by Steven R. Corman I just ran across this “Washington whisper” item in USNWR: President Obama has nominated longtime national security expert Philip J. “P. J.” Crowley as assistant secretary of state for public affairs, a move that suggests that the department’s public diplomacy with foreign nations will be stepped up. Crowley, currently a senior [...]

by Steven R. Corman Matt’s latest post reminded me that we are still awaiting the appointment of a new Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Perhaps the problem is that the task of filling the PD post has simply fallen off the radar screen.  I mean, we all know how things [...]

by Steven R. Corman Yesterday I participated in a bloggers’ roundtable on the just-released White Oak Recommendations on Public Diplomacy.  They were formulated by a large group described as “principal stakeholders” from government, academia, business, the arts, and media.  They spent three days at the Gilman Foundation’s White Oak conference center to arrive at a [...]

by Steven R. Corman Earlier this week John Brown posted a blog questioning those of us who have expressed concern about slow movement on filling the position of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department. Maybe this go-slow approach is not such a bad thing, he says. I [...]

by Steven R. Corman The new strategic communication leadership at the State Department is still a work in progress.  Nonetheless DoD is making plans for better corrdination with it.  So says the Quadrennial Roles and Missions Review (QRM) released last week. This emphasis is an outgrowth of DoD’s evolving doctrine on Irregular Warfare (IW).  The [...]

by Steven R. Corman In an earlier post I commented on what seemed to be a rather unambitious Public Diplomacy agenda outlined by Secretary Hillary Clinton in her confirmation hearings.  At the time I noted that the new administration was just getting started and there was no point getting alarmed.  Since then there have been [...]

by Steven R. Corman Apparently one minute after Barack Obama was sworn in as President, the switch was flipped on a new whitehouse.gov website.  One interesting new feature is a blog that launched with five posts. One of those is entitled Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov and it explains that their new media efforts will [...]

by Steven R. Corman Yesterday Walter Pincus at WaPo published an article entitled Clinton’s Goals Detailed that contains the first news I’ve seen about how the Obama administration intends to fix U.S. public diplomacy.  The second paragraph says: In the battle of ideas, she said, the United States would go on the offensive implementing President-elect [...]

by Steven R. Corman Yesterday I participated in a journalists’ roundtable discussion (sponsored by the AOC) on next week’s symposium organized by blogging buddy and Smith-Mundt super-wonk Matt Armstrong.  At issue is what to do about the Smith-Mundt Act (SMA). In a nutshell, the SMA (among other things) erects a firewall preventing domestic dissemination of [...]

by Steven R. Corman & Ed Palazzolo This is the last in a five part series on the one-year anniversary of the State Department’s Dipnote blog, and an analysis we posted in October 2007 on the blog’s first month of operation.  In this series: Part 1 focused on reviewing Dipnote management and processes. Part 2 [...]