John Brown's Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review

By Ambassador Robert Gosende* Image from, under the headline: Ambassador Robert Gosende Speaks at Siena Symposium I recently had the opportunity to be in Russia, Moscow and St. Petersburg, for one week participating in the 7th Annual St. Petersburg Cultural Forum. I was invited to participate in the Forum by the Dance and Ballet section which asked me to describe the importance that I attached to the decision by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. governments to support contact in the Arts during the Cold War. I was happy to do this since I participated in such activities during my career as a diplomat in the U.S. Information Agency [JB - see]. This unexpected return to Russia brought my wife and me back after a long hiatus. Much has changed since we last were assigned there 20 years ago. Moscow and St. Petersburg, each always very beautiful cities, have been completely restored. The city-center streets are in perfect shape. Buildings are once again beautiful and great skill has been exercised, espe..

Orville Schell and Larry Diamond, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 21, 2018 10:51 a.m. ET uncaptioned image from article President Donald Trump insists that China has been ripping off America for decades, but even if the two countries manage to negotiate—and honor—new terms for trade, basic reciprocity will still be sorely lacking elsewhere in the relationship and will continue to create tensions. Consider the stark imbalance in media access. In the U.S., Beijing has established both a radio network and a television network, which distribute state-controlled programming to American audiences. China also publishes newspapers and magazines here in Chinese and English, Chinese websites are available to Americans online, and the U.S. readily gives work visas to Chinese reporters, who then feed content back to state-run propaganda organs at home. By contrast, American media aren’t permitted to operate any television or radio networks in China, and the government partially or completely blocks ..

waterstones.com image from Popular Music and Public Diplomacy: [JB emphasis]: Transnational and Transdisciplinary Perspectives - Popular Music (Paperback) Sina A Nitzsche (editor) Sign in to write a review [...] Paperback 350 Pages / Published: 15/01/2019 [...] In the early years of the Cold War, Western nations increasingly adopted strategies of public diplomacy involving popular music. While the diplomatic use of popular music was initially limited to such genres as jazz, the second half of the twentieth century saw a growing presence of various popular genres in diplomatic contexts, including rock, punk, reggae, and hip-hop. This volume illuminates the interrelation of popular music and public diplomacy from a transnational and transdisciplinary angle. The contributions argue that, as popular music has been a crucial factor in international relations, its diplomatic use has substantially impacted the global musical landscape of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Publisher: Tr..

Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, The New York Times, Dec. 22, 2018 Image from, with caption: Alex Edelman | picture-alliance | dpa | APIrwin Steven Goldstein, of New York, during his confirmation hearing to be Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy [JB emphasis] at the United States Department of State, before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on November 1st, 2017. Excerpt:“Rex Tillerson and Jim Mattis are two of the finest people ever to serve in government,” said Steve Goldstein, who was under secretary of state [JB - for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs] and he was fired along with Mr. Tillerson. “They were very close and worked hard at trying to do what was best for the country, and sometimes that meant being brutally honest with folks at the White House.” ...

"[Mattis: A] 43-year Marine veteran nicknamed 'Mad Dog' (the moniker was no doubt another attraction for Trump), and whose orders to his troops poised to attack a city in Iraq were: Be Polite. Be Professional. Have a Plan to Kill Everyone You Meet." --From Jim Hoagland, "Mattis endured a lot. Here’s why this was the last straw," The Washington Post; see also *** image from Posted by John Brown at 9:19 AM No comments:

Alagi Yorro Jallow, freedomnewspaper.com image (not from the article) fromExcerpt: The United Kingdom of Great Britain has been the Gambia’s all-weather friend since Independence and has provided budget support and British Development Aid for many years until the reign of Yahya Jammeh when bilateral and public diplomacy [JB emphasis] severed, largely on symbolic gesture, then Yahya Jammeh’s decision to pull the Gambia out of the Commonwealth, accusing it interfering in Gambia’s domestic affairs and “unfair and unjust” treatment, branding it a “neo- colonial institution” reached at their lowest point ever. Now the Gambia government and the Department for International Development (DFID) can neither confirm nor deny after several attempts to contact them via email and telephone that Great Britain have frozen aid funding to the Gambia, amounting to that of $4.3million (£3.3million) meant for Education, Health and nutrition, as well as the Social Cash transfer which benefit a lot of poor f..

Image from article, with caption: Buildings are seen in the central business district of Beijing. (AFP) arabnews.com This week sees China celebrate the 40th anniversary of the start of Deng Xiaoping’s landmark economic reforms. While the changes have been one of the biggest game-changers in global affairs in the post-war era, their very success raises today not just key opportunities but also challenges for Beijing. On the success side of the ledger, China’s rise to greater prominence has been one of the defining features of recent decades. For instance, data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 2014 asserts that China’s economy is now larger than its US counterpart on the basis of purchasing power parity (which makes adjustments for the fact that goods are cheaper in China and other countries relative to the US). In so doing, Beijing has recorded an average annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of around 9.5 percent in the past 40 years. The result has been the..

urdupoint.com Sutormina image (not from entry) from Excerpt:MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th December, 2018) The Russian Civic Chamber urges the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to convene a special meeting to discuss reports about alleged Russian involvement in protests in France, as dissemination of such information violates the International Union of Journalists (IUJ) code of conduct, Elena Sutormina, the head of the chamber's commission for public diplomacy, humanitarian cooperation and preservation of traditional values, told Sputnik on Monday. ...

Charles S. Clark, govexec.com; original article contains links (see also, re the media's silence on Nauert having served as Acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs [1]) Image from article, with caption: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to the press at United Nations headquarters earlier in December. President Trump surprised many with his Dec. 7 nomination of State Department spokeswoman and Fox News alumnae Heather Nauert to be his United Nations ambassador. Most observers agree there will be spirited debate over her qualifications for a job once held by Henry Cabot Lodge, Adlai Stephenson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Madeleine Albright. But fewer noted also that her departure leaves a new vacancy in her current post, officially titled acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs. [JB emphasis; see also (1)] That only adds to the holes in the structural roster of key officials at State, a challenge traced to an early reluctance to rus..

intpolicydigest.org uncaptioned image from articleExcerpt: With the 2018 World Cup in Russia behind it, the soccer world’s focus shifts to the 2022 tournament in Qatar. Politics and the Gulf’s internecine political and legal battles have already shaped the debate about FIFA’s controversial awarding of World Cup hosting rights to Qatar. The battles highlight not only the sport’s dominance in the Middle East by autocratic leaders but also the incestuous relationship between politics and sports that is at the root of multiple scandals that have rocked the sports world for much of this decade and compromised good governance in international sports. Three men symbolize the importance of soccer to Gulf autocrats who see the sport as a way to project their countries in a positive light on the international stage, harness its popular appeal in their cultural and public diplomacy [JB emphasis] campaigns, and leverage it as a pillar of their efforts to garner soft power: Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim..