Introduction

This book frames US diplomacy’s public dimension in the broad sweep of American diplomatic practice from European settlers and Indigenous peoples to the present. It tells the story of how innovators and rival practitioner communities—foreign service officers, cultural diplomats, broadcasters, soldiers, citizen front groups, democratizers, and presidential aides—transformed government-to-government diplomacy and moved diplomacy with publics into the mainstream. It blends practice, practice theory, and multi-disciplinary scholarship. It documents historical turning points and examines societal drivers of an American way of diplomacy. The operational choices of key change agents and the evolving modus operandi of practitioner communities—more than presidents, lawmakers, and headquarters mandates—are essential to understanding US diplomacy’s public dimension today, the digitalization and socialization that extends diplomacy beyond the confines of embassies and foreign ministries, the damage done to diplomatic practice during the Trump presidency, and diplomacy reform agendas.