Abstract
Good public diplomacy, in the words of its paragon practitioner, crosses the last three feet to reach people as individuals. Smart institutions— governments, departments, agencies, political leaders—do this every day. We did this constantly at NATO, whether representing the organization as a whole, separate agencies, individual nations, or as the military command structure. Every day we met people, thousands of people each year. While that felt like a lot to me—the 3,000 in my annual portfolio were far more than a statistical sample for the countries I covered—it was still a pinprick on a demographic map of influence. But people are everything in public diplomacy. People are the only thing.
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Notes
See Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life (New York: Scribner, 2008).
Amb. Edward P. Djerejian, et al., Changing Minds, Winning Peace, Report of the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, Committee on Appropriations, US House of Representatives, October 1, 2003, 13, 43.
Peter G. Peterson, Public Diplomacy: A Strategy for Reform, a Report of an Independent Task Force on Public Diplomacy, Council on Foreign Relations, July 30, 2002, 2.
William J. Hybl, Chairman, US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Assessing U.S. Public Diplomacy, A Notional Model, September 28, 2010, 39.
James Dao, “Learning to Heal, One Memorial Day at a Time,” New York Times, May 28, 2012.
G.B. Trudeau, The War Within (Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 2006).
See, for example, the Beharry controversy in the United Kingdom, Matthew Hickley and Jenny Hope, “Troops Face Mental Trauma ‘on the Scale of Vietnam,’” Daily Mail, London, March 1, 2009; full BBC News interview with LCpl Johnson Beharry, February 28, 2009 (available online);
Markus Klöckner, “German Army PTSD Cases on the Rise,” Stars and Stripes (Europe), March 20, 2009; “One Psychiatrist for 4,500 Troops,” Der Spiegel International, September 24, 2009 (English in original).
See “A Note on the M-16 Series of Rifles in 2010,” in C. J. Chivers, The Gun (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), 415–416.
Joseph P. Avery, “An Army Outgunned,” Military Review, July–August, 2012, 2–8.
Ssgt. Jennifer Schofield, “CES Build Partnerships in Bosnia,” 136th Airlift Wing News, November 12, 2010.
Bruce E. Elleman, Waves of Hope (Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College Press, February 2007), 10–11.
See André de Vries, Brussels: A Cultural and Literary History (Oxford: Signal Books, 2008), 245.
Ian Traynor, “Feminist, Socialist, Devout Muslim: Woman Who Has Thrown Denmark into Turmoil,” Guardian, May 15, 2007.
Drew Hinshaw and Adam Entous, “On Terror’s New Front Line, Mistrust Blunts U.S. Strategy,” Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2013, 1.
Will Stuart, “U.S. Diplomat ‘Caught on Video in a New Russian Honeytrap,’” Daily Mail (London), August 7, 2009.
Jim Garamone, “Iraqi Armored Brigade Ready to Assume Battle Space,” America Forces Press Service, May 12, 2006.
Kevin Sieff and Richard Leiby, “Afghan Troops Get a Lesson in American Cultural Ignorance,” Washington Post, September 28, 2012.
See, for example, Damon V. Coletta, “Deterrence Logic and NATO’s Nuclear Posture,” Strategic Studies Quarterly, Spring 2013, 69–92.
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© 2013 James Thomas Snyder
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Snyder, J.T. (2013). What We Are Talking about When We Talk about Engagement. In: The United States and the Challenge of Public Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230390713_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230390713_3
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