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JAPAN’S CULTURAL DIPLOMACY
By Kazuo Ogoura


Reviewed by Philip Seib
APR 22, 2010

Japan Foundation president Kazuo Ogoura has held high posts in his country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and has served as Japan’s ambassador to Vietnam, South Korea, and France.  His diplomatic experience infuses Japan’s Cultural Diplomacy with pragmatic recognition of the value and the limits of cultural diplomacy. This slim volume contains much important information about Japanese diplomacy and general diplomatic practices.  Ogoura defines cultural diplomacy as “the use of cultural means to enhance a nation’s political influence.”  He distinguishes this from public diplomacy, which he defines as having “a well-defined political objective” and being “aimed at certain pre-determined targets,” while cultural diplomacy has broader, less precise goals related to improving a nation’s image. Ogoura shows how Japan has carefully and persistently used cultural diplomacy throughout the years since World War II.  In the period immediately after the war, notes Ogoura, “when in engaging in cultural activities overseas, the Japanese government emphasized such traditions as the tea ceremony and ikebana (flower arrangement), with the intention that they would convey Japan’s serene, peace-loving nature to the rest of the world.”  At the same time, he adds, “the overseas promotion of certain elements of traditional Japanese culture, particularly those related to the samurai spirit or feudal traditions, was discouraged.” Also receiving emphasis were exchange programs designed to internationalize Japan’s outlook.  For a country that had long favored insularity, exchanges were seen, writes Ogoura, “as a means to promote Japanese understanding of foreign cultures.”  Today, he notes, a goal of Japanese cultural diplomacy is…...  -->

BATTLES TO BRIDGES: U.S. STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION AND PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AFTER 9/11
By R. S. Zaharna


Reviewed by Philip Seib
APR 19, 2010

The September 11, 2001 attacks stirred Americans to consider the possibility that the United States is not the center of the universe and that there might be, as R.S. Zaharna notes, a “connection between America’s image and its security.”  Doing something about this, said 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton, is “how we stop them from coming here to kill us.” Fraught words, as were many post-9/11 declarations about America and the world.  Zaharna, a highly regarded public diplomacy scholar who teaches at American University, relies on a calmer approach in Battles to Bridges, her concise but wide-ranging appraisal of U.S. public diplomacy during the past decade. Her outlook is valuably broad, recognizing that public diplomacy “is a political and communication activity” and must “be strategically aligned to the political and communication dynamics of the international arena in order to be effective.”  When conventional insular American communication values are determinative in implementing U.S. public diplomacy, even the best-intentioned efforts go askew. Zaharna deals with this, as with other issues in the book, with resolute even-handedness.  She writes that post-9/11 public diplomacy efforts, such as Radio Sawa and Al Hurra television, were “extremely innovative, ambitious, and expansive,” and “reflected the best and the brightest of American communication professionals.”  But on the next page, she writes of these efforts that “rather than winning hearts and minds, the initiatives appeared to be doing the opposite.”  Underscoring this, she quotes Rami Khouri, editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star: “Where do they get this stuff from?  Why…...  -->

HOW HOLLYWOOD PROJECTS FOREIGN POLICY
By Sally Totman


Reviewed by Nicholas J. Cull
DEC 10, 2009

Despite the old injunction to ‘never judge a book by its cover’ one cannot really pick up a book without beginning to form an impression of what lies within.  Publishers hire designers for exactly this reason. On picking up Sally Totman’s book “How Hollywood Projects Foreign Policy,” this reader immediately felt a nagging sense of foreboding.  First there was the suspiciously open title.  Would the book examine foreign policy in general or specifically the foreign policy of the United States?  Would it focus on recent years or go back to the roots of the old alliance between the US government and the American film industry?  Would it look at all aspects of US foreign policy or focus narrowly on one aspect?  Then the author’s name was preceded with the word ‘by’ unusual for the cover of an academic monograph.  The illustration was a further red flag.  It shows dramatic incidents from recent Hollywood films dealing with the Middle East (George Clooney in “Syriana” is readily identifiable).  They are arranged in horizontal strips with sprockets running along the top and bottom edge.  Oddly this suggests images on still film, carried through the camera horizontally, rather than motion picture film which in camera and projector is carried vertically and hence has sprockets on either side.  One turns the book over and finds glowing endorsements of the work, but a brief comparison with the author bio finds these come from colleagues at Australia’s Deakin University—experts in international relations theory and Korean foreign policy…...  -->

THE FLETCHER FORUM OF WORLD AFFAIRS
By The Fletcher School at Tufts University


Reviewed by Philip Seib
JUL 27, 2009

Edward R. Murrow’s contributions to public diplomacy are universally acknowledged but rarely explained. That’s a shame, because Murrow left behind more than just a few often-cited comments about the place of public diplomacy in foreign policy. His real legacy in this field is to be found in his unwavering insistence on maintaining values — often values rooted in journalism — to ensure the integrity of public diplomacy. In April 2008, to mark the 100th anniversary of Murrow’s birth, the Fletcher School of Tufts University presented a conference about “credible public diplomacy.” Credibility is the essence of successful public diplomacy. Murrow, while director of the United States Information Agency, said, “To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful.” He added, “It’s as simple as that.” Murrow thought it simple because he equated good public diplomacy with good journalism in the sense that accuracy must be its core. But in practice, delivering truthful public diplomacy can be complicated. Pursuit of short-term political gain can subvert truthfulness, and when that happens, public diplomacy is undermined. Murrow’s views about public diplomacy were just a starting point for the Fletcher symposium.  The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs presents articles by some of the conference’s speakers and, despite a bit of redundancy here and there, this collection provides a valuable overview of modern public diplomacy. Among the offerings: Mark McDowell discusses contrasts between small- and large-state public diplomacy. Bernard Simonin considers the semantics…...  -->

GLOBAL CALIFORNIA, RISING TO THE COSMOPOLITAN CHALLENGE
By Abraham F. Lowenthal


Reviewed by Richard Langhorne
APR 6, 2009

There are two initial virtues in this book, neither of which is precisely related to the discussion of its topic. It is very clearly organized and pleasantly written, and the second is that it contains a great deal of information which Californians will certainly, and others should, find very convenient to have set out between the covers of a single book. The author has a clear purpose: he wants to show that California has distinct and very important connections with the outside world, and these connections are of growing significance in line with the advancing processes of globalization. He then wants to arrive at a realistic assessment of how much Californians and their government can and should seek to advance these interests on their own; finally, he gives an estimation of what would need to be done to make such policies effective. In the context of a discussion about how to promote California’s international interests, there comes a very succinct statement of the problem Professor Abraham Lowenthal intends to solve: “As a single state in the US federal union, California has no clear foreign policy mandate, however, nor does it have a dedicated international policymaking apparatus. It lacks, therefore, an accepted means for identifying its international interests or those of its citizens and for fashioning strategies and mobilizing resources to advance them. Although Californians have important international policy interests, we do not have systematic ways to identify, rank and pursue them.” p. 81 The first part of the book demonstrates…...  -->

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