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America Needs a Voice Abroad By Leonard H. Marks, Charles Z. Wick, Bruce Gelb and Henry E. Catto |
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If you care about the future of U.S. public diplomacy, join us at the USIA Alumni Association |
The writers are former directors of the United States Information Agency. |
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When President Bush visited Canada shortly after his reelection, thousands protested on the streets of Ottawa. In mocking reference to the fate of Saddam Hussein a year earlier, a statue-sized effigy of the president was hoisted to a rostrum above the crowd and then pulled down to loud cheers. That such things should occur in the capital of a friendly neighbor, echoing similar demonstration in capitals around the world, reveals how deep-seated anti-Americanism has come to be. .... For nearly 50 years such a program was a priority for presidents from Harry S. Truman to George H.W. Bush -- all nine of them. Principally charged with carrying it out was the United States Information Agency, an arm of the White House responsible directly to the president. Throughout those years the USIA assigned a public affairs officer experienced in journalism or public relations to nearly every U.S. embassy. He -- occasionally she -- was always a full member of the country team yet sufficiently independent to advise the ambassador as an outside counsel might advise, rather than simply report to, a corporate chief executive. .... The USIA was a creation of the Cold War, born of the conviction that success in the struggle with the Soviet Union would require not only effective armaments and strong alliances but also steady progress in winning and retaining worldwide support for the aims and ideals of American-style liberal democracy. In this the USIA achieved remarkable success, as was demonstrated when the Cold War ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the freeing of its satellite states -- an immense transformation that was welcomed almost everywhere. In the euphoria that followed, it was widely believed that the collapse of communism would lead to the embrace of liberal democracy almost everywhere. One influential book of the time even argued through its title that this trend could in time result in a world permanently at peace and thus in "The End of History." .... Meanwhile, history clearly has not ended, with the United States today facing long-range perils and problems hardly thought of a few years ago: radical Islam, spreading nuclear proliferation, estrangement from much of Europe, and growing political and economic challenges from the world's two most-populous countries, China and India. .... Insistent calls for rebuilding America's public diplomacy have come from both sides of the aisle in Congress. The new secretary of state has said this is high on the administration's agenda. The time for action is now. For the full text, see the WashingtonPost.Com Web site |
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