How We Got Here

Abstract

There is an irony at the heart of U.S. public diplomacy. Although America’s mass communications and popular culture have transformed the world, neither the people of the United States nor their Congress have been truly comfortable with a government role in communication at home or abroad. The U.S. government has deployed public diplomacy—the conduct of foreign policy through engagement with foreign publics—principally only in such times of dire need as the Revolution, the Civil War, or World War I. When the crisis passed, Congress closed down the apparatus of international propaganda. The present apparatus of U.S. public diplomacy survived its origins in World War II only because advocates of the international information program succeeded in persuading legislators of that such a tool was necessary to counter Soviet propaganda. When that threat ended in the early 1990s, the impetus to reduce the mechanism of U.S. public diplomacy returned; a marked reduction in the U.S. capability in the area followed. The post-9/11 period has seen a steady attempt to rebuild U.S. public diplomacy and to create an interagency structure. As momentum builds for another great reorganization of American public diplomacy, it makes sense to review the past. Since the dawn of the cold war the mechanism of public diplomacy has been through a number of transformations.