BOOK REVIEW: Toward a New Public Diplomacy - Redirecting U.S. Foreign Policy. Edited by Philip Seib

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Toward a New Public Diplomacy -- Redirecting U.S. Foreign Policy. Ed. Philip Seib. Palgrave MacMillan, New York. 2009.

Sept. 7, 2010 (Palestine Chronicle) -- This collection of essays could be summed up in one word: image. Other words used throughout the text range from the more benign terms of “perception” and “communication tactics” through to the harder terms of “propaganda,” the military “strategic communications” and the rather laborious military phrase of “coordinated information dissemination.” At its base however it wall returns to the one word, image.

Image as opposed to actions, in that U.S. public diplomacy rarely if ever admits to mistakes in the grand purpose of the United States and will only do so under limited circumstances when media exposure catches their actions at cross purposes with their purported rhetorical ideology. The underlying assumption of all authors, some more boldly stated than others, is that the United States is right, it is good, and therefore we do not need to change our actions, what we need to adjust is our image.

Toward a New Public Diplomacy is divided into roughly three sections. The first looks at the case for public diplomacy. The second examines three different view points from the outside looking in (essentially all three give ‘fails’). Finally, there are five essays on what the future should hold for U.S. public diplomacy -- none of which mention the essential factor that the United States is a highly militarized society occupying several countries with military bases in more than 150 countries at a huge cost to the U.S. economy.

Soft Power

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