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John Brown aggregates all the most recent public diplomacy related news, including current issues in U.S. foreign policy, international broadcasting and media, propaganda, cultural diplomacy, educational exchanges, anti-Americanism, and the reception of American popular culture abroad.

AUGUST 18-19, 2004
by John Brown

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS REVIEW, AUGUST 18-19

QUOTATIONS FOR THE DAY

"ON OCT. 23, JUST 10 DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION, THE WAR IN IRAQ WILL HAVE LASTED AS LONG AS THE 584-DAY U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN WORLD WAR I, FROM THE APRIL 6, 1917, DECLARATION OF WAR TO THE NOV. 11, 1918, ARMISTICE."

--Columnist George F. Will, "Ignoring History In Iraq" (Washington Post, August 18)

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"AN IMMENSE VACUUM THAT SUCKS EVERYTHING INTO INSTANT OBLIVION."

--Critic Jonathan Yardley, describing the Internet, in his "Halftime for Gonzo [review of "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness: Modern History From the Sports Desk" by Hunter S. Thompson]" (Washington Post, August 19)

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"IT WAS SO MUCH EASIER FOR EMPIRES IN THE PAST, BEFORE THE DAYS OF INSTANT COMMUNICATION. THE ROMANS AND THE BRITISH DID NOT HAVE TO WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT POPULAR OPINION. THEY RAN THEIR TERRITORIES BY CO-OPTING LOCAL LEADERS AND CONSCRIPTING LOCAL ARMIES. THEY DID NOT TRY TO DO IT ALL THEMSELVES."

--Commentator Quentin Peel, in his "No Way To Change The World" (Financial Times" [see below item 22]


CONTENTS

A) PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

1. TROOP MOVEMENT - DAVID L. ENGLIN (NEW REPUBLIC): The Bush administration's plan to reduce U.S. forces in Europe and Asia would end probably the best thing America has had going in public diplomacy during the past 50 years – and at a time when public diplomacy is vital to U.S. security. Easily recognized by their jeans and baseball hats, military families have for decades been front-line ambassadors of American values and culture to the nations in which they have been stationed. And the diplomacy works both ways. When those same military families return to the United States, they become, in effect, ambassadors to their fellow Americans of the countries in which they have lived. Even allowing for the black eyes that America has occasionally suffered in Japan and elsewhere, there can be little doubt that, on balance, the presence of U.S. personnel and their families overseas has been a good thing for our country's international image.
LINK

2. WAR OF IDEAS: PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IS VITAL IN BEATING TERRORISTS – OPINION (DALLAS NEWS, AUGUST 18): We can fight terrorists all we want in caves and at security checkpoints, but we also must challenge them in the classrooms, over the Internet and on the airwaves. That's where the United States and its allies must reach the generation growing up in the Persian Gulf, Indonesia and the Philippines. We must show young Muslims – and their parents – the difference between dying as an al-Qaeda pawn and living free in a prosperous democracy. The State Department needs to expand student and professional exchanges between the U.S. and Muslim nations. Yes, some 9-11 hijackers abused student visas. But we can better enforce our own visa rules and at the same time step up efforts to show young, rule-abiding Arabs what Americans are like. The State Department also should send textbooks to Arab students so they learn more accurately about the West. The Sabre Foundation in Boston already has started work with the department to get books into Muslim nations. Let's build upon that work.
LINK

3. DEFENDING AMERICA: STATE DEPARTMENT'S MISSION IN AGE OF TERRORISM; HIRC SCHEDULES THURSDAY HEARING TO EXAMINE 9-11 COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CHANGES IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY - PRESS RELEASE (U.S. NEWSWIRE, AUGUST 18): Among the recommendations contained in its report, the 9-11 Commission proposes significant changes in the way America conducts its international diplomacy. Chief among the recommendations are proposals to urge broader democratic reform in the Middle East; adopt a more aggressive outreach by the United States to explain American policy and actions in defense of freedom, including increased use of broadcasts and exchange programs targeted at the Middle East.
LINK

4. KERRY'S REMARKS BEFORE VFW - (LOS ANGELES TIMES, AUGUST 18): Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry: "Last month, the 9/11 Commission embraced many of these ideas. I have urged the President and the Congress to act — and act now — to implement them. But if we are going to win this war, we will have to listen to another profoundly important recommendation made by the Commission. 'Long term success demands the use of all elements of national power: diplomacy, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, public diplomacy and homeland defense.'"
LINK

5. THE WORLD, ORDERED [REVIEW OF "POWER, TERROR, PEACE, AND WAR: AMERICA'S GRAND STRATEGY IN A WORLD AT RISK" BY WALTER RUSSELL MEAD] - RICH LOWRY (NATIONAL REVIEW): While finding George W. Bush's foreign policy and the War on Terror firmly within the American tradition, Mead is by no means a Bush partisan. He points out that the administration has no effective voice overseas. According to Mead, "It was in its public diplomacy that the Bush administration suffered the most consistent record of setbacks and defeats," plumbing depths of unpopularity around the world that the nation had not sunk to since the Vietnam War. At home, Mead calls it a disaster that Bush didn't adequately prepare the public for the post-war difficulties in Iraq and says it "will likely be studied long into the future as a classic example of how not to manage war policy."
LINK

6. HISTORICAL PATTERNS OF US GOVERNMENT OVERSEAS PROPAGANDA, 1917-2004 – JOHN BROWN (PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS REVIEW): Lists 12 discernible patterns, focusing on the period between World War I and the War on Terrorism.
FULL TEXT BELOW

B) RELATED ITEMS

7. AMERICANS RECEIVED WARMLY OFF THE FIELD - DAVID CRARY (ASSOCIATED PRESS/WASHINGTON POST): U.S. teams have heard plenty of boos so far in the Olympics, mostly the kind reserved for any powerhouse playing an underdog. What hasn't surfaced, they say, is any of the nasty, politically tinged anti-Americanism that was feared in the run-up to the games. Off the field, however, the Americans have raved about the warm reception they've received from the Greeks and from athletes of other nations. There have been no anti-American protests and, according to U.S. officials, no worrisome confrontations.
LINK

8. SWISS JAM AT A TRUCKIN' FESTIVAL - RUTH ELLEN GRUBER (INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE): Anti-Americanism may be a growing phenomenon in the wake of the Iraq war, but you never would have guessed it this month at Interlaken's annual International Trucker and Country Festival.
LINK

9. LIVING THE MATRIX - CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? - VINCENT GUARISCO (PRESS ACTION, VA): It hasn't been that long ago when the world gazed upon the United States with admiration, astonishment and respect. However, thanks to boy George and his cabinet of corrupt "Vulcans," anti-Americanism now runs rampant across the globe.
LINK

10. THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE: VOTERS WORRIED ABOUT AMERICA'S GLOBAL IMAGE; POLL SHOWS ERODING SUPPORT FOR THE WAR AND DISSATISFACTION WITH BUSH'S FOREIGN POLICY - TYLER MARSHALL (LOS ANGELES TIMES): For the first time since the height of the Vietnam War, America's relations with the world loom as the most important issue for voters in the run-up to the November presidential election, according to a poll released Wednesday. The poll found evidence that more Americans than ever before were "acutely aware of — and worried about — the loss of international respect for the United States," an issue that would seem to play into Kerry's campaign pledge to restore America's global image. The data also showed that a sizable majority of swing voters shared the attitudes of Kerry supporters on the issue.
LINK

11. WHAT DO WE CALL THE ENEMY? - (TOMDISPATCH.COM): Self-censorship, conformity, and craven bowing to administration propaganda of the sort admitted to by the Washington Post are just the tip of the media iceberg.
LINK

12. OOZING VENOM AND JIHAD - ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE (WASHINGTON TIMES, AUGUST 19): In most parts of the Muslim world, the war against global terrorism is viewed as a U.S.-Israel crusade, engineered by an alliance of neoconservatives and the Christian Right, against Islam and the Muslims. Pictures and video of dead women and children during the siege of Fallujah, the Abu Ghraib prison pictures of U.S. Army guards humiliating Iraqi inmates, U.S. troops firing at Iraqi insurgents from behind headstones in the huge Shi'ite cemetery in Najaf, or forcing Iraqi civilians to lie face down in the street, hands behind their necks — all have combined to a steady stream of hate-filled commentaries in Muslim newspapers and on Arab satellite TV channels.
LINK

13. AL JAZEERA BROADCASTS AID IRAQ'S GOVERNMENT - LETTERS TO THE TIMES (LOS ANGELES TIMES, AUGUST 18): Al Jazeera has always given extensive airtime to U.S. government spokesmen and the government we brought to power. Without its Baghdad bureau, Al Jazeera no longer is in a position to balance its coverage of the opposition with interviews with the U.S.-sponsored government, which has partially disappeared from Arab television.
LINK

14. NO WONDER THEY BANNED AL-JAZEERA. THE TRUTH HURTS – JONATHAN FENBY (AXIS OF LOGIC)
LINK

15. THE REGION: STRANGE LINE OF REASONING - BARRY RUBIN, THE JERUSALEM POST (AUGUST 19): What is noteworthy is how few Muslims, especially Arabs living in the Arab world, are fighting the currently dominant extremist interpretations prompted by radical Islamists. These interpretations are actually gaining in power.
LINK

16. IGNORING HISTORY IN IRAQ - GEORGE F. WILL (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 18): Preemptive war was waged, in part, to notify enemies of the United States that U.S. sovereignty could not be paralyzed by world opinion or the noncooperation of international institutions. And one measure of progress in Iraq was the June 28 transfer of sovereignty. But does sovereignty reside with the prime minister whose will evidently commands U.S. commanders? Or with those commanders who curb the prime minister's will? A house so divided cannot stand.
LINK

17. W.'S BIG FAT GREEK PRIDE - MAUREEN DOWD (NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 19): The war that was supposed to let us swagger and strut in the world is impeding our swagger and strut in the world.
LINK

18. TIME TO QUIT IRAQ (SORT OF) - EDWARD LUTTWAK (NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 18): So long as the United States is tied down in Iraq by over-ambitious policies of the past, it can only persist in wasteful futile aid projects and tragically futile combat. A strategy of disengagement would require risk-taking statecraft of a high order, and much competence at the negotiating table. But it would be based on the most fundamental of realities: for geographic reasons, many other countries have more to lose from an American debacle in Iraq than does the United States itself. The time has come to take advantage of that difference.
LINK

19. REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN SAYS IRAQ WAR WAS MISTAKE - REUTERS (NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 19): Breaking ranks with the White House and his Republican leaders in Congress, Rep. Doug Bereuter of Nebraska has said in a letter to constituents the U.S. military action in Iraq was a mistake. But Bereuter, who has resigned his seat in the House of Representatives to become president of the Asia Foundation, expressed dismay over the decision to go to war. "Our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened," he said.
LINK

20. BUSH'S WITHDRAWAL FROM THE WORLD - RONALD D. ASMUS (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 18): The president's plan is unfortunately further evidence of the strategic myopia that has afflicted this administration and is undercutting the United States' standing in the world. At a time when we should be mobilizing and reinvigorating our alliances in Europe and Asia, we are dismantling them. Instead of creating multilateral structures to mobilize the world in a common struggle against terrorism and new anti-Western ideologies and movements, we opt for a unilateral course that leaves us with fewer friends. As opposed to balancing the political and military requirements of a new era and coming up with a new troop deployment plan that meets both needs, the administration allows the Pentagon to ride roughshod over broader U.S. strategy and diplomacy and destroy the work of generations of diplomats and soldiers.
LINK

21. NO WAY TO CHANGE THE WORLD - QUENTIN PEEL (FINANCIAL TIMES, AUGUST 19): Unchallenged as the sole superpower, technologically capable of demolishing any threat within days if not weeks, this US administration is nonetheless attempting to do too much on its own, and in the wrong way. It is attempting to run a global empire without admitting it, and without making the essential compromises needed to win enough allies to its cause. Indeed, instead of winning friends, all too often it alienates them with heavy-handed intervention, whether military or diplomatic. Americans insist that their power is not imperial. Their whole history is one of resisting empires, especially the British one. Yet the new strategy from the Pentagon is to encircle the globe with military bases that can be used to whisk US forces to trouble spots wherever they are.
LINK
PAID SUBSCRIPTION

22. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED - OPINION (BALTIMORE SUN, AUGUST 18): Democrats are wrong to criticize President Bush's decision to reduce the number of American troops over the next few years in Germany and South Korea. Mr. Bush's critics are really motivated by a fear that, with fewer foreign entanglements, the administration might be tempted to follow an even more unilateral military policy. Certainly, that would be an outcome worth resisting. But not this way - not by sticking to an outdated system of bases that in some sense turns U.S. soldiers into hostages.
LINK

23. A SMARTER WAY TO USE OUR TROOPS - DOUGLAS J. FEITH (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 19): The new U.S. global force posture President Bush announced on Monday will strengthen our military, invigorate U.S. alliances and improve the lives of our military personnel. It will create a lighter U.S. "footprint" abroad, consolidate scattered facilities, remedy irritants in our relations with host nations, and, in numerous ways, make it easier for the United States to work well with allies and friends on military operations -- to train and operate, to develop military doctrine and tactics, and to exploit new military technologies with them.
LINK

24. CONGRESS MUST GET US OUT OF UNESCO. AGAIN! - TOM DEWEESE (INTELLECTUAL CONSERVATIVE, AZ): The nation laid Ronald Reagan to rest with a massive outpouring of respect and affection for the accomplishments of this great man. One of his most important achievements was to get the United States out of the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Yet it was just one year ago that Congress voted to undo President Reagan's work and authorized the nation to begin again to pay dues of $60 million annually to this corrupt organization. That's an incredible 25% of UNESCO's total operating budget. UNESCO is the root of much of the evil oozing out of the United Nations. It is the source of much of the anti-American education curriculum that is now cropping up in our nation's public classrooms.
LINK

25. U.S. SHOULD FORM A MARSHALL PLAN FOR LATIN AMERICA: VENEZUELA'S VOTE POINTS TO THE THREAT OF GROWING, FAR-REACHING CLASS TURMOIL - ANDREW REDING (LOS ANGELES TIMES): Postwar Europe became prosperous and democratic because the Marshall Plan's massive investment was aimed not just at rebuilding after the war but also at supporting social structures like labor unions, which in turn helped create middle-class majorities and a bulwark against Soviet communism. The U.S. has never made a similar investment in Latin America. Instead, it has in the past chosen to prop up military dictators who kept the poor in check while giving free rein to U.S. multinational corporations.
LINK

26. LOSING THEIR MINDS - REVIEW & OUTLOOK (WALL STREET JOURNAL): If you had to go by the headlines, you'd be forgiven for concluding that the Old World's best and brightest all look down on an intellectually inferior America. But the truth seems to be that Europe's brightest minds are concluding that the U.S. is the place to be, at least when it comes to the sciences. It all makes for an odd symmetry. In America we now have a furious political debate raging over the alleged damage being done to the economy by the offshoring of largely manufacturing and low-level service jobs. Yet for Europeans the complaint is precisely the opposite: that we in America are in-shoring some of their most talented people.
LINK
PAID SUBSCRIPTION

27. POETRY ON THE POTOMAC - SUZANNE FIELDS (WASHINGTON TIMES): We've got a new poet laureate. (Who can name the last one?) Poets can come from unlikely places. We got this one from a life-insurance company. The new poet laureate is Ted Kooser, a retired vice president of the Lincoln Benefit Life Insurance Company in Nebraska. "Ted Kooser is a major poetic voice for rural and small-town America and the first poet laureate chosen from the Great Plains," says James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress. "His verse reaches beyond his native region to touch on universal themes in accessible ways."
LINK

28. A SCULPTOR'S DREAM: 25,000 MAOS OVER 6,000 MILES: HUGE PROJECT COMMEMORATING LONG MARCH INCLUDES MASSIVE STATUE OF CONTROVERSIAL LEADER - CRAIG SIMONS (SF GATE, AUGUST 19): Lu Jie, the curator of a huge contemporary art project – "The Long March: A Walking Visual Display," shown in Beijing and remote parts of western China – hopes to bring contemporary artwork by about 250 artists, some Chinese and some foreign, including the American artist Judy Chicago, to 20 sites – mostly backwater towns along the Long March route. Meanwhile, Wang Wenhai, the 53-year-old self-proclaimed Yanan Clay Sculpture King, has three goals. First, he wants to build a 426-foot-tall statue of Mao Zedong in Yanan, the Chinese Communist Party's historic revolutionary base in the northwest. Then he wants to make a giant memorial commemorating Mao's philosophies, with possibly a nod to Karl Marx. Finally, if he has time, he wants to carve 25,000 tiny statues of Mao to leave along the route of the Long March.
LINK

C) MORE QUOTATIONS FOR THE DAY:

"You've got this box on your desk that is accessible all the time with little or no effort. That just makes it too easy for a lot of people to communicate."

--David Greenfield, author of "Virtual Addiction"; cited in Marilyn Gardner, "Is It Cyber-Flirting Or Cyber-Betrayal?" (Christian Science Monitor, August 19)
LINK

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"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

--Nazi leader Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials before he was sentenced to death; cited in Vincent Guarisco, "Living the Matrix - Can You Believe It?" (Press Action, VA) [see above item 11]

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"I HAVE A GREAT LIFE…WHEN WE WAKE UP, IT IS TO THE SOUNDS OF BIRDS...AND NONE OF IT COULD HAPPEN WITHOUT THE ARMY WIVES."

--Television personality and writer Ben Stein, "Strength at Home" (Wall Street Journal, August 18)
LINK
PAID SUBCRIPTION

D) TEXTS

HISTORICAL PATTERNS OF US GOVERNMENT OVERSEAS PROPAGANDA, 1917-2004
JOHN BROWN (PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS REVIEW)

1. PROPAGANDA, OFTEN UNDER ANOTHER NAME, HAS BEEN USED BY THE USG SINCE ITS ESTABLISHMENT TO INFLUENCE FOREIGN AUDIENCES. The Declaration of Independence can be seen as a propaganda document, if propaganda is defined as a conscious effort to change the behavior of others in ways beneficial to the propagandist. The former colonists wanted to convince mankind to support their independence, which implied a change of behavior on the part of other nations. Modern propaganda began during World War I, with the word becoming a part of the common vocabulary after 1918.

2. PROPAGANDA IS A TOOL OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY PRIMARILY IN TIMES OF WAR. After the start of a global conflict, the USG created special agencies to handle propaganda activities: the Committee on Public Information (1917-1919), the Office of War Information (1942-1945), the United States Information Agency (1953-1999), the Office of Global Communications (2002- ). In periods of relative peace, propaganda's use by the USG abroad has been limited. In the interwar period (1920s and 30s), for example, the USG hardly employed propaganda, especially in contrast to totalitarian countries. Indeed, to counteract Nazi propaganda, the USG first established a "non-propaganda" entity, the Division of Cultural Relations (1938) at the State Department, meant to deal with educational exchanges, primarily with Latin America. As the Cold War waned after the Cuban missile crisis, USG propaganda was transformed into "public diplomacy," which retained propagandistic elements but also focused on educational and cultural programs whose aims were mutual understanding rather than unilateral persuasion. In the words of the person who coined the term, Edmund A. Gullion of the Fletcher School of Diplomacy, "[t]o describe the whole range of [international] communications, information, and propaganda, we hit upon 'public diplomacy.'" (1967)

3. THE USE OF PROPAGANDA BY THE USG ORIGINATES IN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH, WITH THE PRESIDENT IN HIS ROLE AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF. Without the commitment (to varying degrees) of Wilson, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower, there would have been no CPI, OWI, or USIA; the initiative for overseas propaganda did not come from the public or Congress, although the latter has shown interest in promoting it in certain periods, such as at the beginning of the Cold War and today during the War on Terrorism. The involvement of a President in a propaganda agency – and his personal rapport with who is directing it – are crucial to its bureaucratic success in getting sufficient funding, personnel, and resources. Historically, two special relationships between a president and a propaganda czar come to mind: George Creel, chairman of CPI, with Woodrow Wilson; and Charles Z. Wick, Director of USIA, with Ronald Reagan. These relationships resulted, for a limited period, in considerable power and influence for these two propaganda agencies, not only overseas but domestically as well.

4. PROPAGANDA, AND LATER PUBLIC DIPLOMACY, ARE VIEWED CRITICALLY BY TRADITIONAL DIPLOMATS. Sir Harold Nicolson, in his classic "Diplomacy" (first edition, 1939), notes that propaganda "can in certain circumstances do immense damage to international relations," by arousing "hysteria among the lowest types of the population" and making "victims" of those who use it. For traditional diplomats, who engage in negotiations behind closed doors one-on-one or in small groups, the focus of propaganda and public diplomacy – communication in the open, often targeted to mass audiences – has nothing to do with diplomacy (indeed, "public diplomacy" is an oxymoron to them) and should not even be used to support or complement it, as it could backfire by putting negotiations under excessive public scrutiny and complicate their changes of success. Moreover, the old school practitioners stress, the positive results of propaganda/public diplomacy are hard to measure (if they exist at all) and thus are essentially useless, whereas traditional diplomacy produces an agreement, visible evidence of its efficacy. Despite these reservations, it has become increasingly recognized in the U.S. foreign policy establishment that in a globalized world of instant communications and influential foreign public opinion, diplomacy can no longer be conducted in a vacuum and needs the assistance of public diplomacy in order to bring concrete diplomatic results – or at least not to leave enemy propaganda, which can spread unhelpful lies about the United States, unanswered. In the twenty-first century, public diplomacy, no matter how many doubts exist about its effectiveness, has become a sine qua non of U.S. foreign policy, while remaining, in the opinion of many, underfunded and understaffed.

5. USG PROPAGANDA AGENCIES ARE OFTEN SEEN NEGATIVELY BY OTHER USG ENTITIES. The State Department, reflecting the views of traditional diplomats, has historically ignored or kept a distance from propaganda and its implementing agencies. Indeed, the USIA (dismissed by some State employees as "Useless," a play of words on its name abroad – USIS [United States Information Service]) was created in 1953 in part because the State Department did not want to dirty its hands and "do propaganda." The consolidation of USIA with State in 1999 has led to much bureaucratic confusion and antagonisms, with officers in the "public diplomacy" cone not comfortable with the priorities, administrative procedures, and personnel structures at the Department. The long-time resentment of public diplomacy practitioners – that they are left out of the policy making process, a concern which exists at least since OWI staff was producing "news" that they did not always agree with – continues. (It was best expressed by USIA Director Edward Murrow in the 1960s, who felt USIA should be present at the take off of policy, not at the crash landing). The military, while recognizing the importance of psychological warfare, has also had strong reservations about propaganda, especially when produced by a civilian organization not directly linked to the battlefield. As early as World War I, for example, the CPI was criticized by military intelligence as being superficial and ineffective; on of the critic was Heber Blankenhorn, a captain in a seven-man U.S. intelligence unit of the American Expeditionary Force of which Walter Lippmann (who went on to write extensively about propaganda) was a member.

6. USG PROPAGANDA ABROAD IS LIMITED OR CONTROLLED BY DOMESTIC POLITICS. By the end of World War I, the Committee on Public Information came under strong Congressional criticism, and its aggressive propaganda activities, which were accused of spreading domestic intolerance and hatred, led to an anti-propaganda movement in the U.S. that reached its peak in the creation of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, founded in 1937. During World War II, the Office of War Information, cautiously created by Franklin D. Roosevelt, was under much closer Congressional scrutiny than the CPI, and it differentiated far more between domestic and foreign propaganda than the CPI. After the war, the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, passed by a Republican Congress concerned about possible efforts by a Democratic administration to propagandize the citizenry, prohibited the domestic dissemination of USG information products aimed at foreign audiences. During the Cold War, some USIA products were granted special dispensation to be available domestically (e.g., the scholarly journal "Problems of Communism"), but the domestic/overseas division was maintained, although by the end of the twentieth century advances in information technology had made this distinction increasingly artificial. Today, with the Internet, many consider the Smith-Mundt Act an anachronism, and the recently-created White House Office of Global Communications, which focuses on foreign rather domestic audiences, does not formally distinguish between the two on its homepage. It should be noted that efforts to make a distinction between domestic and foreign propaganda is an American phenomenon; other democratic countries have shown much less concern about this issue. As for totalitarian propaganda, it essentially did not separate foreign and home propaganda, although it did massage certain messages in ways to influence audiences abroad more effectively. Hitler did not have to worry about any domestic critics of his propaganda, both at home and outside the homeland, when he was at the height of his power.

7. WHEN A WAR ENDS (WORLD WAR I, WORLD WAR II, COLD WAR), THE USG, UNDER CONGRESSIONAL AND BUDGETARY PRESSURES, DISMANTLES ITS PROPAGANDA AGENCIES, ONLY TO RE-ESTABLISH THEM UNDER DIFFERENT STRUCTURES WHEN A NEW WAR BREAKS OUT. The Committee on Public Information, established in 1917, was terminated in 1919; the Office of War Information, created in 1942, was abolished in 1945; the United States Information Agency, founded in 1953, was consolidated into the State Department in 1999. During the war on terrorism, the White House established the Office of Global Communications.

8. THE MESSAGES ABROAD OF USG PROPAGANDA CHANGE ACCORDING TO HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES AND VARY THROUGH TIME; BUT THEY CONSISTENTLY STRESS AMERICA'S EXCEPTIONALISM. In World War I, the main message was to make the world safe for democracy; in World War II, to achieve victory through unconditional surrender; in the Cold War, to preserve and expand freedom; in the War on Terrorism, to prevail over those who "hate our freedoms." These messages, despite their different emphases, have in common the underlying belief that America has a unique role in determining the fate of mankind and in leading the world onto the path to universal progress. American exceptionalism is a strong element in USG propaganda, but this propaganda has never assumed (until now, some Bush administration critics would say) that America is deemed to dominate the world militarily (economically and culturally is another matter). Rather, USG propaganda has been traditionally based on an underlying belief that America's goodness is a gift to all men that should be distributed with the help of the American taxpayer. Contrast this to twentieth century totalitarian propaganda, which is based on the notion of total global domination.

9. THE PURPOSES OF USG PROPAGANDA ABROAD ARE NOT ALWAYS BEEN PERCEIVED, BOTH AT HOME AND OVERSEAS, AS IDENTICAL TO ITS MESSAGES. During World War I, message and purpose were closely linked in public mind (both in the U.S. and abroad), but after the war the credibility of Wilson's altruistic message was in doubt because of newly disclosed information on the falsity of war atrocities stories and Wilson's foreign policy failures. During World War II, the OWI's initial message of upholding universal values was replaced by calls for military victory, leading to confusion and frustration among its staff (especially during the early years of the war) over American war aims, as was the case when the U.S. collaborated with Admiral Jean François Darlan in North Africa and Marshal Pietro Badoglio in Italy, both of whom had worked for the enemy. In the Cold War after the mid-1960s, when public diplomacy became the accepted term to describe USG propagandistic (and non-propagandistic) programs abroad, slogans promulgated for the promotion and expansion of freedom were interpreted in some circles as efforts to rollback socialism. In the War on Terrorism, USG public diplomacy is seen by its critics as camouflaging American intentions to control Middle East oil and remake the map of the area. A reason why USG propaganda was eventually perceived as more credible than its totalitarian competitor in the twentieth century is that the gap between its message and purpose was never as blatant as that of its global opponents. In the twenty-first century, however, much of the world believes that American public diplomacy's message regarding the war in Iraq hides the true purpose of American policies.

10. USG PROPAGANDA USES THE LATEST MEDIA TO DISSEMINATE ITS MESSAGES ABROAD. In World War I, the American government employed the new medium of movies; in World War II, radio; in the Cold War, television and video; and in the War on Terrorism, Internet. But the USG also made use of older, time-tested communications instruments as well, including person-to-person interaction, a key tool of "public diplomacy." (As USIA director Edward R. Murrow said, "the really crucial link in the international communication chain is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another.") USG propaganda, sometimes uneasily allied with profit-oriented Hollywood in times of war, has employed images with skill and innovation, and more effectively than its totalitarian opponents. Simply put, most people would rather look at "Casablanca" than "Triumph of the Will."

11. AMERICAN PROPAGANDISTS, OFTEN INTELLECTUALS OR JOURNALISTS DRIVEN BY ALTRUISTIC NOTIONS OF HELPING MANKIND AND COUNTRY, RELUCTANTLY ENGAGE IN PROPAGANDA. Even the CPI, which expressed little characterize them as propaganda, choosing to describe them (in the words of its chairman, George Creel) as "educational and informative throughout." During World War II, propagandists such as the poet Archibald McLeish in the OWI had doubts about the intellectual validity of the information activities they undertook in service to their nation at war. During the Cold War, many practitioners of public diplomacy refused to consider it propaganda at all, but saw it as education or bilateral communication (during the Carter administration, the USIA was renamed the International Communication Agency , reverting to its former designation after Ronald Reagan assumed office in 1981). Some would argue that American propagandists' moral uneasiness regarding their trade is what made them effective: in the words of William E. Daugherty, who worked in the Operations Research Office of The Johns Hopkins University during the Cold War, "One must hate propaganda to do it well." During World War II, said Dick Grossman (considered by many the master propagandist par excellence in World War II), "The Germans, because they loved propaganda, could not do it."

12. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USG PROPAGANDA AND PUBLIC DIPLOMACY ARE CONSTANTLY IN QUESTION. There have been many efforts to measure results of propaganda and public diplomacy, but no one has ever scientifically or definitely "proven" that they changed behavior in ways favorable to the United States. Perhaps the strongest argument supporting their use by the USG is to consider what would have happened to the U.S. during the past 100 years had they not been employed to further national interests. Would the United States have survived three global conflicts? Had there not been a Voice of America, for example, would the United States have won World War II or prevailed in the Cold War? Certainly other, more important factors – military, economic, political – contributed to America's avoidance of defeat, but propaganda/public diplomacy can be seen as at least a sufficient cause in bringing this about. Given the relatively low cost of propaganda, it would be foolish if the USG were to go without it in pursuing its national interests abroad, if only because propaganda helps to "cover all bases" (informational, psychological, cultural) in a conflict – and, in times of peace, helps to prevent war, especially when transformed into public diplomacy (with its greater focus educational and cultural exchange programs).

 
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