An obvious conclusion from the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi is that whatever the Obama Administration’s effort has been to deprive al-Qaeda and its affiliates of oxygen, it is not working. Public diplomacy may not appear to be the immediate issue in Thursday’s Benghazi hearings in the House …
The recent layoff of Voice of America (VOA) employees in Russia comes at a time when U.S. international broadcasting is also losing ground to bureaucratic overkill. Despite a continually expanding budget, many mission-critical broadcasting services are being cut, personnel are being let go, and broadcasters are being required to do …
Recent survey results show that the Obama Administration’s foreign policy has been unsuccessful in the promotion of America and in improving hostile relationships, especially in the Middle East. What’s more, polls taken by Transatlantic Trends 2012 show that the disapproval of the current Administration continues to grow. Directly linked to …
Yesterday, the President and Secretary of State of the United States of America went on Pakistani television to apologize. In a commercial containing clips from their Washington press conferences, subtitled in Urdu, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton said “sorry” to the mad hordes attacking the American embassy in the Pakistani …
“The death of U.S. public diplomacy” was how one Twitter user last Tuesday described the now-infamous apology from the U.S. embassy in Cairo for the ill-conceived movie Innocence of Muslims. Strong words, but there is no doubt about it: The need for American public diplomacy in the Middle East needs …
Diplomats abroad represent the government of the United States. They must, therefore, speak with tact, but also with honesty. After all, most of the people they’re speaking to have no firsthand experience with the U.S. Our diplomats are teaching foreigners about America. In fact, the “primary purpose of United States …
The State Department is continuing to edit its website into a more Obama-centric story of the world. As reported by The Heritage Foundation’s Jim Roberts, the State Department three months ago changed the format of one of its better products, the country-by-country Background Notes to a format allegedly more in …
In a recent speech to the American Security Project, Tara Sonenshine, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, laid out her vision for her tenure in office. “I always begin with, well, what is this nation about?” she said. Most people hesitate to go there, presumably for fear of offending this …
An outdated U.S. law adopted in the aftermath of World War II prevents Americans from listening to broadcasts on Voice of America and other taxpayer-supported broadcasters. Yet when two lawmakers offered a bipartisan solution to reverse that prohibition, critics on the right and left complained that our own government would …
The House Armed Services Committee clearly acted in the U.S. interest when it voted to modernize the Smith–Mundt Act last week, as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Since 1948, Smith–Mundt has prohibited agencies of the U.S. government from informing the U.S. public in print or on the …
