Intro to Public Diplomacy

As foreign policy becomes increasingly complicated in the Middle East, the lack of a public diplomacy strategy by the U. S. State Department becomes problematic, Michael Waller, the author of The Public Diplomacy Reader, told the crowd in a recent appearance at the Heritage Foundation. On the same panel with Waller, policy analyst Juliana G. Pilon critiqued the State Department and stated that the agency is downgrading the use of words at the same time that Al Qaeda is engaged in internet propaganda activities.

The Founding Founders would not have succeeded had they not used public diplomacy, Waller argued. The Declaration of Independence has been the perfect public diplomacy document as it explains American ideals, and principles to the world, Waller said in a recent appearance at the Heritage Foundation.

Public diplomacy should be combined with political action, espionage, and covert operations, said Waller. At the same Heritage event, Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy talked about the essential importance of empirical knowledge as a basis for public diplomacy in general.

Heyecan Veziroglu
is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.