All this excitement over recent Russian public diplomacy on Syria is a bit odd to those of us who have been following that diplomacy strategy for over a decade. That Vladimir Putin chose to write an op-ed in The New York Times this week is not at all shocking. It is part of a broader pattern of Russian outreach that began in 2001.
What confuses people about Russian public diplomacy is that it often veers from a closed fist approach to an open handshake depending on its narrow objective -- all the while testing America as it seeks to build its own popularity around the world.
Since the end of the 1990s the Russians have been aware that America and other nations see a weakened former Soviet empire behaving badly in the world, and they have sought to correct that perception beginning with the hiring of an American public relations firm back in 2006, which generated interest at the time.
For years the Russians have worried about how they are portrayed in American media, about Hollywood's depiction of Russians as mobsters and thugs, for example. Scholars of Russia have written often about Russia's near-obsession with its place in the world, including a fixation on polls -- like Gallup's -- about Russia's popularity with the outside world.
Over the years, Russian officials have looked for opportunities in the media to portray Russia as helpful and constructive -- even when it was not. They attempted to use Russian television, and later the Internet, to brandish a better image in the West -- creating a news agency, RIA (The Russian Agency for International Information) which operates 80 news bureaus around the world and Russia Today which boasts a following of 630 million people in over 100 countries. The Russians are also fans of inserting newspaper supplements of Russia Today in American newspapers just to remind readers of their relevance.
Let's face it. Russia remains relevant but its image in the world has suffered throughout the last decade, for good reason. Think of some of the recent events: the conflict Russia had in 2008 with its southern neighbor, Georgia, over the disputed territory of South Ossetia. Then there was the feud with Ukraine in 2009 which resulted in Russia cutting off gas to Ukraine. There was a series of international corruption scandals around a Russian oil firm, Gazprom, including accounting charges involving U.S. financial firms.
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