Poland and PD cont.

Continuing the topic of public diplomacy in Poland, I recently got very disappointed. Together with my group I was working on the case of Czech Republic and how its public diplomacy looks like today. Czech Republic and Poland had very similar historical experience. They were both struggling during the World War I and World War II. After the Second World War both of the countries were under the influence of the Soviet Union and the Stalin’s Regime. During that time public diplomacy was based only on the promotion of communism among the communistic and socialistic countries or the countries that are most likely to become one. Poland as well as Czech Republic did not have their own say and needed to obey the higher power. Nevertheless, the end of the 80’s was fortunate for those Eastern European countries because the communism got abolished. Now Poland and Czech Republic had to create its independent state and prepare plan for the future which would include public diplomacy. However, it was very hard at that time to include public diplomacy because their politics and government was focused on rebuilding the internal matters of the country and public diplomacy was not very crucial for them. Not until entering the European Union countries started to consider the importance of public diplomacy. European Union presented to those countries requirement which they need to achieve in order to be a member. Public diplomacy was a part of those requirements. However, the level of the diplomacy was not as engaging as it should be. After joining the European Union, Czech started to keep up with the western European countries and their nation branding using tools as: tourism, trade, education, and economy became better and is still evolving. Bringing up the case of Poland it looks like the importance of public diplomacy was not noticed even after the EU membership. Although Poland has the same past as Czech Republic it seems like it ignored the case of public diplomacy and focused on different aspects of the nation building. But what other aspects…??? What about promoting the country abroad, creating its positive image and showing to people that Poland is a valuable country? Maybe that is why, as I mentioned in my prior blog post, Poland is unnoticeable by other countries or societies. In my personal opinion, Polish government should finally realize how public diplomacy can be influential and consequently help in polish politics, economy, tourism, etc. Polish embassies all over the world should set up some goals in nation branding and start doing some progress because even though Poland is seen as a country with high possibilities it will never achieve them without promoting the country abroad.