by Steven R. Corman
Pakistani public opinion about the U.S. and its war against extremists is a matter of  considerable concern given the tenuous situation in that country.  As we know, the public is quite unhappy about cross-border missile strikes the U.S. has been conducting this year.
Even if the U.S. and Pakistani governments have a tacit [...]

by ZS Justus

A recent audio recording from al-Qaeda #2 Zawahiri sends a series of “messages” to President-elect Barack Obama. News outlets have quickly grabbed one of the more provocative excerpts from the recording, Zawahiri’s labeling of Obama as a “house negro.” Several blogs have followed suit including hotair, gateway pundit, commentary magazine, the moderate voice, [...]

by Bud Goodall
The headlines from WatchAmerica show worldwide optimism and support for President-Elect Obama.  Yet, despite this large and welcoming window of public diplomacy opportunity, there are still 10 weeks to go before President Obama is sworn in and can officially represent America.  In the meantime, we have a world waiting to see if we [...]

by Steven R. Corman
In a widely-read white paper published last year, my colleagues and I pointed out that strategic communication operates in a complex worldwide system.  One feature of such systems is that they can develop inertia, stubbornly insisting on interpreting messages in standard ways, practically no matter what the message is.  Such is the [...]

by Steven R. Corman
Here are a couple of quick items from/regarding the campaign, for your reading enjoyment…

Yesterday at a news conference Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Jim Glassman said it would be a “great thing” for the image of the United States if Barack Obama were elected president or if Sarah Palin were [...]

by Steven R. Corman
You would think that any presidential debate on foreign policy would have to spend a lot of time talking about how American policy is perceived and how its perception influences our ability to project power, pursue our strategies, and achieve our goals.
You would be wrong.
In the entire 90 minute presidential debate last [...]

by Steven R. Corman
Yesterday the Arab American Institute released the results of a Zogby poll of Arab Americans on the Presidential race.  Here are the overall percentages for the candidates compared to an “all voters” average of three polls I calculated from data on USA Election Polls:

Canddiate
All Voters
AAI Poll

Obama
48%
46%

McCain
44%
32%

Barr
1%
1%

Nader
2%
6%

Others
5%
16%

Support for Obama is pretty similar to [...]

by Angela Trethewey and Joe Faina

In addition to his prime time speech last week at the Republican National Convention, Senator Lieberman also appeared at a convention panel in place of McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Sheunnemann.  In that talk, Lieberman outlined what a McCain administration would mean for foreign policy.
Lieberman promised that McCain would [...]

by Steven R. Corman
About a month ago, I wrote a post critical of a vote in the House of Representatives on an amendment offered by Rep. Hoekstra to H.R. 5959 to deny DHS and NCTC the ability to expend any funds in their efforts to discourage use of words like “jihad” in U.S. strategic [...]

by Steven R. Corman
I remember arriving in Karlsruhe, Germany on March 17, 2003.  It was two days before the Iraq invasion.  I didn’t know the date certain of the invasion, of course, but I knew for certain it was coming.  I was quite worried (needlessly, as it turns out) about how I would be received [...]