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So here are my inchoate thoughts for a draft article, "The Vanishing Act of American Public Diplomacy (PD)."
As I think about such a piece, here are my very preliminary, non-footnoted points (check my PD blog/internet for references):
--First, the basics, from Walter Issacson, who lent his tender brain (July 2, 2010 – January 27, 2012 some would say, what a sacrifice!) as Chair of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (which once -- latest news! -- oversaw USG international broadcasting, arguably part of U.S. "public diplomacy"):
A Declaration of Mutual Dependence
By WALTER ISAACSON, New York Times (2004)
Amid all the hot dogs and fireworks, it's useful to reflect for a moment on precisely what we are celebrating today. Yes, Americans know that the Fourth of July is about independence and an aversion to colonialism -- but what was that sacred parchment to which the founders affixed their John Hancocks really all about, and why is it relevant today?
By July 1776, the Continental Congress had concluded not only that the American colonies ought to be independent, but also that they needed to explain why to the rest of the world. Thomas Jefferson, who received the honor of writing the first draft of this document, was very direct about the motivation in his first sentence: ''a decent respect to the opinions of mankind'' required the founders to explain what they were doing.
Thus the Declaration of Independence is, in effect, a work of propaganda -- or, to put it more politely, an exercise in public diplomacy intended to enlist other countries to the cause.--PD as a term -- It first appeared in the 19th century in The London Times (January 1856); thank you, scholar Nicholas Cull -- was "formalised" (Americanized?) in the mid-1960s by Dean Edmund Gullion of the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy:
Even beyond the organ of the Government set up to handle information about the United States and to explain our policies, what is important today is the interaction of groups, peoples, and cultures beyond national borders, influencing the way groups and peoples in other countries think about foreign affairs, react to our policies, and affect the policies of their respective governments.--PD thus became, to some, a "gentle" -- "gentleman's"? -- non-physically violent all-the-way USA way (God-is-with-us and we know the truth) to "fight" Soviet lies/disinformation during the Cold War, with, of course, a recurrent use of words (and especially images) -- and not, thank The Almighty (Jehovah cares), of the latest nuclear weaponry to exterminate God-fearing capitalists and God-hating communists; this, they, both sides -- no idiots -- understood).
To connote this activity, we at the Fletcher School tried to find a name. I would have liked to call it “propaganda.” It seemed like the nearest thing in the pure interpretation of the word to what we were doing. But “propaganda” has always a pejorative connotation in this country. To describe the whole range of communications, information, and propaganda, we hit upon “public diplomacy.
--BTW, George Allen, who was the director of the "public diplomacy" agency USIA [see below] from 1957 to 1960 (he later was president of the Tobacco Institute, 1960-1966; enjoy your smoke) had this to say, after WWII, when he was Assistant Secretary of State (1949):
"propaganda on an immense scale is here to stay. We Americans must become informed and adept at its use, defensively and offensively, or we may find ourselves as archaic as the belted knight who refused to take gunpowder seriously 500 years ago."
image (from Wikipedia) of George Venable Allen
--From an article by scholar Nicholas Cull (2006):
[JB: internet entry ends here; full article not provided]
--With the end of the Cold War, PD and the "executive agency" that ran it, The United States Information Agency (USIA, founded at the height of the said War, 1953), was considered anachronistic by inside-the-beltway political functionaries/bean-counters (on both sides of the Democratic-Republican "divide").
--Since, as pundit Francis Fukuyama essentially argued, America had triumphed over communism, thus bringing about the "end of history" -- the phrase (not his, actually) used by Fukuyama that made him famous -- and the indubitable victory of the West. (Why waste money on defeated commies?).
--This perspective led (directly/indirectly?) -- among the minor bureaucratic/political turf wars that characterize the imperial capital -- to the "consolidation," in the late 90s, of the USIA into the State Department, thanks to a deal, I guess mostly budget-related (not important enough, on Capitol Hill, I guess again, about "who's REALLY trying, to s--- me), between a Republican senator and the Secretary of State, a politically-savvy lady serving in the Clinton Administration, born -- ironically enough -- in by-then, thanks in part to American "propaganda"-- "liberated" Eastern Europe (Madeline Albright's country of birth, no longer in existence, was known as Czechoslovakia).
In 1999, when USIA was consolidated into the State Department, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright placed the former agency firmly in the U.S. anti-propaganda tradition, publicly praising its work of "almost half a century" as being that of "the most effective anti-propaganda institution on the face of the earth."
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How could a mass murderer who publicly praised the terrorists of Sept. 11 be winning the hearts and minds of anyone? How can a man in a cave outcommunicate the world's leading communications society?What was needed to offset terrorists, Holbrooke wrote,
was “public diplomacy, or public affairs, or psychological warfare, or – if you really want to be blunt – propaganda.”
Image from, with caption: Richard Holbrooke sits with an unidentified member of the Kosovo Liberation Army at KLA headquarters in Junik, southwest of Pristina, during a shuttle diplomatic effort to stop violence in Kosovo on June 24, 1998.
There were doubts about Holbrooke and propaganda, eloquently put by US admiral Michael Mullen:
To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate.
I also hope we learn to be more humble, to listen more. Because what we are after in the end—or should be after—are actions that speak for themselves, that speak for us.
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--Meanwhile, in our Trumpian Error (no typo), US public diplomacy lies dormant at the State Department/White House, since (during?) the Obama years, whose last Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, former Time editor Richard Stengel (his "news" magazine was once referred to, by a scholar, as "canned information") admitted (was it a faux pas on Stengel's part?), when he was no longer in this position, that:Basically every country creates their own narrative story and, you know, my old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist job. We haven’t talked about propaganda. Propaganda — I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population, and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful ..."--Today, The position of Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is "officially" vacant; but of course there is an "Acting" Secretary, Heather Nauert (image from)
--And a USA venerable academic institution -- the USC Center on Public Diplomacy -- is endlessly coming up with other, imaginative terms to describe (avoid using?) the words that describe its putative focus -- "public diplomacy." Just check the USC website ... A latest term from USC PD is "border diplomacy" (another, earlier one, is memorable: "skateboard diplomacy").
JB comment: Well, why not -- nothing lasts forever, and vanishing may be a blessing.
USC PD image from
Just preliminary thoughts.
Check my nearly daily blogs/references for details.
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