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 [...]

by Steven R. Corman With news that the Hillary Clinton pick for Secretary of State is final, I thought it might be useful to summarize what she had to say one year ago in her essay for Foreign Affairs (subscription link).  Of course, these were her priorities as an erstwhile president, and the Secretary of [...]

By Edward T. Palazzolo and Dawn Gilpin (With analysis support from Nick Brody, Jesse Herrera, Krista McNaughton, and Jordan Wolff) This is the third post in a series about the one-year anniversary of the State Department’s Dipnote blog. In Part 1 we focused on reviewing DipNote management and processes. In Part 2 we looked at [...]

by Steven R. Corman The GAO has just released a report on the 2009 Congressional and Presidential Transition.  Number five on the hit parade of urgent issues is improving he U.S image abroad (good beat, but it’s kind of hard to dance to). The GAO says that to accomplish this, policy makers must “improve their [...]

by Bud Goodall In today’s “Blogger’s Roundtable” with Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James K. Glassman, Matt Armstrong from MountainRunner asked a really good question about the relationship of strategic communication to public diplomacy.  Under Secretary Glassman provided a detailed and thoughtful response that distinguished public diplomacy, which is aimed at various [...]

By Edward T. Palazzolo and Dawn Gilpin (with analysis support from Nick Brody, Jesse Herrera, Krista McNaughton, and Jordan Wolff) This post builds on the previously summarized meeting between Steve Corman and Angela Trethewey (COMOPS Faculty) and Heath Kern and Luke Forgerson (DipNote’s Editors). We reviewed roughly one year’s worth of DipNote posts and reader comments [...]

by Steven R. Corman I guess if it’s good enough for Queen Raina, then it’s good enough for State Department Spokesman Sean McCormick.  He will be taking your questions via YouTube video.  All you have to do is go to the State Deparment YouTube Channel and post your question. According to a video statement by [...]

by Steven R. Corman On Thursday the American Academy of Diplomacy released a new report on the dismal state of funding for U.S. diplomacy and public diplomacy efforts, compiled by a Task Force of 14 former senior foreign service officers.  They reckon that the diplomatic capacity of the United States has been “hollowed out” since [...]