I am a frequent reader of the State department's blog, Dipnote, that attempts to give a human angle to foreign policy -beyond the press releases, official statements and 'code words' we have come to know so well.
Dipnote links to an @Google interview where Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and her British counterpart David Miliband (a MIT graduate who happens to have his own YouTube channel, and blog.) This interview is hosted on ...YouTube. Suddenly foreign policy via social media doesn't look so dry.
Rice makes an excellent, passionate albeit slightly flawed analysis of Iraq; between her and Miliband, you get a sense that this is the kind of discourse we (and the world) missed in the last eight years. I'm not saying that social media made this happen, but without doubt these discussions were stifled by the old media that only permitted slogans and sound bites. Only at a venue like could she say that "we are not, as a government, ever going to 'improve' the image of America." That's what the people of America do best, she says. Which is another way of saying that the government should not be in the business of image building.
The new managing editor of Dipnote, Luke Forgeson, calls the blog the online version of a town hall meeting. As Miliband observes elsewhere, "diplomats need to reach out beyond governments to talk to people - at home and around the world."
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