Hare Publishes Blog on Public Diplomacy and “America First”
Ambassador Paul Webster Hare, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a blog on the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy website entitled, “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power? No thanks, It’s America First,” on Tuesday, February 18, 2020.
From the text of the article:
U.S. officials are projecting messages of truth, freedom and human dignity. But overseas publics are likely getting a different impression of the public diplomacy of the United States, and this piece explains why.
Is the Trump administration the first in modern United States history to be oblivious to public diplomacy (PD)? It sounds an absurd question when the PD budget of the U.S. is well over $2 billion and revered programs like the U.S. Peace Corps and Fulbright Scholarships each have annual budgets hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yet America appears no longer interested in building the relationships with and listening to overseas publics which lie at the heart of modern PD. It is not surprising “America First” has little appeal overseas and few will see soft power in a leader who tweets his “great and unmatched wisdom” whilst calling himself a “stable genius.” But there is a wider problem.
The full article can be found here:
Amb. Paul Hare was a British diplomat for 30 years and the British ambassador to Cuba from 2001-04. He no teaches classes at Boston University on Diplomatic Practice, Arms Control, Intercultural Communication and on Cuba in Transition. His novel, “Moncada – A Cuban Story”, set in modern Cuba, was published in 2010. His book “Making Diplomacy Work; Intelligent Innovation for the Modern World” was published in 2015.