"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time,
but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
Abraham Lincoln
"Propaganda" comes from the Latin, and an office of propaganda was established in the Vatican in the 17th century and charged with the propagation of the Catholic faith. My generation associates the word with Nazi Germany, who used the mass media to glorify the party in power and to bend people to its will. Communist Soviet power similarly corrupted the media to portray messages that it deemed politically expedient rather than factually accurate. Those dictatorial regime gave the term a permanent negative connotation.
William Benton was a legendary advertising executive, who worked for the Department of State during World War II, and later became an influential U.S. Senator. I associate his influence in the critical period at the end of the war as having raised government consciousness in the United States of the importance of influencing the opinions of other peoples and national leaders by communications (in the broadest sense) as an element of diplomacy. Of course other countries have similar elements in their diplomacy, as is shown by the numbers of binational centers in every country, and by the efforts to extend the reach of their communications and educate students from abroad in their universities. From the time of Benton, at least, there has been a controversy in the U.S. State Department between those who can be characterized as seeing the function as akin to "flackery" and the selling of time shares on late night television, versus those, often former academics, who see the task as educating the world about America and Americans about the world (with a heavy wiff of cultural anthopology).
Cultural Diplomacy played a significant role during the Cold War, as scientific exchange, international sporting events, and artistic exchanges were programmed to defuse xenophobia and build understanding among peoples. I suspect that cultural diplomacy helped us to survive the Cold War!
More recently, the Bush administration put Karen Hughes in charge of Public Diplomacy as Assistant Secretary of State. One of President Bush (43) public relations advisors -- reputedly with great influence and long standing close relations to the president -- Assistant Secretary Hughes had lots of experience in manipulating the opinion of the U.S. electorate, but little foreign policy experience. She has left that job after a period that seems quite brief to me. I feared that her approach was more toward spin management and less toward factual communications than I would have preferred.
I recently heard Richard Armitage, the recent Deputy Secretary of State and a long time diplomat with great foreign policy experience, say that in reforming our public diplomacy approach, we should emphasize listening to others. It seems a good first step.
Ultimately, however, to be respected by other peoples and nations the United States has to act as a responsible member and leader of the community of nations. Our size and power thrust us into a leadership role among nations. If U.S. foreign policy is guided by our basest emotions -- fear, greed, anger -- then "public diplomacy" will not long fool others. It is only be being a good neighbor that we will in the long run be perceived as a good neighbor. Of course, being a good neighbor depends on understanding our neighbors and helping them to understand our legitimate concerns, but it depends more fundamentally on the will of the people and their government to do what is right.
We should recognize both the light and the dark sides to our nature as a people. For most of history we have managed to be really concerned with the wellbeing of other peoples, and have managed to limit our worst foreign policy actions to the aberrations we hope them to be, eventually reversing those ugly policies. We can look back on the Marshall Plan, Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, and Kennedy's Alliance for Progress as exceptional expressions of national conscience. They were recognized as such by the peoples of the world, and left a legacy of good will that we have not yet totally squandered. So too, the U.S. support for decolonization after World War II, and the concern for self-determination by peoples (when we might have used our economic and military power to try to create an empire) respond to our better nature.
Public Diplomacy is not a substitute for real diplomacy built on a willingness to play our role in the community of nations in manner responsible both to the best intentions of the American public and to the expectations of other peoples and nations.
William Benton was a legendary advertising executive, who worked for the Department of State during World War II, and later became an influential U.S. Senator. I associate his influence in the critical period at the end of the war as having raised government consciousness in the United States of the importance of influencing the opinions of other peoples and national leaders by communications (in the broadest sense) as an element of diplomacy. Of course other countries have similar elements in their diplomacy, as is shown by the numbers of binational centers in every country, and by the efforts to extend the reach of their communications and educate students from abroad in their universities. From the time of Benton, at least, there has been a controversy in the U.S. State Department between those who can be characterized as seeing the function as akin to "flackery" and the selling of time shares on late night television, versus those, often former academics, who see the task as educating the world about America and Americans about the world (with a heavy wiff of cultural anthopology).
Cultural Diplomacy played a significant role during the Cold War, as scientific exchange, international sporting events, and artistic exchanges were programmed to defuse xenophobia and build understanding among peoples. I suspect that cultural diplomacy helped us to survive the Cold War!
More recently, the Bush administration put Karen Hughes in charge of Public Diplomacy as Assistant Secretary of State. One of President Bush (43) public relations advisors -- reputedly with great influence and long standing close relations to the president -- Assistant Secretary Hughes had lots of experience in manipulating the opinion of the U.S. electorate, but little foreign policy experience. She has left that job after a period that seems quite brief to me. I feared that her approach was more toward spin management and less toward factual communications than I would have preferred.
I recently heard Richard Armitage, the recent Deputy Secretary of State and a long time diplomat with great foreign policy experience, say that in reforming our public diplomacy approach, we should emphasize listening to others. It seems a good first step.
Ultimately, however, to be respected by other peoples and nations the United States has to act as a responsible member and leader of the community of nations. Our size and power thrust us into a leadership role among nations. If U.S. foreign policy is guided by our basest emotions -- fear, greed, anger -- then "public diplomacy" will not long fool others. It is only be being a good neighbor that we will in the long run be perceived as a good neighbor. Of course, being a good neighbor depends on understanding our neighbors and helping them to understand our legitimate concerns, but it depends more fundamentally on the will of the people and their government to do what is right.
We should recognize both the light and the dark sides to our nature as a people. For most of history we have managed to be really concerned with the wellbeing of other peoples, and have managed to limit our worst foreign policy actions to the aberrations we hope them to be, eventually reversing those ugly policies. We can look back on the Marshall Plan, Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, and Kennedy's Alliance for Progress as exceptional expressions of national conscience. They were recognized as such by the peoples of the world, and left a legacy of good will that we have not yet totally squandered. So too, the U.S. support for decolonization after World War II, and the concern for self-determination by peoples (when we might have used our economic and military power to try to create an empire) respond to our better nature.
Public Diplomacy is not a substitute for real diplomacy built on a willingness to play our role in the community of nations in manner responsible both to the best intentions of the American public and to the expectations of other peoples and nations.
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