Matt Armstrong on Public Diplomacy Reform in the MSM
Blogfriend and IO/Public Diplomacy expert Matt Armstrong of MountainRunner can be found in the pages of The Washington Times.
“Persuasive Politics: Revisit the Smith-Mundt Act”
In the early years of the Cold War, the threat to the United States was not military invasion but subversion capitalizing on economic and social unrest in Europe and elsewhere. In 1947, America’s ambassador to Russia said the most important “fact in the field of foreign policy today … is the fact the Russians have declared psychological war on the United States, all over the world.” It was, he continued, “a war of ideology and a fight unto the death.” Bullets and bombs were secondary to the power of information and persuasion in the global struggle for the minds and wills of people.
Public Law 402, the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, commonly called the Smith-Mundt Act, passed with bipartisan support in the House and Senate — with opposition primarily from the Midwest — and was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948. It was a collaborative effort by the State Department and Congress with significant and broad support from the media and academia. The final push to pass the law was swift and caused by the Communist reaction to the mother of all reconstruction and stabilization programs: the Marshall Plan. Like development programs today, the enemy hated it. Despite America’s role in liberating Europe, the increased volume and tempo of enemy propaganda meant “knowledge of the United States [was] being systematically blotted out.” Denying ideological and physical sanctuary to our enemy required more than deeds.
….The result was the transformation of what is now known as public diplomacy from a national security imperative aggressively targeting foreign public opinion to something more resembling a passive “beauty contest.” While Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James Glassman has been effective in resurrecting public diplomacy, more must be done. Sixty years after the Act was passed, rumor and disinformation play an even greater role in today’s 24/7 global information environment. First impressions matter more than ever and perceptions make or break confidence in everything from financial markets to issues of global health. The wealth of information is surpassed only by the poverty of attention to digest it. If the media is the oxygen of the terrorist, it is also the oxygen of the counterterrorist.
Read the rest here.
December 19th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
It’s constantly amazing to me how difficult it continues to be to reconcile what people believe to have happened in the world from about 1950 to 1980 with what can reasonably be concluded by looking at primary sources. So much of people’s views continue to be controlled by Soviet-era disinformation.