Public Diplomacy Reflection Paper

Last summer I decided to participate in three additional classes that sounded most interesting to me. I chose to learn about Ethiopian Judaism, Workshop at Political Communication, and Public Diplomacy. I really enjoyed all three classes, but I found myself most interested in Public Diplomacy course especially since I could relate to many ideas that were brought up during the lessons. I was surprised to understand there are theories and practice methods behind public diplomacy, and for that reason I would like to share some interesting ideas I learned through the class. We started the course with theoretical terms such as soft power, strong power, and smart power that was coined by Joseph Nye in the late 1980. Nye argued that a successful policy of states should be based on smart power, which is a combination of strong and soft power. Soft power of a country is the ability to persuade others to act according to its interest without force or coercion (Nye, 1990). Strong power is quite different, and it means to persuade using force or means. I was interested to know more about soft power as I felt it could relate to the methods I found effective when I was an emissary and a counselor for Jewish American teens. As the lesson went on, there were indeed many statements that overlaps with Nye’s definition, and the way I worked so far. For example, Nye believed that one source of the soft power is culture: Music, movies, and literature of a certain country can represent its values