Public Diplomacy Studies From A Perspective Of Grand Strategy

In an era of globalization where nation states are increasingly interdependent on each other, information technologies not only provide new instruments for government to engage the domestic and international public, but also present new challenges to traditional diplomacy. Meeting those challenges requires a comprehensive public diplomacy strategy, instead of simply more public diplomacy activities. Nowadays, public diplomacy is literally everywhere and every time. More players are involved in public diplomacy process and consequently causing two drawbacks:overlapping activities causing waste of diplomatic resources, and confliction between players leading to confusions for international publics. Therefore, the purpose of strategy of public diplomacy is to identify a common agenda, around which players can make collective efforts, some of this activity will be collective, and much will be separate but complementary.The UK had suffered from a huge decline since WWII. In terms of soft power and public diplomacy, however, the UK is still one of leading powers. This is not only because of British relatively strong hard power and rich soft power resources, but also due to their continuous exploration and innovation in managing public diplomacy. The long history and rich experience has made British public diplomacy one of the best models globally.In this dissertation, combining grand strategy theory and best practice from British experience, I attempt to first construct a theory on public diplomacy strategy, second understand British public diplomacy better from a strategic perspective, and last but not the least, provide a mature reference for China’s growing public diplomacy strategy.