The Foreign Service Journal - November 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2017 35 John Campbell joined the State Department in 1975, serving in Aubja, Lyon, Paris, Geneva and Pretoria. His second posting to Nigeria (2004-2007) was as U.S. ambassador. He is the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and the author of Nigeria: Danc- ing on the Brink (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). Nontraditional U.S. Public Diplomacy: Past, Present and Future Deborah L. Trent, editor, The Public Diplomacy Council, 2016, $19.95/paperback, 310 pages. “Most good public diplomacy is non- traditional, but also based on a sound understanding of other forms, functions and objectives of diplomacy. That is where the experience of contributors to this work is very valuable,” says Jan Melissen, founding co-editor of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy , about this book. Nontraditional U.S. Public Diplomacy , the fifth volume of the Public Diplomacy Council Series, showcases key innovations and lessons in U.S. diplomacy since World War I. A collection of essays by practitioners and researchers in the field, its inspira- tion came from a daylong conference on public diplomacy in late 2013. The book offers compelling engagement strategies and primary research for shaping and communicating policy among increasingly diverse, collaborative and powerful publics. Chapter titles include: “The Uses and Abuses of Public Diplo- macy: Winning and Losing Hearts and Minds,” “Nontraditional Diplomacy in the Iraq-Afghan Wars, or The Ups and Downs of Strategic Communicators” and “Public Diplomacy Engages Religious Communities, Actors and Organizations: A Belated and Transformative Marriage.” The 11 contributors include several retired Senior Foreign Service officers: John Brown, Ambassador (ret.) Brian E. Carl- son, Peter Kovach, Ambassador (ret.) Anthony C.E. Quainton and Richard A. Virden. Deborah L. Trent, the book’s editor, worked for the U.S. Information Agency for 13 years before moving into nonprofit management and research. She wrote the book’s introduction and also contributed a chapter. Other contributors include Carol Balassa, Robert Albro, Helle C. Dale, Jong-on Hahm and Craig Hayden. War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft Robert D. Blackwill and Jennifer M. Harris, Belknap Press, 2016, $29.95/hardcover; $19.95/paperback; $16.17/Kindle, 384 pages. Today, nations increasingly carry out geo- political combat through economic means. Policies governing everything from trade and investment to energy and exchange rates are wielded as tools to win diplomatic allies, punish adversaries and coerce those who have not taken a side. In contrast, as Robert D. Blackwell and Jennifer M. Har- ris argue in War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft, America still too often reaches for the gun rather than the purse to advance its interests abroad. The result is a playing field tilting ever more sharply against us. In a cogent analysis of this trend, the authors explain that the rules-based systemWashington established after World War II benefited Americans for decades. But now, as the system frays and global competitors such as China take advantage, America is uniquely self-constrained. If it does throw off its policy shackles, the price in blood and treasure will only grow. Robert D. Blackwill was a Foreign Service officer from 1967 to 1987, and later served as U.S. ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003. He is currently the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Jennifer M. Harris is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. MEMOIRS Answer Coming Soon: More Blog Postings on Arts, Letters, Policy Dan Whitman, New Academia Publishing, 2017, $26/paperback, 259 pages. As its subtitle indicates, Answer Coming Soon: More Blog Postings on Arts, Letters, Policy is a sequel to Dan Whitman’s 2012 volume of his blog postings ( Blaming No One ). In its pages, he once again offers a practitioner’s view of foreign policy, while also tackling themes ranging from immigration and other gov- ernmental functions to human nature, music, literature and oral history. All of the book’s content originally appeared online at Pun- ditwire, a public blog disseminated by American University’s