COMMUNICATING WITH THE WORLD
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COMMUNICATING WITH THE WORLD
THE INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF DIPLOMACY concentrates on the
processes of conducting foreign relations abroad, in the belief
that studies of diplomatic operations are useful means of teaching
or improving diplomatic skills and of broadening public
understanding of diplomacy. Working closely with the academic
program of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, the
Institute conducts a program of research, publication, teaching,
diplomats in residence, conferences, and lectures.
COMMUNICATING WITH THE WORLD
U.S. Public Diplomacy Overseas
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS New York
© 1990 by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown
University, Washington, D.C.
All rights reserved.
For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St.
Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1990 Second
paperback printing 1993
ISBN 978-0-312-04532-6 ISBN 978-0-312-04809-9 ISBN
978-1-137-10687-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-10687-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tuch, Hans N., 1924- Communicating with the world: U.S. public
diplomacy overseas I by
Hans N. Tuch; foreword by Marvin Kalb. p. cm. - (Martin F. Herz
series on United States diplomacy)
includes bibliographical references.
1. United States- Diplomatic and consular service. 2. Diplomacy. I.
Title. II. Series. JX1706.T78 1990 327.2-dc20 89-49579
CIP
To my wife, Mimi, who lovingly and unselfishly shared my life and
my experiences in public diplomacy and contributed to making
my
years in the Foreign Service meaningful, satisfying, and
memorable.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Foreword, Marvin Kalb . . . ix Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . .
xiii Abbreviations and Acronyms . xv
Part I The Practice of U.S. Public Diplomacy Abroad 1
1. Defining Public Diplomacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
2. The Origin and Development of U.S. Public Diplomacy 12
3. Practicing Public Diplomacy . 39
4. The Methods- The Media . 58
5. The Voice of America . . 87
6. Worldnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
8. A Critique of U.S. Public Diplomacy 113
Part II Case Studies in the Practice of Public Diplomacy 123
9. The Beginning of U.S.-Soviet Cultural Relations . 125
10. Practicing Public Diplomacy in Brazil . . . . . . . . .
11. Dealing with the German "Successor Generation" . .
12. INF Deployment in the Federal Republic of Germany
Epilogue ........................... .
Appendices
2. USIS Germany Country Plan Fiscal Year 1986
3. USIS Budget (10/1/88)- Colombia . . . . . .
4. Public Affairs Goal Paper for President's Visit to the Federal
Republic of Germany, June 1982 ...... .
5. Quarterly Analysis from USIS Bonn to the U.S. Information
Agency, January 4, 1983
6. USIS Country Plan (Brazil)-Fiscal Year 1989, Academic Exchange
Program
Bibliographic Note Index ...... .
Vignettes
Roy Cohn's Descent on the Libraries of Europe ........... 19
Amerika Magazine in the Soviet Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
52 Arts and Artifacts- Khrushchev at the American Exhibit .
63
Tit-for-Tat Diplomacy . . . . . . Cash for the Casa . . . . . The
Mothers of Filderstadt . . . .
129 146 167
Foreword
MARVINKALB
Hans Tuch (who has always been known to his friends as Tom) has
written a valuable book: valuable, first and foremost, to a new
generation of Foreign Service officers beginning to grasp the
essential lesson of the sad Vietnam experience- that a policy
conceived in secrecy and implemented by deception, denied the
popular support so essential in a democracy, will fail, no matter
how honorable the original intent. The book is valuable also to the
student of American foreign policy who has come to appreciate the
fact that policy has at least two faces, one that remains private
and the other that must be made public, and to the journalist,
American or foreign, who is skeptical of any nugget of informa
tion that is officially volunteered or leaked rather than unearthed
during independent pursuit of a story. (Why, after all, the
journalist asks, would I be given a "fact" unless it serves the
government's interest? If it serves the government's interest, then
by definition it may be self-serving, perhaps even devoid of
credibility, and thus lose its value to me.)
Tom Tuch understands the rules of the game. He was, for more than
thirty years, one of the most professional public affairs officers
I have ever met. I don't know where- maybe in Moscow, or Berlin, or
Brasilia, or Bonn, several of the capitals in which he served so
ably- but somewhere he learned
ix
X COMMUNICATING WITH THE WORW
that the currency of public diplomacy is credibility, and that no
matter how blunt the challenge, or how sensitive the information,
he must never lie. He could dance and dodge, and Tuch has been
quite adept at both, but he must never, as Harry Reasoner said
years ago of Lyndon Johnson, be "less than candid." Once a PAO
lies, he's finished. Journalists have a way of thinking that every
lie is a big lie; they dismiss small lies, white lies, inadvertent
lies, as simply lies, all these distinctions generally lost in the
journalist's mind. There were many times when Tom Tuch could not
tell the truth; but even on those occasions he did not mislead the
press, not to the best of my knowledge. He steered reporters away
from bad leads, and occasionally helped them with a few good
ones.
He is, in this sense, the perfect author for this book. He has a
gentle, winning personality, able to expand contacts and retain
friendships. In the age of "winning the hearts and minds" of
contested parts of the world that was once the urgent mandate of
the United States Information Agency, Tom Tuch was a super envoy.
He never met a person he couldn't befriend, nor a language he
couldn't master. From Russian to German to Portuguese he fluttered,
always fluent enough to enhance his role as a serious diplomat
eager to understand the nuances of the country to which he was
assigned, while representing the subtlest shifts of American policy
with clarity and tireless dedication.
Communicating with the World: U.S. Public Diplomacy Overseas is, in
addition to being valuable, an important book. At its core, it
recognizes that diplomacy has changed radically from the time a
hundred years ago when a British envoy in the Near East reported to
the Foreign Office that the pasha had died and "What should I do?"
Many months later, the time consumed in the envoy's query reaching
London and the Foreign Office's response ricocheting back to him, a
cryptic, oddly amusing message finally arrived at the British
mission to the pasha's homeland. "First suggest burial service,"
was the Foreign Office's advice. "Then convey Her Majesty's deepest
regrets."
What once took months now takes seconds. Technology has squeezed
time for reflection out of old-fashioned diplomacy. Space has been
obliterated. Now the diplomats have been forced to compete with the
journalists to get their stories to the home office. It is an
unfair contest. The diplomats are not paid to be quick, but often
they learn about events in their own backyard from
Foreword xi
a bulletin on the radio or television, or from a call from a State
Department colleague who has heard the same bulletin in Washington.
Everyone is often dependent on the same sources of information, but
not everyone, certainly not the journalist, is responsible for
giving advice to the secretary of state or the president about what
the United States should do. That is the diplomat's job.
It is a job made all the more difficult by the increasingly central
role that the press plays in the process of decision making. Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev uses the press with stunning
effectiveness. He caresses the lens like a professional anchorman,
knowing that its power can enhance his diplomacy. During a visit to
Bonn, he picked up a child with flowers, and this picture of
friendliness bounced off every comer of the globe and did more to
bury the hatchet in Soviet-German relations than any agreement he
signed with Chancellor Helmut Kohl. One of Gorbachev's
spokespersons told me recently that before he briefs foreign
reporters in the Soviet Foreign Ministry, he watches CNN in his
Moscow office to learn what's happening in the world and what
questions he can expect to field. David Gergen, who once worked in
the Reagan White House, says that the president's famous
zero-option speech, which laid the basis for the medium-range
missile agreement he later signed with Gorbachev, was delivered at
2:00PM, because the message was aimed at Western Europe and 2:00PM
in Washington was prime time in Paris, London, and Bonn.
Pollster Lou Harris estimates that there are now thirty million
people in Western Europe who speak English and depend on American
news organiza tions for their news. Before the democracy movement
was crushed in Beijing, the students communicated their cry for
freedom through Western cameras, unfurling slogans in English and
French and propping up their own version of the Statue of Liberty
symbolically to convey their sympathy for American values and their
impatience with Communism. The images from Tiananmen Square, first
of democracy and then of repression, ignited strong emotions
throughout the world, accelerating the pace of politics in China
and of diplomacy everywhere else.
It is a new world, linking technology, journalism, and diplomacy in
a global loop of interdependence, and raising in virtually every
trouble spot profound questions about American responsibilities,
but also profound opportunities. Ronald Reagan, who throughout his
presidency was on a first-name basis
xii COMMUNICATING WITH THE WORLD
with the camera, referred to information as the "oxygen of the
modem age," the power that "seeps through the walls topped with
barbed wire .... [M]ore than armies, more than diplomacy, more than
the best intentions of democratic nations, the communications
revolution will be the greatest force for the advancement of human
freedom the world has ever seen."
The best diplomacy these days takes advantage of the power of a
free flow of information. Tom Tuch, in his book, focuses on public
diplomacy and uses four case studies to amplify his points. They
are, first, the start ofU.S.-Soviet cultural relations in the
mid-1950s; second, the practice of public diplomacy in Brazil;
third, dealing with the successor generation in Germany; and,
finally, the deployment of medium-range missiles in West Germany in
the early 1980s. In each case Tuch plays a key role, but he is wise
enough to know that more senior officials in Washington make the
decisions. As an ex perienced public affairs officer in the field,
Tuch can make a recommenda tion, he can offer advice, he can raise
a cautionary flag; but his is an advisory role in a key comer of
diplomacy - "only one piston in the foreign affairs engine," as he
puts it.
Washington is beginning to understand the power and potential of
public diplomacy, not propaganda but the unafraid exercise of ideas
and information in the global marketplace. Tuch' s book is helpful
instruction for a secretary of state, a director of central
intelligence and, yes, even a president.
Preface
Chinese villagers in Szechuan listen over their communal
loudspeakers to the news of student demonstrations in Beijing in a
Voice of America Chinese broadcast. A Peruvian Fulbright
student
is studying environmental economics at the University of Florida.
Leading U.S. and Soviet cardiologists discuss new techniques of
combatting heart disease via satellite television on USIA's
Worldnet. Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute
discusses American reaction to the Pope's encyclical with an
audience in Brazil. A Stockholm newspaper editor writes an
editorial about the INF treaty on the basis of the full text of
Secretary of State George Shultz's news conference, supplied him
through the USIS Wireless File. A teenager from Olathe, Kansas
spends the year living with a German family and attending high
school in Freiburg as a participant in the Congress-Bundestag Youth
Exchange Program. A minister of education from Senegal travels
around the southwestern United States for a month, visiting school
boards, elementary and high schools, and universities as a USIA
International Visitor. A nursing student from Cuernavaca checks out
a book about obstetrical nursing in the Benjamin Franklin Library
in Mexico City. An American exhibit guide explains American
information technology in Russian to a group of exhibit visitors in
Tashkent, as two thousand others stand patiently in line to enter
the exhibition hall.
These are but a few routine examples of public diplomacy as
practiced by the United States government. What public diplomacy
is, why it is part of our
xiii
XIV COMMUNICATING WITH THE WORLD
foreign affairs process, how it is practiced by the u.s. government
throughout the world, who the practitioners are, and whether it is
effective - these questions are the subject of this study.
Most of this book is based on my thirty-five years of experience in
practicing public diplomacy. And most of that experience has been
in three distinct areas of the world-Germany, the Soviet Union and
other Com munist countries of Eastern Europe, and Brazil. Readers
will understand that the majority of examples I cite to illustrate
the practice of public diplomacy will involve my service in those
countries; and they will forgive me, I hope, ifl slight other
areas, although I have tried to broaden my personal experience by
consultation and conversation with colleagues experienced in public
diplomacy whose service was in China and countries in Africa, the
Middle East, and Asia with which I am not familiar.
In a book which includes the distillation of so many years in the
Foreign Service, many contribute to the thoughts, ideas, and
opinions that the author expresses. With my gratitude to all who
will recognize their input to this manuscript, I mention by name
only those who helped with the actual publication of the book:
David Newsom, who encouraged its writing and saw to its
publication; Margery Boichel Thompson, who edited it expertly and
thereby improved it greatly; Gifford Malone, Mary Brady, and
Terrence Catherman, who read it critically and gave me
indispensable advice and valuable suggestions; C. B. (Cliff) Groce,
Alan Heil, and Robert Gosende, who, by reading pertinent parts of
it, helped me with ideas and corrected mistakes; Martin Manning,
who checked the manuscript for factual and historical errors and
supplied needed documents; Nina Parmee, who assisted with research
and indexing; and to Jeffry A. Robelen, manuscript production
coordinator, and Michael Snyder, principal manuscript "word
processor." My thanks to all.
Finally, this volume is the first in the Martin F. Herz Series on
United States Diplomacy, established by the Institute for the Study
of Diplomacy to honor the memory of an exemplary scholar-diplomat
who was the Institute's first director of studies.
Abbreviations and Acronyms
CAO CAPES
CDU CNPq CP csu cu DAAD DRS E/YX E/AA EUR/CE Euronet FAPESP FDP
FRG
Brazilian Association of American Studies Brazilian Association of
University Professors of English Language and Literature American
Field Service, former name of AFS International, a youth exchange
organization American Participant [Program] (USIA) British
Broadcasting Corporation binational center branch public affairs
officer Central American Program for Undergraduate Scholarships
(USIA) cultural affairs officer [or cultural attache] Brazilian
government organization for foreign educational grants and
scholarships Christian Democratic Union (FRG) National Research
Council (Brazil) country plan (USIS) Christian Social Union (FRG -
Bavaria) State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural
Affairs German Academic Exchange Service Distribution and Records
System (USIS) USIA Office of Youth Exchanges USIA Office of
Academic Affairs State Department Office of Central European
Affairs USIA television network, predecessor to Worldnet Sao Paulo
State Foundation for Research Free Democratic Party (FRG) Federal
Republic of Germany [West Germany]
xvi
FSNE/FNE FSO GAAS GAl GDR GOB INF IREX IUCTG IV Komsomol
LASPAU
MPAA NAPA NATO NSDD NSF PAO ppp
PRC RFE RIAS RL SPD US AID USIA USIAAA USICA USIS VOA Worldnet
YFU
COMMUNICATING WITH THE WORLD