There is good news and bad news in the world of public diplomacy.

The good news is that respected observers and senior American officials are now paying more attention and trying to develop public diplomacy strategies. The not-so-good news is that they are getting it wrong. And the really bad news is that until America fixes its diplomacy both public and traditional, our national interests will continue to be badly compromised by precisely those institutions most responsible for protecting us.

Join the USC Center on Public Diplomacy as we cordially announce the awards-recipients of the Reinventing Public Diplomacy through Games Contest!

When: May 8th, 2006 3:00-5:00 p.m. PST

Where: Davidson Executive Conference Center

University of Southern California

3415 S. Figueroa Street

Los Angeles, CA 90089-0871



There will also be simulcast of the Awards Ceremony within Second Life! Stay tuned for more details!

The latest monthly television ratings in Saudi Arabia by the independent pollster IPSOS-STAT show al-Arabiya dramatically widening its lead over al-Jazeera as the number one satellite television news outlet for the Middle East.

The critical success factor for any government's public diplomacy function is whether its connection to policy making is one-way or two-way.

Delivered with equal measure of art and science, diplomacy is a
non-violent approach to the management of international relations and
global issues which seeks to resolve conflict through discussion,
negotiation and partnership. The diplomats' brief is unambiguous: to
advance or defend their country's political and economic place in the
world by the most effective means. That is the purpose, the essence of
diplomacy.

"[T]hrough the press section of USIS that the Communist parties themselves represented at the Moscow Congress have come to know one of the most serious and dramatic documents in the Communist literature of the world."

--Pietro Nenni, Secretary General, Italian Socialist Party, 1957

This week workers at the Brooklyn Bridge chanced upon a forgotten room
containing supplies stockpiled against a nuclear attack. Dates on the
materials were evocative: 1957 - the year of Sputnik; 1962 - the year
of the Cuban missile crisis. This discovery is an oddly evocative
interruption from the high point last long war into what future
historians will doubtless see as the opening phase of the era-defining
conflict. It is like a ghost in a Shakespeare play -- reminding us of