American Diplomacy's Public Dimension - Practitioners as Change Agents in Foreign Relations

This is the first book to frame U.S. public diplomacy in the broad sweep of American diplomatic practice from the early colonial period to the present. It tells the story of how change agents in practitioner communities - foreign service officers, cultural diplomats, broadcasters, citizens, soldiers, covert operatives, democratizers, and presidential aides - revolutionized traditional government-to-government diplomacy and moved diplomacy with the public into the mainstream. This deeply researched study bridges practice and multi-disciplinary scholarship. It challenges the common narrative that U.S. public diplomacy is a Cold War creation that was folded into the State Department in 1999 and briefly found new life after 9/11. It documents historical turning points, analyzes evolving patterns of practice, and examines societal drivers of an American way of diplomacy: a preference for hard power over soft power, episodic commitment to public diplomacy correlated with war and amb ition,an information-dominant communication style, and American exceptionalism. It is an account of American diplomacy's public dimension, the people who shaped it, and the socialization and digitalization that today extends diplomacy well beyond the confines of embassies and foreign ministries.

Inhaltsverzeichnis:

Introduction.- Part I Precursors and Concepts.- Chapter 1. Colonial Era Foundations.- Chapter 2. Turning Points in a New Nation.- Chapter 3. Framing Practitioner Communities.- Part II, 20th Century Practitioners.- Chapter 4. Borrowing from Civil Society, 1917-1947.- Chapter 5. Foreign Service - Building a Foundation, 1948-1970.- Chapter 6. Foreign Service - Transforming Diplomacy, 1970-1990.- Chapter 7. Cultural Diplomats.- Chapter 8. International Broadcasters.- Chapter 9. Soldiers.- Chapter 10. Covert Operatives and Front Groups.- Chapter 11. Democracy Builders.- Chapter 12. Presidential Aides.- Part III 21st Century US Diplomacy.- Chapter 13. Reinvention and Fragmentation.- Chapter 14. A Failure to Communicate?.- Chapter 15. Drivers of Change.- Chapter 16. What Happens Now?.- Acronyms.- Selected Bibliography.- Acknowledgments.- Index.

Rezension:

"This book makes multiple contributions, and while in no way exhaustive, I want to recognize three of them. ... This is an ambitious book. ... Those who study and/or practice diplomacy (and public diplomacy) will likely extract the most value from this book. It is an advanced analysis, and while it is well-written, the content is intensely packed together. ... The book also serves as a springboard for further research and ideas for honing the practice." (Katherine A. Brown, Journal of Public Diplomacy, Vol. 4 (1), 2024)

"The book takes readers from the foundational experiences of the colonial American frontier, through the maturing of the Republic to the multiple global outreach campaigns waged during the twentieth century, into our own era of digitally powered diplomacy. ... This is a book for the ages which belongs at the right hand of every scholar and practitioner with an interest in diplomacy's public dimension." (Nicholas J Cull, Place Branding and Public Diplom acy, Vol. 20 (4), December, 2024)