ABSTRACT
The lamentable condition of American public diplomacy today is widely acknowledged. A raft of studies and reports over the last half decade or so by a variety of official, semiofficial, and independent bodies have told a broadly similar story of institutional ineffectiveness, lack of strategic direction, and insufficient resources.1 Recently, these criticisms were acknowledged by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who in her Senate confirmation hearing promised to make public diplomacy reform a “top priority.” In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the elected leadership of the nation summoned the political will to make the most far-reaching changes in the national security bureaucracy in more than half a century in order to enhance the security of the American homeland in the face of the terrorist threat. A similar national commitment to institutional change seems to have emerged in the area of intelligence. Such a commitment does not exist, unfortunately, in the area of public diplomacy, in spite of the administration’s proclaimed concern. There are several key reasons for this. Not only is there no real consensus among practitioners or critics of American public diplomacy as to what needs to be done to fix it, but also the nature of the pathologies afflicting it are themselves not well understood.
