US Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Success Story?

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-79
Author(s):  
John Robert Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Radio Free Europe

AbstractThe post-'9/11' revival of interest in US public diplomacy encompasses a wide variety of opinions, all overwhelmingly critical. In view of falling global favourability towards and the foreign policy challenges of the United States during this period, the purveyors of these opinions ultimately agree that US public diplomacy efforts are flawed and ineffective. Of these critical observations, it is interesting to track a thread of logic that yearns for the restoration of public diplomacy's Cold War-era standing, which holds that the spread of liberal democracy behind the Berlin Wall owes a debt to the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, that cultural exchanges with influential members of Soviet society helped to create the groundswell that undermined the communist regime, and that public diplomats made these outcomes possible by being equipped with the necessary tools of statecraft, as well as by wielding an important measure of influence over policy-makers. The fall of the Soviet Union merely underscores their notion that public diplomacy during the Cold War was a success. It would thus seem that the problems of today could be remedied by adopting lessons from the past. This article explores the viability of this claim by reviewing the ongoing debate on how the historical memory and lessons of Cold War-era public diplomacy may be applied to the challenges of the post-'9/11' era. Of particular importance is ascertaining the degree to which the Cold War's campaigns of information, influence and engagement could be viewed as a success. By subdividing public diplomacy's activities in these ways, greater potential exists to attribute these activities to more compelling determinations of success or failure.

scholarly journals Le réexamen des affaires du vol 007 de la Korean Airlines et du RB-50 (Note)

2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-65
Author(s):  
Anatoli Ilyashov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Cold War

As revealed by documents in the National Archives in Washington, u.c., the United States routinely and knowingly sent reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union during the fifties and sixties. The u-2 shootdown of the pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1960 was a manifestation of this dangerous pattern during the Cold War era. The author, the first Fulbright Lecturer to the formerly « closed-to-foreigners » military-industrial city of Nizhny Novgorod, or Gorki, suggests a direct correlation between this pattern of earlier reconnaissance flights and the shoot down of the KAL 007 airliner in 1983. It thus contains implications for current foreign policy in the bold new post-Cold War era, in which the means for surveillance have become more militarily sophisticated and technologically advanced.

Cold War “Bridge-Building”: U.S. Exchange Exhibits and Their Reception in the Soviet Union, 1959–1967

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomas Tolvaisas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
United States Information Agency ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Bridge Building

Following the presentation of the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, nine exhibits organized by the United States Information Agency traveled in the Soviet Union from 1961 to 1967. This article discusses the aims, preparation, content, and reception of these exhibits, which attracted more than five million visitors and provoked diverse reactions. The exhibitions and their guides served as a unique form of communication with Soviet citizens, informing them about U.S. achievements and freedoms and the American way of life. The initiatives offset Soviet Communist propaganda, advanced popular understanding of the United States, and promoted popular goodwill toward Americans. The low-key interactions between the guides and the visitors shed valuable light on the mindset and experiences of ordinary citizens in the USSR, who were a major target audience of these exhibitions, and also, more broadly, on U.S. public diplomacy during the Cold War.

Foreign Intelligence and the Historiography of the Cold War

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond L. Garthoff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Foreign Intelligence ◽  
The Cold War

Foreign intelligence played a number of important roles in the Cold War, but this topic has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. This survey article provides a broad overview of some of the new literature and documentation pertaining to Cold War era intelligence, as well as the key dimensions of the topic. Despite the continued obstacles posed by secrecy and the mixed reliability of sources, the publication of numerous memoirs and the release of a huge volume of fresh archival material in the post— Cold War era have opened new opportunities to study the role of intelligence in Cold War history. Scholars should explore not only the “micro level” of the problem (the impact of intelligence on specific events) but also the “macro level,” looking at the many ways that the Cold War as a whole (its origins, its course, and its outcome) was influenced, perhaps even shaped, by the intelligence agencies of the United States, the Soviet Union, and other key countries. It is also crucial to examine the unintended consequences of intelligence activities. Some interesting examples of “blowback” (effects that boomerang against the country that initiated them) have recently come to light from intelligence operations that the United States undertook against the Soviet Union. Only by understanding the complex nature of the role of intelligence during the Cold War will we be able to come to grips with the historiographic challenge that the topic poses.

Changing Patterns of Power in Cold War Politics: The Mysterious Case of Vladimír Komárek

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor Lukes
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The West ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Willingness To Cooperate

The story of the arrest and imprisonment of Vladimír Komárek sheds valuable light on relations between Czechoslovakia and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Komárek, who had worked as an intelligence officer against the Czechoslovak Communist regime in the 1950s, was a U.S. citizen traveling to the Soviet Union on business when he was dramatically captured by the Czechoslovak authorities. Pressure from the U.S. government and private individuals, as well as conflicts between the Czechoslovak secret service and other, more liberal, elements in the Czechoslovak government, ultimately led to Komárek's release. Czechoslovakia's eventual willingness to cooperate in the Komárek case signaled a new approach to relations with the West, an approach that would have significant consequences during the Prague Spring of 1968.

Propaganda Broadcasts and Cold War Politics: The Carter Administration's Outreach to Islam

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-37
Author(s):  
Javier Gil Guerrero
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Damage Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Control Effort ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Communism ◽  
Soviet Invasion

After the Islamic revolution in Iran in early 1979 and the hostage crisis that began at the U.S. embassy in Tehran later that year, the Carter administration launched a public diplomacy campaign specifically directed at Muslims, the first of its kind. The idea was to counter the narrative of a Western crusade against Islam while highlighting the differences between the United States and militant Islam. In time, the damage control effort was transformed into an attempt to rally Muslims—both outside and inside the Soviet Union—against Soviet Communism. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan created an opportunity for the United States to bolster its standing in the Islamic world. Influencing Muslim opinion was no longer just a matter of delegitimizing the discourse of radical Islam, but also one of using the growth of religious sentiment among Muslims against the Soviet Union. The initiative's spearhead was the increased multilingual radio broadcasts directed at Muslim audiences across the globe.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

Enemy Number One

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Inferiority Complex ◽  
Available Information

Enemy Number One tells the story of Soviet propaganda and ideology toward the United States during the early Cold War. From Stalin’s anti-American campaign to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, this book covers Soviet efforts to control available information about the United States and to influence the development of Soviet-American cultural relations until official cultural exchanges were realized between the two countries. The Soviet and American veterans of the legendary 1945 meeting on the Elbe and their subsequent reunions represent the changes in the superpower relationship: during the late Stalin era, the memory of the wartime alliance was fully silenced, but under Khrushchev it was purposefully revived and celebrated as a part of the propaganda about peaceful coexistence. The author brings to life the propaganda warriors and ideological chiefs of the early Cold War period in the Soviet Union, revealing their confusion and insecurities as they tried to navigate the uncertain world of the late Stalin and early Khrushchev cultural bureaucracy. She also shows how concerned Soviet authorities were with their people’s presumed interest in the United States of America, resorting to monitoring and even repression, thereby exposing the inferiority complex of the Soviet project as it related to the outside world.

Ballet in the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Searcy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today.

Trygve Lie, 1946–1953

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Jenny Ravndal
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Political Negotiation

This chapter explores all aspects of Trygve Lie’s interaction with the Security Council, beginning with his appointment process and the negotiation of the relative domains of the Council and the Secretary-General. This was a time when the working methods of the UN system were rapidly evolving through political negotiation and responses to external crises. It examines Lie’s personality and character, how he viewed his own responsibilities in the maintenance of international peace and security as crises arose, the legal and political tools he developed and exercised, and his changing relationship with individual permanent members and the six elected members. In the emerging Cold War, Lie’s position in the Security Council would be determined in particular by his relationships with the United States and the Soviet Union. Taking initiative in response to external crises in Iran, Palestine, Berlin, and Korea, Lie succeeded in laying foundations for an expanded political role for the Secretary-General.

Cold War Exiles and the CIA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Tromly
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Germany ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Home Base ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Secret War

During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA’s Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA’s patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors.

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