Public Diplomacy

Yesterday Senator Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama's faced offover such foreign policy issues as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Iraq war at the MSNBC debate in Ohio last night. The NAFTA discussion must have tickled Senator Clinton's inner Latino, because on Monday her campaign released a “Hispanic campaign song.” I know you can't wait to hear it, […]

When does the growing popularity of Barack Obama , at home and overseas , begin to impact the terrible polling numbers that the United States has been getting in foreign opinion surveys? Lately we've been seeing more reports of negative foreign views of the U.S., such as yesterday's NPR report from Berlin. But these reports […]

(Richard Falk) Yesterday Today's Zaman News, a Turkish English-language daily newspaper, published an opinion piece by Richard Falk, an American professor of international law at Princeton University. Titled “What to expect from the next American president in the Middle East,” the piece gives a well-rounded, in-depth summary of the current status of the US presidential […]

Last week the Heritage Foundation, the conservative, Washington-based think tank, held a discussion titled “Public Diplomacy: Reinvigorating America's Strategic Communications Policy.” The panel included presentations by Colleen Graffy, the State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary (DAS) for Public Diplomacy (PD) for Europe and Eurasia, Michael Doran the Department of Defense's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for […]

Today brought the news that Barack Obama had won the vote among registered overseas Democrats, beating Hillary Clinton 65% to 32%.  Some 22,000 overseas Americans in 164 countries took part in the week-long vote. However, following the Democrats’ usual rules that award convention delegates proportionately, Obama was awarded only 2.5 delegates to Clinton's 2.0. Another […]

Over 300 Academics and policy-makers from all over the world gathered to attend the Brookings Institution-sponsored US-Islamic World Forum  in Doha, Qatar on Monday. (Karen Hughes at the 2006 US-Islamic World Forum) Agence France Presse reported that many of the Muslim delegates in attendance said they hoped to see Obama win the Democratic nomination and become the next […]

We know a few things already about how foreign audiences regard the U.S. election race. In Ireland and Kenya, we know that there's newfound pride in the fact that Obama has roots that can be traced to these two countries. McCain and Hillary Clinton and even Mike Huckabee have their foreign admirers, but not generally […]

Last week Anthony Barnett, the British social entrepreneur and political comentarist, recently authored an article on the webzine he founded, Open Democracy.net, exploring Senator Barak Obama's campaign. If you are not familiar with OpenDemocracy, I highly reccomend browsing through its pages. It is a London-based webzine/opinion forum that offers “stimulating, critical analysis, promoting dialogue and […]

Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain authored an article in the November/December 2007 edition of Foreign Affairs titled “An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom” that reveals his campaign's foreign policy platform. Here is a quick summary of his article: “America needs a president who can revitalize the country's purpose and standing in the world and defeat […]

The former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV penned an endorsement for Hillary Clinton in today's Baltimore Sun.  He officially came out in favor of the New York Senator in July of 2007. But the column is likely a byproduct of Clinton's need for a boost in the very close primary races, and Wilson's penchant writing […]

David Ignatius, columnist for the Washington Post, offered an interesting perspective on foreign attitudes in the wake of Super Tuesday.   As he put it: As I travel, I sense that the world has a big stake in what's going to happen [in the U.S. elections].  I’ve never seen people as angry at the United States […]

The U.S. State Department regularly brings groups of foreign journalists to the United States on study tours. At any time of year, in any year, there's a lot to study in the U.S., and these visits are among the State Department's more successful public diplomacy activities. But this year, bringing a group of journalists to […]