Not Very Diplomatic, Are We?

"There is near universal agreement that public diplomacy is broken and something must be done and done quickly to fix it," states a new report from the Public Diplomacy Council. The Council suggests establishing a U.S. Agency for Public Diplomacy within the State Department, quadrupling the federal public diplomacy budget to $4 billion, and increasing overseas staff three-fold. Their report also "ridicules recent initiatives such as the creation of Radio Sawa to beam American pop songs to the Middle East." While young people are "the future decision makers," the report calls for "substantive news and feature programming," to Middle Eastern youth, elites and current decision-makers.