhaps under the assumption that the international appeal of American popular culture would do the job on its own.  One of the unintended consequences of this hands-off approach to public diplomacy has been a rising tide of anti-Americanism, based upon, among other things, the inadequacy of popular culture to provide a full and accurate picture of American society and values.  There is now an increasing consensus that active steps need to be taken in order to counter the international perception of American society as uncultured and unsophisticated.  Reinvestigating the past successes and failures of American cultural diplomacy as described by Penny Von Eschen in her latest book on the “jazz ambassadors” of the Cold War might provide a good starting point for analysis.

Von Eschen’s thought provoking book entitled Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, explores how and why the U.S. Department of State sent American jazz artists around the world as cultural ambassadors during the Cold War.  On one hand, Von Eschen argues, the prominence of black artists, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong, as well as integrated bands led by white musicians such as Benny Goodman and Dave Brubeck, helped counter international criticism of racism and segregation in American society.  On the other, jazz music was promoted by the State Department as an exclusively American cultural contribution:  “Unlike classical music, theater, or ballet, jazz could be embraced by U.S. officials as a uniquely American art form.  Government officials and supporters of the arts hoped to offset what they perceived as European and Soviet superiority in classical music and ballet, while at the same time shielding America’s Achilles heel by demonstrating racial equality in action.”

Von Eschen’s survey of music as a cultural diplomacy tool begins with Dizzy Gillespie’s tour of the Middle East in 1956 and ends with Clary Terry’s tour of Greece, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India in 1978.  In the context of the Cold War, however, perhaps most significant was the jazz ambassadors’ ability to penetrate the Iron Curtain and establish an influence where little existed in the way of cultural and ideological exchange.  Jazz tours of the Soviet Union appealed to the general public and often cunningly bypassed the Soviet authorities by impromptu public performances and unannounced jam sessions.  During Benny Goodman’s tour of the Soviet Union in 1962, Goodman took out his clarinet in Red Square and mocked the Soviet guards by playing “Pop Goes the Weasel” as they marched by.  There is no better testimony to the success and potent influence of such performances than the response of the Soviet authorities to attempts by Russian jazz musicians to participate in jam sessions or speak with the band members in private.  On the night of their final concert, Benny Goodman’s band looked on as the Soviet police whisked away the local jazz club leader.  Politics and culture intersected in strategic thinking across the Atlantic as well.  Occasionally, American Foreign Service Officers tried to identify Soviet jazz fans that might serve as intelligence contacts.  For example, after Duke Ellington’s tour of the Soviet Union in 1971, the State Department produced a study of jazz clubs in Leningrad, “in order to augment American intelligence on potentially pro-American Soviet citizens.”

Even though the jazz ambassadors received warm welcomes almost everywhere they went, Von Eschen is clear to point out that the effect of these cultural programs could be undercut by other methods employed to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals.  She concludes that covert operations to destabilize foreign governments undermined the goodwill generated by the jazz tours, yet her account also shows that the tours encouraged a positive view of American culture independent of American foreign policy.

As a professor of African American studies at the University of Michigan, Von Eschen gives special attention to the issue of race.  She attempts to walk the line between lauding jazz musicians as civil rights ambassadors and denouncing the State Department’s exploitation of black artists as pawns in the Cold War.  Von Eschen argues that the State Department relied on black jazz musicians to present a rose-colored image of American race relations, even as Jim Crow laws were still in place.  Yet, even if the musicians did not believe that they were representing a color-blind nation, many African-American jazz artists such as Duke Ellington took great pride in representing their race as well as their nation.  Others, including Dizzy Gillespie, distanced themselves from American nationalism and promoted jazz as a universal world-music.

Recognizing the popular appeal of African-American gospel and soul, the State Department joined forces with private promoters such as Newport Jazz Festival founder George Wein and helped send a diverse range of American artists to strategically important areas that would normally be of little interest for commercial tours.  Blues legend BB King traveled to Dakur, Accra, and Lagos in 1970, and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson toured India in 1971.  In addition, George Wein helped organize eclectic jazz tours in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and South America.

The strong points of the book include an accessible style and excellent use of primary source documents from U.S. government archives, English language press reports, and first-hand interviews with musicians. Von Eschen’s book is concisely written and laden with informative and enlightening anecdotes.  One of the highlights of the book is Von Eschen’s description of the jazz musical “The Real Jazz Ambassadors,” a work that presents a satirical commentary on the jazz tours co-written by Dave Brubeck and Louis Armstrong in 1960.  The lyrics highlight the irony of black musicians being asked to represent a nation that still endorsed segregation.  The book also highlights American attempts to shape attitudes in the Middle East through cultural diplomacy such as Dave Brubeck’s 1958 tour of the Middle East, which included stops in Afghanistan and Iraq.  In Kabul, Brubeck’s quartet played for a mixed audience of Soviet and American military advisors eager for cultural diversion.  After the concert, a security advisor from California confided to Brubeck that the U.S. government should be more supportive of the arts.  Later in the tour, Brubeck played for employees of an oil company in Baghdad just days before a military coup over-threw the U.S. friendly regime.

In her discussion of race, the author walks a fine line between acknowledging the contributions of the jazz tours towards promoting civil rights and democracy and denouncing the abuse of black musicians by the U.S. government. Von Eschen’s arguments about imperialism and espionage are less convincing.  She poignantly draws attention to the contradiction between advocating democracy while supporting oppressive dictatorships abroad, yet her criticism of U.S. policy overlooks Soviet foreign policy by proxies.  Von Eschen’s critique of U.S. “imperial” ambitions makes little effort to respond to opposing points of view, preferring instead to cite like-minded critics.  In addition, more could have been done to represent the views of local non-English language press.  Nonetheless, Von Eschen’s book presents an informative historical survey of jazz in the service of American cultural diplomacy.

In the epilogue to her book, Penny Von Eschen laments that contemporary U.S. cultural diplomacy displays ignorance of the lessons of the past, and she warns of the danger of relying on McDonalds and Britney Spears to represent American culture abroad.  Since her book was published in 2004, the U.S. Department of State seems to have learned from the lessons of the Cold War jazz ambassadors.  In 2006, the State Department sponsored a series of jazz concerts to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Gillespie’s first jazz tour and has partnered with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra to send American jazz bands abroad.  Signs such as these are encouraging, but whether future policy makers will truly heed Von Eschen’s call for a “jazz approach” to foreign policy remains to be seen.


About the reviewer

Matthew Thomas is a Doctoral student in Musicology at the University of Southern California and is currently working on his dissertation, which concerns jazz and cultural diplomacy in the Middle East.  Matt is an avid teacher and gives frequent pre–concert lectures for the Da Camera Society of Mt. St. Mary’s College.  He regularly contributes program notes for the annual Mozart Woche in Salzburg, Austria.  His writings on the folk music of Chechnya have been published in the online journal Resonance and he has presented a paper on the representation of the Crusades in medieval song at the international conference on Music and War in the Czech Republic.  His experience in foreign policy and public relations includes internships with the U.S. Department of State in Vienna, Austria and Hamburg, Germany.  As a professional singer, he performs with the USC chamber choir and works as a soloist and section leader at churches in Los Angeles and Orange County.

]]> 2008-03-31T21:48:00-08:00 This review first appeared in The Channel In recent years no broadcast media outlet in the world has attracted as much attention, and controversy as the Qatar-based pan-Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera. Earlier this year, a survey by a worldwide branding consultancy ranked the network the world’s fifth most influential brand, behind Apple, Google, Ikea and Starbucks. No mean achievement for a channel launched in 1996 and virtually unknown outside the Arab world before the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Al-Jazeera – How Arab TV news challenged the world, details the origins and gradual expansion of the network which changed the Middle Eastern and global broadcast media landscapes. The author, Hugh Miles, an Arabic speaker born and partly educated in the Middle East, claims the particular situation of Qatar and the vision of its ruler allowed the creation of an independent channel in the emirate. From the distinctive nature and shortcomings of the Arabic media scene and the collapse of the BBC Arabic TV channel, to the working practices of the channel and reactions to its broadcasts in the Muslim and Western world, Miles gives a comprehensive account of what made Al-Jazeera such a special phenomenon. “The BBC Arabic [TV] service was the beginning. For the first time Arabs had the chance to watch Arab journalists doing the news and making programmes to the same standards as Western news channel,” an Al-Jazeera journalist told Miles. The sudden collapse of the BBC Arabic TV channel, a joint venture with the Saudi-owned Orbit satellite television company in April 1996, over a dispute regarding editorial control of the channel, left scores of BBC-trained journalists and other media staff out of a job overnight. Some 120 of these were immediately taken on by Al-Jazeera, providing editorial experience and a solid foundation for the young channel. Miles offers a broad overview of Al-Jazeera’s unique [in the Arab world] and often provocative programming. In particular, lively talk shows and interviews which saw officials and dissidents from all Arab countries discussing contemporary issues and arguing angrily. These proved very popular among Arab viewers, but angered many governments, leading to the closure of several Al-Jazeera bureaus throughout the region and a widespread Saudi-backed ban on advertising on the network. The channel achieved a first international breakthrough with its comprehensive coverage of the second intifida which, according to Miles, forced Arab governments to react following widespread popular protests in the Arab world. Amazingly, the Palestinian Authority also temporarily closed down the Al-Jazeera bureau in Ramallah following what it considered to be an offensive image of Yasser Arafat in a trailer program. Miles recalls how the 9/11 attacks on the USA and their aftermath proved a watershed for Al-Jazeera and established its global status. The channel was the only one with a bureau in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and western networks started vying for its footage after the US launched its offensive and after it broadcast tapes from Osama bin Laden. This enhanced status also marked the beginning of tense relations with Washington, which continue to this day, and have resulted in strong direct and indirect pressures from Washington on the channel and the Qatari authorities and – some argue – in deliberate US strikes against Al-Jazeera offices and staff in Kabul and Baghdad. Interestingly, Al-Jazeera is frequently accused of being funded and controlled by Israel and the USA in some Arab circles, and by al-Qaeda and other terrorists or extremists by Washington and Tel Aviv; this could be seen as a tribute to its editorial independence. Miles also highlights US contradictions regarding non-Western media: whilst advocating free-speech in the Arab world Washington reserves its harshest critics for a channel which has truly opened up political debates in the Arab world. It could be argued that Al-Jazeera is no more anti-American than many European media organizations. For instance, according to a February 2005 Media Tenor survey, the share of negative statements about the US on Germany’s leading news show “Tagesthemen” (produced by public broadcaster ARD) was higher than those on Al-Jazeera news in January 2005. Yet Western media are not targeted by Washington. However, not all US officials are hostile to Al-Jazeera, Department of State Spokesman Dr Nabil Khouri is quoted as saying: “I would prefer to watch Al-Jazeera any time rather than Fox.” At the same time, Miles says, the US is embarking on an ineffective media offensive in the Arab world by sponsoring costly advertising campaigns and launching a stream of broadcast media services targeting Arab audiences and often perceived as brazen propaganda. Too often, this book appears overly “positive” about Al-Jazeera: the channel does no wrong and nearly all criticisms directed at it are too easily dismissed as irrelevant or unjustified. However, if Al-Jazeera has indeed transformed the Arabic broadcast media landscape, and is undoubtedly proving a popular success with a global audience estimated at nearly 50 million, it still has plenty of room for improvement and would certainly benefit from some tightening of its editorial practices, nothing surprising for this fairly new kid on the international broadcasting block. Al-Jazeera – How Arab TV news challenged the world has a comprehensive index, but lacks notes. It will prove a key book for those wanting to understand the Arab media scene and the deep transformations it went through in the past 10 years or so, thanks precisely to Al-Jazeera. It is also essential reading for all those interested in Middle Eastern politics, international broadcasting, public diplomacy and international relations. About the reviewer Morand Fachot is a media analyst and international broadcasting consultant. He worked as a journalist and media analyst with the BBC World Service (Monitoring Service), and media officer for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). His publications include an FT Business Management Report on “European public broadcasting in the digital age” as well as articles and papers on international broadcasting; media, conflict and the military; hate media; and broadcast technology for BBC News Online, The Channel (Association for International Broadcasting, U.K.), International Affairs (U.K.), Transnational Broadcasting Studies Journal (Adham Center, The American University in Cairo, Egypt), Policy Options (Canadian Institute for Research on Public Policy), Commentaire (France), Diffusion Online (EBU). Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That is Challenging the West This review first appeared in The Channel

In recent years no broadcast media outlet in the world has attracted as much attention, and controversy as the Qatar-based pan-Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera.
Earlier this year, a survey by a worldwide branding consultancy ranked the network the world’s fifth most influential brand, behind Apple, Google, Ikea and Starbucks.
No mean achievement for a channel launched in 1996 and virtually unknown outside the Arab world before the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Al-Jazeera – How Arab TV news challenged the world, details the origins and gradual expansion of the network which changed the Middle Eastern and global broadcast media landscapes.
The author, Hugh Miles, an Arabic speaker born and partly educated in the Middle East, claims the particular situation of Qatar and the vision of its ruler allowed the creation of an independent channel in the emirate.
From the distinctive nature and shortcomings of the Arabic media scene and the collapse of the BBC Arabic TV channel, to the working practices of the channel and reactions to its broadcasts in the Muslim and Western world, Miles gives a comprehensive account of what made Al-Jazeera such a special phenomenon.
“The BBC Arabic [TV] service was the beginning. For the first time Arabs had the chance to watch Arab journalists doing the news and making programmes to the same standards as Western news channel,” an Al-Jazeera journalist told Miles. The sudden collapse of the BBC Arabic TV channel, a joint venture with the Saudi-owned Orbit satellite television company in April 1996, over a dispute regarding editorial control of the channel, left scores of BBC-trained journalists and other media staff out of a job overnight. Some 120 of these were immediately taken on by Al-Jazeera, providing editorial experience and a solid foundation for the young channel.
Miles offers a broad overview of Al-Jazeera’s unique [in the Arab world] and often provocative programming. In particular, lively talk shows and interviews which saw officials and dissidents from all Arab countries discussing contemporary issues and arguing angrily. These proved very popular among Arab viewers, but angered many governments, leading to the closure of several Al-Jazeera bureaus throughout the region and a widespread Saudi-backed ban on advertising on the network.
The channel achieved a first international breakthrough with its comprehensive coverage of the second intifida which, according to Miles, forced Arab governments to react following widespread popular protests in the Arab world.
Amazingly, the Palestinian Authority also temporarily closed down the Al-Jazeera bureau in Ramallah following what it considered to be an offensive image of Yasser Arafat in a trailer program.
Miles recalls how the 9/11 attacks on the USA and their aftermath proved a watershed for Al-Jazeera and established its global status. The channel was the only one with a bureau in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and western networks started vying for its footage after the US launched its offensive and after it broadcast tapes from Osama bin Laden.
This enhanced status also marked the beginning of tense relations with Washington, which continue to this day, and have resulted in strong direct and indirect pressures from Washington on the channel and the Qatari authorities and – some argue – in deliberate US strikes against Al-Jazeera offices and staff in Kabul and Baghdad.
Interestingly, Al-Jazeera is frequently accused of being funded and controlled by Israel and the USA in some Arab circles, and by al-Qaeda and other terrorists or extremists by Washington and Tel Aviv; this could be seen as a tribute to its editorial independence.
Miles also highlights US contradictions regarding non-Western media: whilst advocating free-speech in the Arab world Washington reserves its harshest critics for a channel which has truly opened up political debates in the Arab world.
It could be argued that Al-Jazeera is no more anti-American than many European media organizations. For instance, according to a February 2005 Media Tenor survey, the share of negative statements about the US on Germany’s leading news show “Tagesthemen” (produced by public broadcaster ARD) was higher than those on Al-Jazeera news in January 2005. Yet Western media are not targeted by Washington.
However, not all US officials are hostile to Al-Jazeera, Department of State Spokesman Dr Nabil Khouri is quoted as saying: “I would prefer to watch Al-Jazeera any time rather than Fox.”
At the same time, Miles says, the US is embarking on an ineffective media offensive in the Arab world by sponsoring costly advertising campaigns and launching a stream of broadcast media services targeting Arab audiences and often perceived as brazen propaganda.
Too often, this book appears overly “positive” about Al-Jazeera: the channel does no wrong and nearly all criticisms directed at it are too easily dismissed as irrelevant or unjustified. However, if Al-Jazeera has indeed transformed the Arabic broadcast media landscape, and is undoubtedly proving a popular success with a global audience estimated at nearly 50 million, it still has plenty of room for improvement and would certainly benefit from some tightening of its editorial practices, nothing surprising for this fairly new kid on the international broadcasting block.
Al-Jazeera – How Arab TV news challenged the world has a comprehensive index, but lacks notes.
It will prove a key book for those wanting to understand the Arab media scene and the deep transformations it went through in the past 10 years or so, thanks precisely to Al-Jazeera. It is also essential reading for all those interested in Middle Eastern politics, international broadcasting, public diplomacy and international relations.

About the reviewer

Morand Fachot is a media analyst and international broadcasting consultant. He worked as a journalist and media analyst with the BBC World Service (Monitoring Service), and media officer for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). His publications include an FT Business Management Report on “European public broadcasting in the digital age” as well as articles and papers on international broadcasting; media, conflict and the military; hate media; and broadcast technology for BBC News Online, The Channel (Association for International Broadcasting, U.K.), International Affairs (U.K.), Transnational Broadcasting Studies Journal (Adham Center, The American University in Cairo, Egypt), Policy Options (Canadian Institute for Research on Public Policy), Commentaire (France), Diffusion Online (EBU).

]]> 2007-10-24T22:58:00-08:00 This review first appeared in International Affairs The Voice of America (VOA), which broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of programmes in 45 languages to an estimated audience of some 115 million worldwide, is the world’s second largest international broadcaster, yet within the USA itself it is “America’s best-kept secret”. Alan L. Heil, Jr., who spent 36 years at the Voice, beginning as a newswriter trainee to retire as deputy director after holding several positions including Middle East correspondent and chief of News and Current Affairs, was uniquely placed to write this comprehensive and captivating insight into a “great, sometimes heroic, but fragile and endangered national institution”, stretching from the launch of the service, in February 1942, to its 60th anniversary. Ever since going on air for the first time, telling its German listeners: “Here speaks a voice from America (...) The news may be good. The news may be bad. We shall tell you the truth”, the Voice has been constantly striving to uphold its editorial independence in the face of persistent political pressures and to secure appropriate funding. Heil’s detailed account of the Voice’s advances and setbacks, always set in the broader US and international contexts, shows the importance attached by successive US administrations to international broadcasting in their public diplomacy strategy. Yet, Heil’s record of the often considerable pressures from all official quarters involved in foreign policy – from the White House down to US diplomats abroad – to influence editorial content, shows how US public diplomacy itself has suffered (and continues to suffer) from this constant interference into VOA’s operations. Heil peppers his account with transcripts of radio broadcasts and personal anecdotes from dozens of VOA staff and listeners, which give this sizeable book its distinctive – and often moving or amusing – human dimension. In his “tales of great VOA escapes” Heil describes the extraordinary backgrounds of some of the Voice’s foreign staff who have made a major contribution to its reputation over the years. Many of Heil’s descriptions of the work at VOA apply to similar services in other countries and depict the very specific features that make international broadcasting such a distinctive craft: in particular, a meticulous respect for the specificities and sensitivities of foreign audiences and the care taken in transposing concepts and ideas in other languages and for people of different cultural backgrounds. Over the years VOA has developed a number of unique programmes which have contributed to its popularity and to the spread of American values abroad. Notable among those are music and VOA Special English programmes. The latter, using a vocabulary of about 1,500 words only, are read at a much slower speed than VOA’s standard English programmes. Broadcast since 1959, they have proved very popular. Music, “the universal language”, has contributed to VOA’s reputation abroad. Heil recalls, in particular, the role played by Willis Conover in bringing jazz to millions of listeners throughout the world, most notably in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, for over 40 years. The book highlights VOA’s unique nature in the US broadcasting environment: it is a genuine public service broadcaster, publicly-funded and carrying out public service duties. Heil shows how, through its incessant quest for balanced and credible news reporting, its aspiration to be a “voice for the voiceless”, its efforts to assist people worldwide through a number of humanitarian actions – special family reunification helplines for refugees in Central Africa; public health campaigns in India; human rights awareness programmes in Central America, etc. – VOA has become a highly-respected and valuable broadcaster worldwide. In spite of all this, the Voice is nearly unknown in the USA, thanks to provisions of the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act which banned the dissemination of VOA products within the country. Paradoxically also, the greatest threats to the Voice come from the US administrations – whose changing agenda and interference in the running of the Voice are very unsettling – and the existence of “too many voices of America”, as a renowned VOA media analyst once noted. New US-funded stations are indeed appearing (and disappearing) on a regular basis, leading at times to the closure of long-established VOA services, such as that of its respected Arabic service, replaced in April 2002 by Radio Sawa, a fast-paced mix of pop and Arabic music interspersed with short news aimed at young listeners in the Arab world. A closure which Heil – a former Middle East correspondent and director of VOA program centers in Beirut and Cairo – obviously regrets. Heil is also looking at the challenges the Voice – and other international broadcasters – will face in the future. The breadth and scope of this book makes it essential reading for all those involved – or with an interest – in public diplomacy, international affairs, and the media. About the reviewer Morand Fachot is a media analyst and international broadcasting consultant. He worked as a journalist and media analyst with the BBC World Service (Monitoring Service), and media officer for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). His publications include an FT Business Management Report on “European public broadcasting in the digital age” as well as articles and papers on international broadcasting; media, conflict and the military; hate media; and broadcast technology for BBC News Online, The Channel (Association for International Broadcasting, U.K.), International Affairs (U.K.), Transnational Broadcasting Studies Journal (Adham Center, The American University in Cairo, Egypt), Policy Options (Canadian Institute for Research on Public Policy), Commentaire (France), Diffusion Online (EBU). Voice of America – A History This review first appeared in International Affairs

The Voice of America (VOA), which broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of programmes in 45 languages to an estimated audience of some 115 million worldwide, is the world’s second largest international broadcaster, yet within the USA itself it is “America’s best-kept secret”.
Alan L. Heil, Jr., who spent 36 years at the Voice, beginning as a newswriter trainee to retire as deputy director after holding several positions including Middle East correspondent and chief of News and Current Affairs, was uniquely placed to write this comprehensive and captivating insight into a “great, sometimes heroic, but fragile and endangered national institution”, stretching from the launch of the service, in February 1942, to its 60th anniversary.
Ever since going on air for the first time, telling its German listeners: “Here speaks a voice from America (...) The news may be good. The news may be bad. We shall tell you the truth”, the Voice has been constantly striving to uphold its editorial independence in the face of persistent political pressures and to secure appropriate funding.
Heil’s detailed account of the Voice’s advances and setbacks, always set in the broader US and international contexts, shows the importance attached by successive US administrations to international broadcasting in their public diplomacy strategy.
Yet, Heil’s record of the often considerable pressures from all official quarters involved in foreign policy – from the White House down to US diplomats abroad – to influence editorial content, shows how US public diplomacy itself has suffered (and continues to suffer) from this constant interference into VOA’s operations.
Heil peppers his account with transcripts of radio broadcasts and personal anecdotes from dozens of VOA staff and listeners, which give this sizeable book its distinctive – and often moving or amusing – human dimension.
In his “tales of great VOA escapes” Heil describes the extraordinary backgrounds of some of the Voice’s foreign staff who have made a major contribution to its reputation over the years.
Many of Heil’s descriptions of the work at VOA apply to similar services in other countries and depict the very specific features that make international broadcasting such a distinctive craft: in particular, a meticulous respect for the specificities and sensitivities of foreign audiences and the care taken in transposing concepts and ideas in other languages and for people of different cultural backgrounds.
Over the years VOA has developed a number of unique programmes which have contributed to its popularity and to the spread of American values abroad.
Notable among those are music and VOA Special English programmes. The latter, using a vocabulary of about 1,500 words only, are read at a much slower speed than VOA’s standard English programmes. Broadcast since 1959, they have proved very popular.
Music, “the universal language”, has contributed to VOA