Improving US PD with Bridges

This class has allow students to question PD’s complicated nature. While the definition of PD is not clear cut, PD is not just one concept but the interconnectedness of many ways or concepts to attract foreign publics to a positive image in order to manage the international system. The most exciting part about this emerging field of public diplomacy is that all actors in the international system must acknowledge and participate in it. Actors in PD must migrate and help frame stories in their best possible light, particularly the media. While Hilary Clinton articulates that more jobs are opening up for Foreign Service officers, US PD has a lot of room for improvement. The US could be branding itself better. Other countries are developing their more informal PD plans as the US is trying to win the war of information. US grand strategy efforts should be less spent on fighting the information war and more on building reciprocal cultural bridges to help other publics understand American culture and vice versa. Deep meaningful contacts in many places should be the American PD goal. The hardest part about making these contacts are managing them in the media and successfully planning and executing initiates that withstand time. People at all levels of society realize that their role in the international system can have an effect on how their state actor is perceived by other publics.