ABSTRACT
In America’s Global War on Terrorism, or GWOT, what is called “public diplomacy” represents not the least, but rather a central element of U.S. failure. Arguably, public diplomacy has helped advance a historic loss of American world authority. It did not begin that way. Confidently, the GWOT advanced a revision of that authority, through which the United States’ world position would be made permanent and constitutional. Instead, aided by its public diplomacy, it has achieved the opposite. America’s recent experience in world revision followed by loss of authority can profit from the public diplomacy of Napoleonic France and early Showa Japan. Their experiences in strategic persuasion have much to tell us today.
