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  • Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the U.S. Information Agency
  • David Krugler
Wilson P. Dizard Jr., Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the U.S. Information Agency. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004. 255 pp. $49.95.

Over the past decade, a growing number of scholars have examined the role of propaganda and public diplomacy in the Cold War. In Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), historian Walter L. Hixson explains how the United States was able to make a favorable impression on citizens in the Soviet bloc by deemphasizing psychological warfare methods in favor of news, cultural exhibitions, and music. Propaganda had domestic influences too. In The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), Shawn J. Parry-Giles explains how Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower used peacetime propaganda programs to shape political discourse at home. Other subjects that have received considerable attention include the role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in sponsoring art festivals, Europeans' ambivalent acceptance of American culture, and the U.S. government's eagerness to use private organizations such as the Advertising Council to mold public opinion beyond U.S. borders. Collectively, these studies show that a challenge issued by Hixson has not gone unmet: "Any comprehensive explanation for the end of the East-West struggle will require serious analysis of the role played by Western cultural infiltration" (p. xv). [End Page 158]

Given the surge of interest in the role of propaganda and public diplomacy in U.S. foreign policy after 1945, it is surprising that no one has yet written a complete history of the United States Information Agency (USIA), the executive agency primarily responsible for the U.S. government's public diplomacy (also called cultural diplomacy) and propaganda during and after the Cold War. Thankfully, Wilson P. Dizard Jr. has filled this lacuna. Dizard is eminently qualified to write a history of USIA. His career as a public diplomat spans several decades. In 1951, he arrived in Istanbul to work for the predecessor to USIA, the State Department's U.S. Information Service. In subsequent postings, whether mingling with Pakistani dignitaries, driving a jeep loaded with films and books down a rough Burmese road, or working in USIA's Washington headquarters, Dizard helped tell America's story to the world. Dizard has also written several earlier books about public diplomacy. His first book, The Strategy of Truth: The Story of the U.S. Information Service, appeared in 1961, just eight years after Dwight Eisenhower created the USIA. We might consider The Strategy of Truth a prequel in which a young but seasoned public diplomat set out to describe the fledgling agency's shift from shrill propaganda to the content, tone, and programs that Walter Hixson later found to be effective. Dizard, like Dean Acheson, was present at the creation, and he has drawn on a half-century of experience to produce an important work. In addition to reviewing the antecedents of USIA, Dizard assesses the agency's "contribution to the United States' worldwide ideological impact" (p. xiv) and the agency's sometimes difficult collaboration with American commercial media, cultural groups, and exporters. Dizard's definitive history closes with a chapter offering thoughts about the future of public diplomacy. Counseling against "crash-project solutions" (p. 226), Dizard recommends that the U.S. government adapt public diplomacy to the new information age, particularly the Internet, to explain its foreign policy and support its commitment to the unimpeded flow of information and culture.

USIA had a troubled beginning, to say the least. In early 1953 the new secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, who was anxious to sever information and cultural programs from the State Department, stood aside as Senator Joseph McCarthy staged televised hearings in which former and current employees of Voice of America (VOA) dished out sensational if bewildering stories. The accusers claimed, among other things, that the head of religious programming was an atheist and that someone on the French desk was recruiting members for a "free-love" commune. McCarthy spun these false allegations into "evidence" of Communist...

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