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A new tagline reflects the purpose of the new site: public diplomacy, international media, and the struggle against propaganda.

The purpose of the blog is to develop understanding of the challenges of today’s international environment. The goal is to raise the quality of the discourse around these topics, to create informed decisions; to empower the fox over the hedgehogs that ignore or miss the messy details and then stumble right into the traps of our adversaries.

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Bruce is an adjunct professor at both George Washington University and Georgetown University. His knowledge of the discussions behind the scenes around public diplomacy and strategic communication is perhaps the greatest of any person you’ll meet. In the prior century, Bruce served as the executive director of the U.S. Advisory Communication on Public Diplomacy.

Gordon Adams and Shoon Murray, eds., Mission Creep: The Militarization of US Foreign Policy? (Georgetown University Press, 2014). There is an “institutional imbalance at the heart of the foreign policy and national security process,” Adams and Murray (American University) argue, driven by growing militarization of civilian instruments of power. The military has become the primary actor and face of US policy abroad – with adverse consequences for diplomacy and the missions, programs, roles, and budgets of civilian agencies. Thirteen essays provide contrasting views on this argument. Several are particularly useful for diplomacy scholars and practitioners. James Dobbins (RAND), “Civil-Military Roles in Postconflict Stabilization and Reconstruction.” Brian Carlson (Intermedia Research Institute), “Who Tells America’s Story Abroad.” Shoon Murray and Anthony Quainton (American University), “Combatant Commanders, Ambassadorial Authority, and the Conduct of Diplomacy.” Edward Marks (Simons Center for the Study of Interagency Cooperation), “The State Department: No Longer the Gatekeeper.”

Christina Archetti, “Terrorism, Communication and New Media: Explaining Radicalization in the Digital Age,” Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 9, Issue 1, February 2015, 49-59. Archetti (University of Salford, UK) challenges misunderstandings about the role of technologies and concepts of strategic communication and narratives in countering violent extremism. Her article examines the social construction of individual and collective narratives and the role played by mediated technologies in extending them through “indirect relationships” and “imagined communities.” Archetti concludes with a brief discussion of a communication-based framework for understanding radicalism and lessons for counter-terrorism.

Gregory Asmolov, “Welcoming the Dragon: The Role of Public Opinion in Russian Internet Regulation,” Center for Global Communication Studies, 2015. Asmolov (London School of Economics) argues that protecting Internet freedom in Russia requires a shift in public opinion that is centered not only on opposition to state-sponsored framing of the Internet as a threat but also on an understanding of the “Internet’s role in the everyday life of its users.” Asmolov’s paper discusses recent regulatory initiatives in Russia and opinion surveys on the role of the Internet in Russian life and attitudes toward the role of the state in Internet governance. He concludes that challenges to the frame of the “Internet as a Threat” requires an “alternative imaginary that allows for the realization that the Internet may have substantial life-changing value for individuals.”

Maria Luisa Azpíroz, “Soft Power and Public Diplomacy: The Case of the European Union in Brazil,” CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, March 2015. Azpíroz (University of Liege, Belgium) identifies and analyzes the EU’s public diplomacy activities in Brazil. She examines their challenges and potential in a conceptual framework that emphasizes creation of collaborative networks and “normative power” used in combination with economic instruments in what she calls “civil power.” Her paper focuses on activities of the European External Action Service in the EU’s relations with Latin America, Mercosur, and Brazil during the years 2011-2013. Azpíroz concludes that “cultural, educational, and scientific components constitute the best assets of EU public diplomacy in Brazil.” CPD has published her paper in English and Spanish.

Vanessa Bravo and Maria De Moya, “Communicating the Homeland’s Relationship with its Diaspora Community: the Cases of El Salvador and Colombia,” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Volume 10, Number 1, 2015, 70-104. In this needed contribution to the public diplomacy of Latin American governments, Bravo (Elon University) and De Moya (DePaul University) examine ways in which El Salvador and Colombia conceptualize and communicate with their diaspora communities in the United States. The authors use qualitative content analysis of official publications and other public information to analyze types of relationships (communal vs. exchange), issues the two governments identify as important to these communities, and means by which they seek to engage and strengthen relationships with them. The article provides a typology of government-to-diaspora communication and frames a new category of “hybrid relationships.” A literature review on diasporas and diaspora diplomacy adds to the value of their work.

Craig Hayden, “Research Trends in Public Diplomacy,” Talking Points from a Presentation to the International Studies Association Annual Conference, February 20, 2015, Posted on Intermap Blog, February 23, 2015. In this handy “snap shot” of public diplomacy research – described not as a road map of where to go, but “a complicated subway map around the hub of public diplomacy studies” – Hayden (American University) profiles areas that define current scholarship. His list: (1) the new public diplomacy, (2) continuing refinement and critique of the soft power concept, (3) public relations, (4) mediated public diplomacy, (5) content analytic approaches, (6) digital diplomacy, (7) comparative studies, and (8) cognate concepts. His overview also includes some notable absences and quick takes on where public diplomacy research can go.

Ingrid d’Hooghe, China’s Public Diplomacy, (Brill/Nijhoff, 2015). In her comprehensive and deeply researched book, d’Hooghe (Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael”) builds on years of scholarship to provide an indispensable account of China’s approach to public diplomacy – the cultural and political factors that shape its characteristics, its strengths and limitations, and its role in China’s domestic and foreign policies. Her book combines thoughtful assessments of China’s conceptualization of public diplomacy and soft power with up-to-date examinations of organizations, tools, and methods. Case studies include: China’s public diplomacy strategies in Africa and Asia, the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai World Expo, the SARS epidemic, product scandals, and the Wenchuan earthquake. d’Hooghe usefully places her inquiry in the context of a thoughtful examination of Western concepts of public diplomacy and provides an extensive English and Chinese language bibliography. Her book is Volume 10 in Clingendael’s Diplomatic Studies series edited by Jan Melissen.

Anup Kaphle, “The Foreign Desk in Transition,” Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 2015, 37-40. Kaphle (digital foreign editor, The Washington Post) explores changes in the mainstream media’s foreign reporting in the digital era. His article looks at international blogs reported from home bureaus, new readers who seek more analysis and faster dispatches, and the current “hybrid blend of traditional correspondents and in-house bloggers.” Kaphle expects changes as mainstream news organizations share agenda setting space with digital natives who are developing new models of foreign reporting.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Is the American Century Over? (Polity Press, 2015). In this slim volume, Nye (Harvard University) summarizes years of thinking on the varieties of contested issues in debates about America’s role in the world. His bottom line: the American century is not over if it is understood as “pre-eminence in military, economic, and soft power resources that have made the United States central to the workings of the global balance of power, and to the provision of public goods.” However, given power diffusion and increased complexity, America’s role is “definitely changing in important ways.” Nye’s tapestry is woven from threads in his thinking on diplomacy, power, history, and international relations.

“On the Right Side of History: Public Diplomacy & LGBT Rights Today,” Public Diplomacy Magazine, USC Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars, Issue 13, Winter 2015. This edition of PD Magazine contains 18 short essays by scholars and practitioners on LGBT issues in the study and practice of diplomacy.

Yelena Osipova, “’Russification’ of ‘Soft Power': Transformation of a Concept,” Exchange: Journal of Public Diplomacy, Syracuse University, December 2014. Osipova (American University) examines Russia’s re-conceptualization and indigenization of soft power as manifest in official and academic discourse. Her paper explores creation of a distinct Russian approach to soft power grounded in its political culture and its framing of American soft power as a mask for projecting hegemony and interference in Russia’s internal and external affairs. Selecting from a range of cultural diplomacy, international broadcasting, and other Russian soft power tools, Osipova focuses on Russia’s use of development and humanitarian assistance and cultivation of civil society networks abroad. She concludes with a brief look at Russia’s use of soft power in Ukraine.

“PD Hub, CPD’s Virtual Classroom,” USC Center on Public Diplomacy, 2015. CPD’s new searchable online library includes active links to books, articles, speeches, essays, PD News items, and CPD Blogs. PD Hub also includes a list of PD organizations, a database of multimedia resources, links to annotated bibliographies, and other resources. A “go to” research site for students, scholars, and practitioners.

Rufus Philips, “Breathing Life Into Expeditionary Diplomacy: A Missing Dimension of US Security Capabilities,” Working Paper, National Security Information Center, Fall 2014. In this 86-page paper, Philips (Senior Fellow, NSIC) examines the reasons for creating an “expeditionary diplomatic capability” and the thinking, training, and resources needed to bring it into being as a separate personnel category working directly for US Chiefs of Mission. Drawing on the thinking of retired Ambassador Marc Grossman, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, and others, Philips analyzes a range of issues: missions and roles of an expeditionary capability, recruitment, skill sets, risk management, the elements of a basic education and training course, management and administration, and an orientation course for ambassadors and deputy chiefs of mission.

Katarzyna Pisarska, “The Role of Domestic Public Engagement in the Formulation and Implementation of US Government-sponsored Educational Exchanges: An Insider’s Account,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy (2015) 11, 5-17. Pisarska (Warsaw School of Economics and Center for European Policy Analysis) argues that domestic civil society organizations, long essential in implementing US exchange programs, over time become partners in program design and policy formulation. Her article draws on interviews with diplomats and practitioners and a research literature grounded in relational models often characterized by the term “new public diplomacy.” Pisarska argues international exchanges can serve as an example for other instruments of public diplomacy as states “adjust to the ongoing internal democratization of foreign policy.”

Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss, “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money,” The Interpreter, Institute of Modern Russia, November 22, 2014. In this 43-page paper, Pomerantsev (journalist and author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible) and Weiss (editor-in-chief of The Interpreter and columnist for Foreign Policy) argue that Russia systematically uses “information not in the familiar terms of ‘persuasion,’ ‘public diplomacy’ or even ‘propaganda,’ but in weaponized terms, as a tool to confuse, blackmail, demoralize, subvert and paralyze.” Information, cultural organizations, and money, they contend, are central elements in Putin’s “concept of ‘non-linear war.’” Their paper offers a variety of recommendations on ideas and tools needed to understand and respond to a strategy that uses culture and money to enable aggression and “freedom of speech as a way to subvert the very possibility of debate.”

Monroe E. Price, Free Expression, Globalism and the New Strategic Communication, (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

This is a brilliant and original book.

In what he calls an invitation to a conversation about the “architecture” of speech in society, information flows, and strategic communication, Price (University of Pennsylvania) presents “a series of inquiries into global actors and the relationship between their information strategies and geopolitical impacts.” The first half of the book offers an array of sophisticated empirically grounded concepts: definitions of “strategic communication” and “strategic communicators,” organized advocacy of “narratives of legitimacy,” the concept of “analytical diagnostic” in media assistance and public diplomacy, information and strategic asymmetries, and “strategic architectures of media and information systems.” The second half contains case studies: perceptions of “soft war” in Iran in the pre-Rouhani era, religions and strategic communication, NGOs in democracy promotion, “platforms” as bases for advancing ideas or national identity focusing on the Beijing Olympics, and the implications of regulating satellite transponders for Internet governance. His book offers numerous insights into new ways of thinking about power, communication, and the theory and politics of free expression.

“Public Diplomacy: Inside the Issues 5.10,” CIGI Podcast, Center for International Governance Innovation, January 8, 2015. CIGI Senior Fellow Andrew Thompson interviews US Consulate Toronto Public Affairs Officer Hillary Fuller Renner. Topics discussed in this 27-minute video include the role of cultural diplomacy, how public diplomacy is changing, the impact of digital technologies, and US public diplomacy activities in Canada.

“Public Diplomacy and the Role of the Public Affairs Officer,” USC Center on Public Diplomacy, January 8, 2015. In this approximately 6-minute video, senior State Department officials discuss the meaning of public diplomacy and roles, tools and methods of Public Affairs Officers.

Tim Rivera, “Distinguishing Cultural Relations from Cultural Diplomacy: The British Council’s Relations With Her Majesty’s Government,” CPD Perspectives, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, January 2015. Rivera (Delegation of the European Union to the United States) has adapted his MA thesis written at Kings College London for publication by CPD. His project (annotated previously in this reading list) examines a basic question: What does the British Council do? “Cultural relations” through international educational and cultural engagement as framed by the Council? “Cultural diplomacy,” a term preferred by the British Government? Or perhaps the Council engages in “new public diplomacy,” a frame that appeals to some scholars. In his study of the Council from 2010 to the present, Rivera develops a framework that seeks to clarify these concepts and make a normative claim that cultural relations is more effective than cultural diplomacy in advancing a nation’s soft power. He argues that recent oversight and funding trends threaten the Council’s “’arms length’ relationship with and ‘operational independence’ from the Government.” Contains updated financial data from Council reports.

Andreas Sandre, Digital Diplomacy, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). Sandre (Embassy of Italy to the United States) has compiled twenty-six conversations with diplomats, journalists, scholars, technology executives and other experts that probe issues at the crossroads of digital technologies and diplomatic practice. Based on the Embassy’s popular Digital Diplomacy Series in Washington, DC, they provide insights, advice, and numerous references that open doors to further inquiry. Sandre’s work with practitioners who are coming to terms with dgital technologies usefully complements the growing scholarly literature in diplomacy and communication studies.

Matthew Wallin, Military Public Diplomacy: How the Military Influences Foreign Audiences, White Paper, Atlantic Security Project (ASP), February 2015. In this well organized and clearly argued 42-page report, ASP fellow Matt Wallin looks at definitional, structural, and operational issues in “military public diplomacy” – a term he defines as “military communication and relationship building with foreign publics and military audiences for the purpose of achieving a foreign policy objective.” His report includes case studies, best practices, and evaluation of strengths and limitations in the following categories: inform and influence activities, information operations, civil affairs, strategic communication, leaflets in Afghanistan, trans-regional web initiatives, commander’s emergency response program, military exchange programs, female engagement teams, human terrain system, and military information support teams (MIST).

R.S. Zaharna, “From Pinstripes to Tweets,” The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, January 25, 2015. Zaharna (American University) provides a sweeping portrayal of diplomacy’s use of communication tools from the Amarna Tablets of ancient Egypt to todays’s digital media. Her article focuses on social media’s strengths and limitations, networking and the “relational paradigm” in public diplomacy, contentious publics enabled by digital technologies, the overlooked potential of diaspora populations, and the need for governments to shift from analyzing messages to studying relational dynamics on and offline.

Recent Blogs and Other Items of Interest

Michael Birnbaum, “Russia’s anti-American Fever Goes Beyond the Soviet Era’s,” March 8, 2015, The Washington Post.

Donald M. Bishop, “Public Diplomacy: Time to Debate, Change, Continuity, and Doctrine,” February 2015, American Diplomacy.

Broadcasting Board of Governors, “Statement from BBG on CEO and Director Andrew Lack,” March 4, 2015, BBG website.

Robin Brown, “Lobbyists and the Outsourcing of Public Diplomacy,” March 12, 2015; “French Cultural Diplomacy in Eastern Europe, 1936-51,” March 4, 2015; “(Not) The Freedom House Guide to Policy Advocacy,” March 2, 2015; “Cuts and Capabilities at the FCO,” February 27, 2015; “What’s Different About Confucius Institutes?” January 22, 2015; “Counter Propaganda: The Case of ISIS,” January 13, 2015, Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence Blog.

Daryl Copeland, “How Can We Do Diplomacy Better,” February 18, 2015, Canadian Defense and Foreign Affairs Institute.

Karen DeYoung, “U.S. Seeks to Capitalize on Defeat of Islamic State in Kobane,” January 27, 2015, The Washington Post.

Anna Fifeld, Missy Ryan, and David Nakamura, “Before Attack, U.S. Diplomat Sought to Charm, Engage with South Koreans,” March 5, 2015, The Washington Post.

Frans-Stefan Gady, “How the Pentagon Manipulates People Overseas,” February 11, 2015, The Diplomat.

Craig Hayden, “The 2014 US Advisory Commission Comprehensive Annual Report,” January 6, 2015, Intermap Blog.

John Hudson, “Top American Diplomat Decries ‘Lies’ of Russian Media,” January 27, 2015, Foreign Policy Blog.

David Ignatius, “The Internet Isn’t to Blame for Radicalization,” January 15, 2015, The Washington Post.

“Kerry Tells Royce He’s 100 Percent With Him on BBG Reform, Asks for More Money,” February 25, 2015, BBG Watch.

Joseph Lichterman, “Here’s How the BBC, Disrupted by Technology and New Habits is Thinking About its Future,” January 28, 2015, NiemanLab.

Kristin Lord and Marie Harding, “The Challenges of People-to-People Programs – and How to Surmount Them,” February 27, 2015, USC Center on Public Diplomacy Blog.

Ron Nixon, “U.S. Seeking a Stronger World Media Voice: Broadcasting Board of Governors Names Chief Executive,” The New York Times, January 21, 2015.

Ed Royce, “Chairman Royce Statement on Resignation of U.S. International Broadcasting Executive Andy Lack,” March 5, 2015, US House of Representaves.

Eric Schmidt, “U.S. Intensifies Effort to Blunt ISIS’ Message,” February 16, 2015. The New York Times.

Simon Shuster, “Inside Putin’s On-Air Machine,” March 5, 2015, Time Magazine; Margarita Simonyan, “Once Upon a TIME,” March 9, 2015, RT.com.

Gem from the past

Monroe E. Price, Media and Sovereignty: The Global Information Revolution and Its Challenge to State Power, (The MIT Press, 2002). Recent publication of Price’s Free Expression, Globalism and the New Strategic Communication (annotated above) is just the occasion for this gem from the past. In Media and Sovereignty, Price developed his idea of “market for loyalties” and thinking about ways in which states use media to maintain sovereignty within borders and to influence populations and disrupt loyalties in other states. Successful management of the “market” yields what he calls “narratives of legitimacy” through which groups or coalitions maintain power. His conceptual framework also explains anxieties and the instrumental and systemic consequences when narratives and loyalties break down. Taken together, these books frame Price’s understanding of “strategic communication and strategic architectures for altering flows of information” within states and in regional and global settings.

An archive of Diplomacy’s Public Dimension: Books, Articles, Websites (2002-present) is maintained at George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. Current issues are also posted by the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, Arizona State University’s COMOPS Journal, and the Public Diplomacy Council.

# # #

This 1953 Journalism Quarterly article by Burton Paulu entitled “Smith-Mundt Act- A legislative history” (3.7mb PDF) is a good read for anyone interested in the subject of public diplomacy, including exchanges of all kinds and international media, and the Smith-Mundt Act. It is an interesting contemporary overview of the debates over ‘public diplomacy’ immediately prior to the establishment of the United States Information Agency. The support from State for these activities had waned considerably and several former supporters of empowering State with these tools were beginning to reconsider whether the Department was capable of effectively running these programs. The debates Mr. Paulu describes have a striking resemblance to modern discussions, particularly those between 9/11 and 2010.

The United states Information and Education Exchange Act of 1948 authorized our government for the first time in its history to conduct international information and educational exchange activities on a permanent basis. The United States had developed international information services on a limited scale in World War I, and on a global scale during World War II, justifying both operations as war measures. In peacetime, however, we had always opposed government information services, although we had officially sanctioned some cultural and educational exchange activities. The passage of this legislation, therefore, marked a significant departure from traditional American policy.

With only a few exceptions all present United States Government international information and educational exchange activities are carried on under this act. Our information services include
the widely publicized Voice of America broadcasts, the news bulletins distributed abroad by the Department of State and a comprehensive motion picture program. The cultural and educational exchange work consists mainly of the operation of American reference libraries abroad, the interchange of teachers. students and specialists and the extension of financial aid to American-sponsored schools in other countries.

…

It is impossible to review these events without noticing parallels between them and many current developments. Some of the basic issues are still being debated: the loyalty of State Department advisers and officials; the efficiency of State Department operations; and the question of whether it is safe to expose the American people to uncensored radical opinions, especially those from abroad.

Despite Mr. Paulu’s proximity to events, there are a couple factual errors in his paper. One, for example, it that the bill was not first introduced by Chairman Sol Bloom of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in October 1945, as Mr. Paulu writes. It was introduced by Congressman Mundt in January 1945, revised, resubmitted by Bloom in July, and then again in October after President Truman abolishes the Office of War Information and moves several operations, and tranches of personnel, into the State Department, including shortwave broadcasting.

It is also important to put the excerpt above — ‘…and the question of whether it is safe to expose the American people to unsecured radical opinions, especially those from abroad.’ — was in the context of exchanges and not the news service authorized by the Smith-Mundt Act, which included but was not limited to shortwave broadcasting.

Download the whole article here (3.7mb PDF).

Russian President Vladimir Putin has nearly completed his purge of independent news media in Russia.  “This is not just a war of information,” says one keen analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.  “It is a war on information.”

…

The best counter to propaganda is truth and transparency, not more propaganda. Honest, unbiased facts coupled with unimpeded discussion by an informed citizenry is the most powerful weapon against the Kremlin’s disinformation that drains the future from Russia’s people and threatens Russia’s neighbors.

This is not about Russia Today. This is about Russia’s tomorrow.

Read the whole article at War on the Rocks.

Robert Lansing

U.S. public diplomacy has a surprising history, as a recent blog post and interview noted. That brief discussion, however, gave the expected superficial treatment that left out key details such as a deeply entrenched cultural resistance and the influence of highly filtered information flows.

The story of Mrs. Vira Whitehouse, referred to in the recent blog post, is a useful case study to discuss some ‘surprises’ that break with conventional wisdom about the Creel Committee, formally known as the Committee for Public Information, the State Department, the beginning of the United States Information Service, and U.S. Government-sponsored exchanges.

Below is an abridged and modified excerpt from my book (a work long in progress but nearing completion). I am sharing it here partly in response to the recent discussion, partly to frame an anniversary discussion on public diplomacy (more on that later), and to invite comments. Footnotes and citations have been removed; passages have been altered for brevity or removed and saved for the book.

The Committee for Public Information’s ‘Foreign Section’ was not a mirror image of CPI’s domestic operation. Much of the ‘common knowledge’ of CPI’s Foreign Section is drawn from Creel’s hagiography of his CPI years. However, the first comprehensive account of CPI was written in 1939, by James R. Mock and Cedric Larson. As the authors note, Creel did not have access to CPI records when he wrote his two books on CPI — Complete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information and How We Advertised America. Mock and Larson described these books as written with Creel’s “customary verve and loyal pride in the organization, but far from complete because of hasty and chaotic liquidation of the Washington office while Mr. Creel was at the Peace Conference [in Paris].”

Mock and Larson continued that as the first researchers to really dig through the archives, records that even Creel could not access, “the majority of the documents in this book [Mock and Larson’s 1939 Words that Won the War] have never been published before. A number of them will necessitate reinterpretation of certain statements in George Creel’s books and in the recollections set down in print by his associates.”

Just as it is important to understand what CPI really did (versus what Creel said it did and how people responded to his books), we must not ignore or discount the information environment at the time. Often — very often — ignored in discussions about CPI was the influence and impact of the global news cartel headed by Reuters of Great Britain, with France’s Havas and Germany’s Wolff, on global information flows, and thus on the conduct of international affairs and international business. The cartel ‘divided up the earth among themselves, and posted No Trespassing signs in their own countries’. Only heavily filtered, and often distorted, news and information about the United States, America’s foreign policies, domestic affairs, and culture was transmitted abroad. What Reuters, as the ‘gatekeeper’ to news about the U.S. entering the Cartel’s news stream, permitted to flow onward from the U.S. typically emphasized the ‘scandalous’ and the ‘lascivious’.

The AP’s General Manager, Melville Stone, and Colonel Robert McCormack, of the Chicago Tribune, shared the views of many other American publishers and editors when they declared that the Cartel system intentionally distorted the news in support of British and French national interests. These ‘interests’ were often not in sync with American interests. Censorship that resulted in highly selective and distorted portrayals of the United States, they charged, lead to serious and dangerous consequences. Newspaper publisher Valentine Stuart McClatchy was ‘certain that the relations of the United States and the countries of the Western Pacific were being poisoned because of foreign propaganda which was being distributed in the Western Pacific’. The AP’s Kent Cooper wrote that ‘Reuters decided what news was to be sent from America. It told the world about the Indians on the war path in the West, lynchings in the South and bizarre crimes in the North’.

CPI’s Foreign Section was the first U.S. bureaucracy purpose built to identify, engage, and develop foreign public opinion. While President Wilson was pushing CPI with breaking through the Reuters-led cartel and delivering news and information about the U.S. to local media, he was also pushing the U.S. media to expand abroad. President Wilson asked the UP’s chief to open Latin American markets while providing him a personal letter of introduction. The CPI pushed Mexican press sign up for the AP, suggesting the local media approach the local American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City to keep the U.S. Government out of the transaction. For the work abroad, the CPI Foreign Section created the ‘United States Information Service’.

The Foreign Section also brought to bear U.S. private organizations wherever possible. Complimentary programs went to work when private endowments, such as the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace, were operating.

Creel described the two broad purposes of the foreign campaign in a memo dated January 31, 1918 — to “stiffen” morale in the allied countries by the “presentation of the immense power which America could exert against the German when our preparations are complete” — and to explain America and its ideals and counter German propaganda, including that the U.S. was not entering the war “for territorial or commercial gains.”⁠

Mock and Larson restated the Foreign Section’s goals in more familiar terms. First, ‘America could never be beaten; and therefore that it behooved them to join the winning side’. Second, that ‘America was a land of freedom and democracy; and therefore that it could be trusted’. And third, ‘thanks to President Wilson’s vision of a new world and his power of achieving it’, a new era of unarmed and peaceful nations would begin, ‘minorities would be released from oppression, and the sovereignty of every country would be returned to the people’. America was not just a land of freedom and democracy, it would bring freedom and democracy to the world.

Wilson’s efforts overseas are ironic considering what he did domestically. While  he was working to empower foreign media and publics with press freedom, he brought about the greatest reductions in freedom of speech and freedom of the media in the U.S. since Independence.

To answer the question ‘Why CPI?’ requires understanding the role of the Secretary of State and the culture of the State Department. Wilson had pushed State to engage foreign publics, but State refused.

The State Department held the view that diplomacy and international affairs were an activity that took place behind closed doors or in the shadows. The affairs of state had little to do with the public, let alone public opinion. Wilson’s attempt to change this failed because of both the State Department’s culture and an insubordinate Secretary.

Wilson’s relations with the foreign ministry were rocky. Wilson’s Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, was not regarded as effective or even suited for his position.

Colonel House, the President’s close advisor, had previously suggested that Wilson ‘get a man with not too many ideas of his own and one that will be entirely guided by you without unnecessary argument, and this, it seems to me, you would find in Lansing’. Further, House noted in his diary, Wilson is ‘practically his own Secretary of State and Lansing would not be troublesome by obtruding or injecting his own views’.

While Lansing was a respected authority in international law, he lacked imagination and his occasional deviousness quickly lost the confidence of President Wilson. By 1917, Wilson rarely consulted Lansing on matters of importance.

As one of Wilson’s biographers noted, Lansing was ‘the worst appointment Wilson ever made’:

‘At his best, he lived up to the president’s misgivings about his smallness of mind and character. At his worst, he belied House’s assurances about his docility and lack of ideas. Lansing frequently attempted to pursue his own aims in ways that were at once devious and maladroit. … Several times in his tenure⁠ he worked to undermine Wilson’s most cherished policies and usually acted deliberately, not by inadvertence. … but for sheer incompetence and consistent underhandedness in dealing with momentous events, Lansing still wins the prize.’

Wilson would finally fire Lansing in February 1920.

Lansing was petty and insecure from the start. Creel certainly did not help matters when he went to the Secretaries to sign the formal letter recommending the creation of CPI. Creel met first with the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy before seeing Lansing. The first two signed the letter without comment but Lansing demanded the letter be retyped on State Department stationary so Lansing could be the first signatory. The other Secretaries ‘laughed heartily’ when told the story and asked to sign the revised letter⁠, which they did without objection.

One example of CPI’s work abroad is the tasking of Mrs. Vira Whitehouse to Switzerland. Whitehouse’s travails are instructive because of the American Legation’s reaction to Whitehouse, and interventions by the President and the Secretary.

The leadership of the American Legation in Switzerland included Minister Pleasant A. Stovall, First Secretary Hugh Wilson, and Second Secretary Allen Dulles. Stovall was a newspaper owner and editor of the Savannah Press. He was a political appointee who lacked diplomatic experience but was a childhood friend of the President. Hugh Wilson, a Yale graduate, was a respected career diplomat who served in Portugal, Guatemala, Argentina, Berlin, and Vienna before Bern. He was also a traditionalist, as one historian noted: ‘Inbred caution and concern for diplomatic detail and protocol sometimes limited his perspective.’ He was the Charge d’Affaires during Stovall’s frequent absences. Dulles was Lansing’s nephew and would, decades later, become head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Legation obstructed CPI at every chance and variously believed Whitehouse’s mission to be an intelligence operation or a ‘propaganda campaign’. The Vice Consul in Bern cabled Washington that he already had too many intelligence agents, who were, in his words, incompetent in remaining undercover and are ‘openly recognized and identified as “American Spies”’. ‘Any propaganda that we undertake,’ the Hugh Wilson, cabled Washington, ‘must be done in the quietest possible way and, above all, without previous press announcement.’ The Legation refused to accept Whitehouse’s methodology or purpose, which was to be public and above board. The CPI mission, which included sending journalists to the U.S., was simply too foreign to the Legation and State to be understood, let alone accepted.

Hugh Wilson refused to allow Vira Whitehouse to distribute CPI news items received in Bern (originally sent via wireless from New York to Paris and then over cable to Bern), to be distributed to the Swiss press. Denying Whitehouse the task, Wilson distributed the articles but would only send a few articles and then only sporadically. Both Whitehouse and Wilson complained to their respective leadership.

President Wilson was fed up with the Legation’s complaints and their allegations about the CPI. A cable was sent that the President supports the CPI efforts and that the Legation should immediately allow her to do her work: ‘[CPI agent Mrs. Whitehouse] goes with the full approval of the President who states that she will work in Switzerland in a perfectly open way.’ Hugh Wilson acting in Stovall’s absence, acceded to the instruction from Washington. However, Stovall, on returning from a vacation, rejected the agreement and refused to allow the Legation to support Whitehouse. Whitehouse expressed her frustration in a letter to Creel, ‘I came here to fight Germans, not American officials’.

With Minister Stovall now interfering the matter was escalated to Secretary Lansing. Despite the President’s recent cable making clear his support for Whitehouse and the CPI, Lansing went again to the President for a decision. And once again, the President made it clear that the new and separate agency maintain its role and that the Department must support it.

President Wilson recognized the importance of foreign public opinion in the support of U.S. foreign policy and objectives. The lack of other means, such as private media, meant the Government had to take on the responsibility. And yet, State’s resistance grew stronger as did their suspicions of CPI agents. As a result of the interference, CPI agents in the field often sought to bypass State’s cable network and interference to communicate with Washington, sometimes resorting to secret codes.

In the absence of any commercial U.S. news service, the CPI provided the only unfiltered link to the United States for many countries, with few exceptions at the local level due to the Reuters-cartel system. The local media, and their consumers, came to view the CPI products as the U.S. equivalent of Reuters and Havas, that, despite the CPI’s protests otherwise, were viewed as semi-official government agencies for their respective countries.

Then there was the struggle over what news to share. At the time, it is important to remember, few people travelled and information was scarce. The need to share the U.S and the mundane of American life was often at odds with those who felt any information should be overt or direct influence. There were stories on medicine and medical technology that CPI distributed. Stories on candy habits of U.S. soldiers, baseball scores, etc. Distributing stories of human interest – CPI had a category named Human Interest – helped, well, humanize Americans and create a link between publics.

In the end, State won. When the war ended, despite recommendations to keep CPI’s Foreign Section open, the operation was shutdown. However, the struggle to open up foreign media markets to American media would continue with support from the U.S. Government, including a some support from State.

Less than two decades later, State would again be asked by the President to engage and inform foreign publics, it would refuse, and once again the President would create a new organization as a work around. Congress gave State the authorities it needed in 1938 but FDR’s lack of patience with the ‘pregnant elephant‘ led to the establishment of the Office of the Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs outside of the State Department.

But that’s another story.

“It is a pity that our press plays up our diplomatic relations like a ball game, stressing victories and defeats. Good diplomacy results in satisfaction for both sides as far as possible; if one side really feels defeated, they try to make up for it later, and thus relations deteriorate. In general the daily press and commentators dramatize short-term conflicts at the expense of long-term prospects for achieving a stable balance.”

From ‘Draft on Information Policy on Relations with Russia’ by George Kennan, July 22, 1946.

On ‘Soviet Rulers, Government':

The government has a distinct personality all its own, very different from that of the people. The rulers are fanatics in the sense that you can talk to but not with them. … They will take advantage of every weakness; this is considered merely good sport, no particular offense. So they are quite apt to poke up one or another of their puppet states in order to feel out our weaknesses indirectly. …

Russian treatment of brief visitors is responsible for considerable misunderstanding of the problem of dealing with the Russian Government. When a distinguished American turns up for a week or so, the Russians are ingratiating, respond to every request and accompany it with sales talk about how we have so much in common, ought to get along easily, etc. He goes away intoxicated with this revelation of good fellowship, but without any specific commitments from the Russians. If later he should reproach them for not following through along cooperative lines, they insinuate that it’s all the fault of the career diplomats: if only he were ambassador, all would be well. Probably nobody goes to Russia without feeling that his particular personality holds the secret of winning Russian friendship, but only those who stay for a good while and have to do business son a day-today basic learn how tough the problem is.

On the ‘Soviet People':

They are strong, self-reliant, hard-working, artistic (when they get a chance), kindly, interested in other countries, eager for more international cultural contacts, fundamentally peace-loving. But they are like a beautiful lady guarded by a jealous lover: their government prevents our getting in touch with them and vice versa. It is with the government, not the people, that we have to deal for an indefinite time to come. The people don’t like Party tyranny and the discipline of a police state, but the accept it fatalistically. They have known no other way of life.

The cliche about Americans and Russian being fundamentally alike should be corrected. There are important differences which impose limits on possible ways of dealing with them. As a people they have been mostly isolated from the West for centuries. Few of the present generation have ever been abroad — this applies also to the inner circle of leaders. The Russians’ mental isolation is greatly increased by rigid censorship of press and radio. Moreover they never had a Magna Charta [sic], a French Revolution or similar source of a tradition of civil liberties: when we insist on such things the Russians can’t understand what we are making such a fuss about.

On ‘Cur [sic] Best Course':

Motto from Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard: Love thy neighbor but keep thy fences mended. … We should keep the door open to all forms of cultural and economic collaboration, but not irritate the Russians by pressing for these against their will. Some of our efforts toward mutual understanding they undoubtedly feel to be tactless prying. They can hardly accept American students in their institutions because of the embarrassing contrast in standards of living. Similarly, if Russian students come to America, they would return dissatisfied with Russian life. There is little chance of the ‘iron curtain’ being lifted in the near future. The Soviets run an internal propaganda machine which can work only in a vacuum. …

On communist infiltration: best avoid making martyrs; use the spotlight of publicity to expose them and their motives; let them discredit themselves if possible. But if they should become a serious threat in Latin America, for example, it would constitute just as much a violation of the Monroe Doctrine as any other, and should be treated accordingly. In general, since our policy looks toward a peaceful and prosperous world, we are in a favorable position to counter their subversive tactics with constructive measures. Our best counter to the psychological war against ‘capitalism’ is the unvarnished truth about the standards of living and conditions of liberty in Russia, including their labor ‘unions’. News correspondents only tell the full picture off the record, even when they return to the U.S., for fear of losing their Russian visas.

The right to a free press — the right of the people to read and to hear and therefore to think as they please — is, I deeply believe, the basic right upon which freedom rests. Freedom of exchange of information between the peoples of the world is the extension into international relations of the basic democratic right of freedom of the press. Belief in the freedom of exchange of information rests upon the conviction that if the peoples of the world know the facts about each other, peace will be maintained, since peace is the common hope and the common cause of the people everywhere.

Source: Department of State, Bulletin, December 10, 1944, p693. (Bulletin was State’s in-house publication.)

MacLeish was appointed as the first Assistant Secretary of State for Public and Cultural Affairs. The Office of Public Affairs, recently established, fell under him, among other responsibilities.

The position was established under the ‘basic reorganization’ State began on January 15, 1944, and continued in December 1944, the latter under Departmental Order 1301. MacLeish was hired and charged with furthering ‘the steps taken during the year to develop a program designed to provide American citizens with more information concerning their country’s foreign policy and to promote closer understanding with the peoples of foreign countries’. (Department of State, Bulletin, December 17, 1944, p777.)

The 1301 also established the geographic Assistant Secretaries. The leadership of State was thus the Secretary, one Under Secretary, and six Assistant Secretaries. MacLeish, as Assistant Secretary for Public and Cultural Relations, was #5 in the A/S ranking. (#2 A/S was MacLeish’s friend, Dean Acheson, appointed A/S for Congressional Relations and International Conferences.)

MacLeish resigned in August 1945, following Roosevelt’s death. He would stay close to State and work very closely on the freedom of speech across borders. This include working on establishing UNESCO, an assignment given by MacLeish’s successor, and writing the preamble to the UNESCO constitution. A significant role on the Commission on Freedom of the Press, commonly referred to as the Hutchins Commission, which operated with funding from Henry Luce and William Benton (through Encyclopedia Brittanica, which Benton owned).

MacLeish was succeeded by Benton, who dropped ‘cultural’ because the word was exclusionary and distracting, particularly to Congressmen. After all, the Assistant Secretary managed all manner of engagement: informational, cultural, educational, and technical affairs.

MacLeish’s statement above is just one small example of how important a free press and the freedom to think were to State Department leadership in the 1940s.

Dealing with the State Department is like watching an elephant become pregnant. Everything’s done on a very high level, there’s a lot of commotion, and it takes twenty-two months for anything to happen.

Source: Cary Reich, The life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: worlds to conquer, 1908-1958, 1st ed. (New York: Doubleday). 182.

A recent example is an article where the subject, Mr. Ben Bradlee, was described as a public diplomacy officer.  Mr. Bradlee worked for the United States Information Service, or USIS, but USIS was part of the State Department at the time, not USIA.  

From August 31, 1945, the State Department was responsible for coordinating, managing, and executing the whole range of activities that fall under what is generally today labelled ‘public diplomacy’.  This included educational, cultural, and technical exchanges between nations.  From that date, the State Department also owned the government’s international broadcasting, which soon after (not before) was given the name Voice of America.

In what may be explained as an unconscious attempt to reconcile the calendar, many appear to believe USIA was established in 1945, or that the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 established USIA.  Neither are true.  Alternatively, I have been in discussions that sought to establish the beginning year of a historical discussion of modern, post-war public diplomacy at 1953.  That, I invariably point out, would be a discussion of the history of USIA and ignores eight years of public diplomacy run by the State Department.  Probably because these ‘missing years’ tend to be so unknown, instead of shifting the start date the discussion is either dropped or relabelled to focus on USIA.  Oh well.

About two months ago, Dr. Michael H. Anderson, wrote about the late Ben Bradlee’s short time as a public diplomacy officer.  The article is interesting and worth reading.

(One can argue that Mr. Bradlee was not a ‘public diplomacy officer’ as the phrase is understood today as it would suggest current Voice of America reporters are also public diplomacy officers.  However, USIS was a cohesive operation that, along with other offices under the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, was unlike anything we have now.  The integrated nature of USIS at the time supports Dr. Anderson’s label of ‘public diplomacy officer’.)

However, Dr. Anderson erred in writing that Mr. Bradlee was ‘reserve Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Information Agency’ and that he ‘flunked the USIA oral exam’.

Mr. Bradlee never worked for USIA, he worked for the State Department.  This is clear from Mr. Bradlee’s autobiography and the dates of employment.

The confusion probably comes from the organization Mr. Bradlee went to work for.  USIS was first established in 1917, abolished a few years later, and re-established before World War II.  USIS was one part of the State Department’s bureaucracy supporting international information and engagement.  The reason many outside the U.S. know the acronym USIS more than USIA is the former predated the latter.  By the time USIA was established, USIS had over a decade of brand development and recognition with audiences, media organization, and government institutions abroad.

USIS moved under State Department’s Office of Public Affairs with Truman’s Executive Order 9608 that abolished the Office of War Information, or OWI, and moved its functions to various offices.  OWI’s international broadcasting was moved to State, personnel and systems, and State was charged with developing a go-forward plan for peacetime global information, including broadcasting, activities.  On the day EO 9608 went into effect, August 31, 1945, William Benton began as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, a position established the prior year and previously held by Archibald MacLeish.

Mr. Bradlee was hired into USIS in 1951 while USIS was still in the State Department, as it had been for the previous six years.  USIS was a unit under the Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, who in 1951 was Edward W. Barrett (Feb 1950-Feb 1952).  A journalist before 1941, Barrett joined OWI during the war, transitioned to State because of EO 9608, and left the government in 1946 to start his own public relations firm.  At Truman’s request, Barrett returned to be Assistant Secretary.  Barrett later became the Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism where, among other notable achievements, he founded the Columbia Journalism Review.  (George V. Allen, a career Foreign Service Officer, as the third Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, serving before Barrett and after Benton.)

It is very likely that Mr. Bradlee was hired as part of an initiative by Barrett to re-inject journalism and journalists into USIS.  Benton had established the peacetime USIS with a strong and dedicated focus on journalism.  He recruited journalists and successfully sought out editors and publishers to run, guide, and support the operation, both inside and outside of Foggy Bottom.

Mr. Bradlee’s book has some insights on both the challenges and the advantages of working inside State.  Among the latter is the security clearance and the resulting access to information (he wrote that his clearance was upgraded to ‘Eyes Only SecState’).  Among the former was the reticence for action, bold or swift, by his colleagues at the Department.

As a testament to the importance placed on America’s public diplomacy officers, and more than a little of Congress’s distrust of the State Department, a ‘loyalty check’ was required.  In the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, there was a Section 1001 (since removed):

LOYALTY CHECK ON PERSONNEL
SEC. 1001. No citizen or resident of the United States, whether or not now in the employ of the Government, may be employed or assigned to duties by the Government under this Act until such individual has been investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a report thereon has been made to the Secretary of State: Provided, however, That any present employee of the Government, pending the report as to such employee by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, may be employed or assigned to duties under this Act for the period of six months from the date of its enactment. This section shall not apply in the case of any officer appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.

If someone — and someone probably already has — FOIA’d Mr. Bradlee’s FBI file, they will very likely find a thick background check stamped ‘Pursuant to PL 80-402’, aka the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948.

There was no legislation establishing USIA.  It was created by Eisenhower’s Reorganization Order No. 8, effective August 1, 1953.  The first Director of USIA, Theodore C. Streibert, was appointed three days later.  It is not clear how long it took to identify and move staff and functions from State to USIA, but, despite growing resistance in State against public diplomacy, it does not appear to have been quick.  This should be expected considering the bureaucracy and number of FSOs and staff in the field.

Mr. Bradlee describes in his book a conversation in the fall of 1953 where Mr. Bradlee was asked by the soon-to-be senior editor at Newsweek to become a European correspondent for the magazine.  Despite Mr. Bradlee working at USIS through 1954, he started at Newsweek on Christmas Eve 1954, when Mr. Bradlee left for Newsweek, he recounted how Embassy Paris, where he was stationed, was ‘secretly pleased’ that they did not have to pay for his transport back to the U.S.  That is over one year after USIA was established and the only mentions of bureaucracy in his memoir is of State.  The reorganization and reallocation of resources to USIA very likely focused on Washington and does not appear to have reached France by the time Mr. Bradlee moved on.

In the end, it appears that Mr. Bradlee never worked for USIA.

The reader may view this as simply an academic exercise, or perhaps simply semantics.  On the contrary, I see this as a counter to the mythologizing of the past that hides the the true foundations and even purposes of international information and engagement.  There was public diplomacy before USIA and we would do well to understand the advantages and disadvantages of that time, including the landscape in which public diplomacy operated, why it was required, and why it was supported by diverse actors in the Congress, in the media, across corporate America, and in Democrat and Republican Administrations.

This blog was and continues to be about having a conversation.  For every comment that appeared on this site, there were 3-5 (or more) that were emailed.  For every visitor the statistics showed, there were innumerable others with readers distributing many posts by email and email subscribers (over 1,500 at one point) could read posts in their entirety without visiting the site.  I don’t expect the numbers return to their previous levels, and I won’t be posting with the frequency of the past, but I do hope readership will rebound somewhat for an inclusive and broad exchange of ideas.  Posts will be mine and I will begin considering guest posts later in 2015.

It bears repeating that this blog is a personal project.  It was when I began blogging over a decade ago — back when I was blogging anonymously — and it remains so today and into the future.  The opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect the opinions or positions of any organization I work for or am otherwise affiliated with.

Because of my role with the Broadcasting Board of Governors, I expect that some readers may be disappointed with topics and issues that will not covered here.

If you’re inclined, below are two other personal social media channels that you can follow:

Twitter: @mountainrunner

Tumblr: MountainRunner-us (new!)

Stay tuned!