APDS Blogger: Peter Winter

Is Google bold? It takes some serious courage to stand up to the gatekeepers of the world’s biggest market. By refusing to kowtow to the Chinese censors, the tech company that built its fortunes on the free flow of information stood up for its business model, not to mention the ideals of its home country.

And even though Tehran is trying to track the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is perhaps meant to maximise its presence in the region to rise to the level of being a "partner in dividing the cake of influence in the Middle East".

The State Department is close to winding up the initial phase of a Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. Mandated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the QDDR aims at creating a more robust civilian capacity for U.S. global engagement.

With all eyes on Pak-US Strategic Dialogue opening here today (Wednesday), Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has called on the United States to "walk the talks" as people of Pakistan want meaningful and mutually cooperative relationship between the two countries.

Today, new informational and ideological challenges to American leadership have arisen. Furthermore, the media environment has become far more competitive and diverse. If there was ever a time that called out for a new and sophisticated U.S. public diplomacy doctrine, this is it.

...Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a delegation to Mexico tomorrow to talk with officials there about efforts to fight the mob violence that is being generated in Mexico by the war on drugs. U.S. recognition of this shared problem is healthy.

At times this focus is highly favorable, but in other times and places it can be quite negative. Thus the views of people in one country may be highly positive, while those in another country see America in the opposite light.

Simply put, the document reads too much as a dated conception of message management designed to counter or compete with the actions of other actors like China, Russia, and extremists groups. Aren’t US public diplomacy planners done with the “there’s a media war going on” kind of talk?