BEACON SOFT POWER AND PUBLIC DIPLOMACY SERIES:DAY 2<\/b><\/p>\n
For Tuesday’s segment of the series, Paul Kretkowski’s <\/strong>Beacon<\/strong><\/a> features a post by Professor<\/strong> Patricia Kushlis<\/strong>, a retired Foreign Service Officer and specialist in Europe, Asia, the U.S., politics, public diplomacy and national security. Kushlis is also part of a trio of experts at the highly recommended foreign affairs blog, Whirledview<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n An excerpt:<\/p>\n “Public Diplomacy Dateline 1975: A Meeting in Helsinki<\/p>\n In 1992, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) held its first major conference in Helsinki, Finland, a fitting memorial to the Cold War\u2019s end. This 54-nation conference also commemorated CSCE\u2019s 1975 beginning\u2014the initial 35-state conference held in the same city but at a different time in a polarized world. The U.S. had only reluctantly agreed to participate, perhaps simply because the idea of a pan-European security conference had Soviet origins. America\u2019s cold warriors\u2014still smarting from Vietnam\u2014feared wrongly the conference might hurt U.S. interests in Europe, the chief battleground between East and West. Baltic \u00e9migr\u00e9 communities also objected because they believed the conference would legalize then-national boundaries, keeping the three small Baltic countries forever in Soviet hands.<\/p>\n The 1975 conference included a human rights \u201cbasket\u201d or negotiating group. Its negotiators drafted a declaration of support for individual human rights. The declaration became known as the Helsinki Accords\u2014that first CSCE conference\u2019s most important act. I don\u2019t know why the Soviets agreed but they did\u2014perhaps because they thought no enforcement or verification mechanisms existed, and so assumed the human rights provisions were empty words.<\/p>\n In the end, the Helsinki Accords\u2014unbeknownst to us\u2014provided the chief protection for and inspiration of tiny groups of anti-Communist dissidents from Prague to Moscow. They ultimately inspired the many to challenge the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union and to end Communism in Europe.”<\/p>\n