The Five Tool Corporate Diplomat

The conversation began innocently enough - sitting on a porch in Half Moon Bay, overlooking, ironically, The Mavericks - where only the best come to surf and conquer the monster waves. “Cari, you’re a Five Tool Wife,” remarked one of my husband’s friends. Read More

Lugar Report Brings Some Honesty to Evaluation of U.S. International Broadcasting

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), the ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has done something remarkable: issued an honest appraisal of America’s public diplomacy broadcasting. That the report has found U.S. efforts flawed is no surprise, but the willingness of Senator Lugar to publicly state this is welcome relief after so many government efforts to paint a ridiculously optimistic picture of U.S. public diplomacy achievements. Read More

At Wilton Park, Public Diplomacy Edges Forward

While attending a Wilton Park (UK) conference on the future of public diplomacy, I was pleased to see this facet of foreign policy gaining traction. About 50 diplomats and a handful of academics took part in discussions ranging from the military use of soft power to the roles of religion and sports in public diplomacy. Read More

U.S. Reverses Sanctions Policy To Open Access To Culture, Education

WASHINGTON -- A recent “pivot” of U.S. sanctions policy toward Iran, Sudan and Cuba was discussed in detail this morning by a senior State Department official. Alec Ross, Secretary Clinton's Senior Advisor for Innovation, said the new policy is designed to promote access to global education and culture by permitting certain telecommunications equipment and services to flow to those countries. Export of those equipment and services had previously been blocked by U.S. sanctions. Read More

Iranian Democracy and US Public Diplomacy: Offering an Alternative Perspective

It has now been a year since the historic Iranian presidential election and its volcanic aftermath. Some in Iran, proud of the highest turnout (85%) in Iranian election history, consider the day (June 12) a time for glory, while others, in the defeated Reformist camp, consider it a memorial day for those who lost their lives in the violence. Like so many other issues in Persian politics, the 2009 election has also sparked much discussion and debate. Read More

Shanghai’d, or the USA Pavilion as a Corporate Theme Park

Co-author: Hailey Woldt Let’s begin with the positive: the United States is present at the World Expo in Shanghai. The Secretary of State deserves praise for making this possible, by launching an eleventh hour fundraising drive, after the previous administration had done virtually nothing (besides rejecting a proposal that included Frank Gehry as architect). The Chinese cared enough about the U.S. presence to have contributed both public and private funds to guarantee that the U.S. showed up for Expo Shanghai 2010. Read More

Israel and Turkey: End of an Alliance

Israel's 2009 war on Gaza has been exhaustively documented: some 1,400 Palestinian deaths (compared to 13 for Israel), a vast, rubble-strewn landscape, international condemnation culminating in the hard-hitting and controversial "Goldstone Report" from the UN, and a blockade, tacitly approved by the U.S. and EU, that led to a humanitarian crisis, and ultimately to the high-seas catastrophe this week on the Free Gaza flotilla. Read More

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