The forgotten process: Information disarmament in the Soviet/US reproachment of the 1980s

This article contends that just as an excess of conventional arms requires a disarmament processes, so the weaponization of media should be met with an information disarmament process. The article examines elements of this work deployed to assist in the US — Soviet rapprochement of the 1980s. Cases discussed include a mutual textbook review project, citizento-citizen conferences mounted by the Chautauqua Society and a series of forums held via satellite television links called Spacebridges. The emergence of government-to-government information talks in which the United States Information Agency led by Charles Z.Wick engaged various elements of the Soviet state media apparatus is traced. The meetings from 1986 through 1989 are summarized, including the frank discussion of the challenge of disinformation and of mutual stereotyping. It is asserted that this process was more effective than is generally remembered, but success required a rough symmetry within the US/Soviet relationship. The internal crisis within the USSR repositioned the country as a junior partner and led the US to misperceive the end of the Cold War in terms of victory and defeat, with counterproductive results.

The Truth of Cultural Diplomacy

<p><em>Since the United States Information Agency (USIA) is no longer active to operate cultural diplomacy in the post-cold war, the concept of cultural diplomacy has experienced a time of crisis in the context of International Relations studies. For a decade, cultural diplomacy was marginalized and considered obsolete until finally in the early 2000s, cultural diplomacy was revived and activated both in practice and theory. Since then, cultural diplomacy has returned to its path. The discourse of cultural diplomacy in International Relations studies has developed to gain more specific activities. This is a qualitative research, with the aim of understanding cultural diplomacy in a more holistic way. The results of this study indicate a debate and a lack of consensus on several aspects of cultural diplomacy and bringing much unclear explanation. This study also shows a dichotomy between cultural diplomacy and other approaches.</em></p>

A Singapore Story, Hollywood Version

The fourth chapter examines anti-Communist films made by Hollywood in Cantonese and Malay in Singapore and Malaya in the Cold War context of the ‘Campaign of Truth’. In the early 1950s, the United States Information Agency, an arm of the State Department, secretly commissioned and funded New York Sound Masters Inc. to produce and shoot several anti-Communist films in Singapore and Malaya. In 1953, cinemas across Malaya and Singapore screened Singapore Story and Kampong Sentosa, two Cold War products of the ‘Campaign of Truth’. In addition to analysing the ideology of these films, this chapter combines declassified archive material from the US and Singaporean National Archives with primary materials from UK, US, Singaporean, and Malayan periodicals from the Cold War era, in order to explore how these two films use Malay and Cantonese to narrate a Hollywood version of the Singaporean story. As these two films have been largely passed over in scholarship and the films and archives have not been regularly accessible, records of these films are absent from histories of film and television in the US, Singapore, and Malaya. This chapter aims to remedy this absence.

O sonho de Julius e Ethel Rosenberg: antissemitismo, opinião pública e a U.S. Information Agency.

No presente artigo, analisamos a atuação, no início dos anos 1950, da agência de informação e propaganda do governo dos EUA, a United States Information Agency, em relação ao processo movido na justiça do país contra o casal de judeus Julius e Ethel Rosenberg, acusados de espionagem em favor da União Soviética. Especificamente, analisamos a atuação de tal agência em dois importantes jornais brasileiros do período, o “Correio da Manhã” e a “Tribuna da Imprensa”. Mais do que discutir a singularidade do processo do casal Rosenberg, nosso objetivo é chamar atenção o fato de que, para além dos campos já conhecidos e consideravelmente explorados pela historiografia sobre a Guerra Fria, havia outro campo importante de disputa no período: o da propaganda cultural – no que a historiografia, notadamente estadunidense, tem chamado de “Cultural Cold War”.

Public Diplomacy Conceptualised

This chapter outlines the theoretical rationale behind the book’s argument that the Pilgrims Society’s activities during the first half of the twentieth century were a nascent form of public diplomacy and that they contributed to the development of later, more official, public diplomacy organisations like the British Council, the Division of Cultural Relations, and the United States Information Agency. In so doing, this chapter analyses the historical orthodoxies surrounding public diplomacy and offers a definition of the concept that will applied across the rest of the book. The chapter also establishes how concepts of public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, associational culture, and elite networking intersect and why this intersection is important to the Pilgrims Society.

Between Objectivity and Engagement

This chapter introduces the main themes, objectives, scope, and sources underpinning this study of the Radio in the American Sector (RIAS). It also contextualizes this book within the larger body of scholarship relating to the American Cold War information programs managed largely under the auspices of agencies such as the United States Information Agency and its overseas incarnation, the United States Information Service. RIAS was created within months of the end of World War II to serve as the official broadcaster for the American sector of occupation in Berlin, and was later retooled as a propaganda operation designed to counter the Communist media organs operating in the Soviet Occupation Zone. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s RIAS produced news and entertainment programs directed at listeners living behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany.