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Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James K. Glassman FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, October 4, 2008, San Francisco -- James Glassman, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, gave incomplete and misleading answers when asked Friday whether the elimination of vernacular broadcasts to Georgia, Russia, and India is going to hurt his "war of ideas" effort. Speaking in Washington at a National Press Club luncheon on "The New Age of Public Diplomacy," Glassman seemed surprised and annoyed by the question. His answer that the U.S. is not...

Engagement in the battle of ideas and strategic communication has long been the missing ingredient in the government-wide effort to combat terrorism. Now, with a restructured public diplomacy bureaucracy at the State Department and elsewhere in the interagency process, engaging foreign publics has formally and strategically become part of the toolkit to combat radical extremist ideologies. Today, in his first major public address in his new position in Washington, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James Glassman addressed The Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Special Policy Forum on "Winning the War of Ideas." The prepared...

Wars of Ideas and THE War of Ideas Authored by Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria, II. Added June 12, 2008 Type: Monograph 62 Pages   Cost: Free The author discusses several types of wars of ideas in an effort to achieve a better understanding of what wars of ideas are. That knowledge, in turn, can help inform strategy. It is important to note, for instance, that because ideas are interpreted subjectively, it is not likely that opposing parties will "win" each other over by means of an ideational campaign alone. Hence, physical events, whether intended or incidental, typically play determining...

America has an image problem. While the problem is serious, it is complicated by more variation than is usually ascribed to it. For example, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey of June 2005, the “U.S. image [is] up slightly, but still [is] negative.” This variation is further reflected by the fact that in two of the world’s potentially most important triangular relationships — namely, those between China, Japan, and the U.S. and between India, Pakistan, and the U.S. — it is the United States that is regarded as most friendly by the other two members of each triad. America’s...

CAIRO – As Karen Hughes, the newly appointed head of U.S. public diplomacy, began her first visit to the Middle East last week, an Arab newspaper published a cartoon of the “Ugly American”. It showed President George Bush sitting in front of a mirror, with a thick layer of make up on his face. He turns to Hughes and asks her for more make up and a strong perfume. The message was: America cannot hide its ugliness. Its arrogance and actions carried out without thought to consequence have made it so unattractive that nothing will turn an ugly face pretty....

September 11, 2001, may have been a wake-up call to reform America’s outdated intelligence bureaucracies and fight a global war on terrorism, but in some corners of the government, the war of ideas has been a lesser priority. While overseas opinion polls show mostly negative views of the United States, the communications machinery at the Department of State remains in disarray, inter­agency coordination remains minimal, and Amer­ica’s foreign communications effort lacks focus. The nomination and confirmation of Karen Hughes as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplo­macy and Public Affairs is a much-needed step, but it is not enough. The...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say. Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations. Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon's credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say...