America's Public Diplomacy Deficit
Abstract
As the world adjusted in the 1860s to the invention of the telegraph, a British diplomat was heard to remark that the new era of instantaneous international communication heralded the dense of the ambassador role. What, after all, would be the role of envoys when governments could communicate directly? As an analysis of government's needs of the day, the remark was reasonable enough. And yet, it could not have been further off the mark. Far from shrinking, America's diplomatic establishment a century later has mushroomed, with embassies in key capitals numbering their employees in the several hundreds. What that 19th-century diplomat had faired to anticipate was the fact that the telegraph -- and the communications revolution it presaged -- was the beginning of a revolution in the scope and intensity of how nations interact As a result, the diplomat's role a century later may have changed -- becoming simultaneously more mundane and more complex -- but it has hardly gone away. On the contrary, our forebears a century ago would be startled to learn how central the diplomat's skills have become to managing meter-related economies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA442089
Entities
People
- Larry Wohlers
Organizations
- National War College