Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Information Agency
More than once in the past decade or more, I guarantee that you have heard —
or read — someone declare the United States would be better off today if the U.S.
Information Agency (USIA) were still around and how without it, the United
States was robbed of the ability to properly engage in information warfare today.
Some of these discussions have been in Congress and at least one bill was
introduced in recent years to try to recreate a limited USIA. However, laments
about USIA are really a coded way of saying that we lack a strategy, an
organizing principle, and empowered individuals to execute information
warfare today.
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With insurgencies around the globe, disappearing borders, and economic and
social unrest, our adversaries are increasingly adept at manipulating public
opinion. Through overt and covert use of media, face to face interactions, and
more, state and non-state actors are threatening Western freedoms and
independence. Russian activities today support Moscow’s expansionism and
mask failed domestic policies, using propaganda and subversion to disrupt a
coherent response to Moscow’s adventurism and to undermine the fabric of
democratic governance and society. China’s “Three Warfares” play the long
game of lawfare and information warfare, successfully betting against a
synchronized, holistic response. The Islamic State’s media machine exploits the
seams between reality and fantasy to spin successes and failures to its
advantage. This list can go on. What of al-Qaeda, for example? Venezuela?
Cuba? Central African countries? The challenges to the United States in the
realm of information are numerous and diverse. And succeeding against them
is a natural challenge for the United States if it is to maintain its pursuit of
peaceful, interconnected societies. However, the solution is not simply to rebuild
USIA. People who advocate bringing back USIA do not know what that means in
practice or what USIA even really did.
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bureaucracies often work together only on an ad hoc basis and rarely share
collaborative requirements and communications with their respective oversight
committees in the Congress.
It was a similar situation over 60 years ago. In 1945, days before the Japanese
surrendered on deck of the USS Missouri, the role of the State Department in the
global struggle for minds and wills dramatically expanded. The U.S. Information
Service, including its news and information divisions, was moved into the State
Department. Within a few weeks, legislation to expand and institutionalize
exchanges of all kinds between nations was reintroduced with an added
capability of shortwave radio broadcasting. And a few months later, a small,
complementary bill was also soon introduced in the Senate Committee on
Military Affairs, now named the Armed Services Committee, to support a
narrow range of exchanges using foreign currency derived from sales of
surplus military equipment abroad. The State Department was, as of August 31,
1945, the leading communicator of and point of engagement for U.S. foreign
policy abroad through film, radio, speakers, books, exchanges of all kinds, and
more.
This was not the “diplomacy in public” we know today, but a full-spectrum
“diplomacy with publics,” engaging people at all levels and with all means
available. Two years later, Nelson Rockefeller recognized the struggle as
“shifting more than ever from the arena of power to the arena of ideas and
international persuasion” as he participated in expanding America’s
information warfare toolkit. At the same time, at the same conference, a young
Henry Kissinger stressed the importance of the people when, he noted the
“predominant aspect of the new diplomacy is its psychological dimension.”
Cabinet rivalries and other personalities dealt FOA a quick death. While its
sibling at birth was forgotten, USIA lived on. However, within a decade, the
model was coming apart. The struggle for minds and wills of the 1940s and
1950s, against non-state actors (communists, subversives, ignorant publics),
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gave way to competition over narratives with other states (the Soviet Union,
Vietnam). In the 1960s and beyond. USIA’s transition was complicated by battles
in Washington over its relevance and parity with State and its Foreign Service.
The term “public diplomacy” arose purposefully in this period to demarcate the
important role of USIA as something related to but different from “diplomacy.”
In 1969, Kissinger, now the National Security Advisor, removed USIA from the
National Security Council. USIA would attend only by invitation, effectively
ending its role in policymaking and advising. Public opinion mattered to some,
but to others, information activities were irrelevant or distasteful.
USIA inherited the so-called Second Mandate from State. An original and
primary role of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, established in 1944,
was to “provide American citizens with more information concerning their
country’s foreign policy.” But from the start, Senator J. William Fulbright
opposed the information activities and he did not consider communism or the
Soviet Union a threat to America.
The Abolishment
Originally focused on the broader “struggle for minds and wills” against
communism and non-state actors in fluid environments, USIA was firmly
entrenched in combating a state by the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
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In 1999, the “peace dividend” needed more money, and either USAID or USIA
was going to help fund it. While USAID’s chief fought for his agency, USIA’s did
not. But why was USIA even on the chopping block? Partly because of the
incomplete, or tainted, knowledge of its role (primary credit goes to Fulbright),
but also partly because USIA’s narrative, its raison d’être, had failed to adapt to
the new normal, which would have been a lot like its early years.
Abolishing USIA was messy. Parts went to State, mostly under the purpose-built
office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, but not
all. And the broadcasting portion was spun off into a separate federal agency,
the Broadcasting Board of Governors. A 2000 report on the status of the so-
called merger captured part of the culture clash. While accounting at USIA
served the mission and the field, at State, former USIA employees saw
“accounting is an end itself.”
If we truly want to recreate USIA, the public affairs officers and their sections at
our Embassies and Consulates would go to the new agency. The libraries and
America’s Corners and all the similar programs would be moved, and likely
moved out from behind fortress walls where some are invite-only, if they are
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accessible at all. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs would also
leave State. The Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs would
be abolished, though the Bureau of Public Affairs would remain in the
department. The Broadcasting Board of Governors would be merged with this
new entity as well. Perhaps most important of all, the Defense Department
would defer to this new agency in its public communications, as would USAID
and other agencies. Obviously such a reorganization is not going to happen.
Perhaps State could revamp itself. It is worth noting here that the title “public
affairs officer” used by State and the United States Information Service were
created in 1917 by the foreign section of the Committee for Public Information
because State refused to do “public diplomacy” abroad. Nelson Rockefeller’s
Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs was established prior to Pearl Harbor as
a USIA-like organization focused on Latin America because State refused to
respond to FDR’s requests and engage the public. In 1953, State was all too eager
to dump the responsibilities of engaging foreign publics directly in the interest
of “streamlining.” And in 1999 through today, we see how poorly State
integrates, funds, and prioritizes “public diplomacy” into its operations. Even
the title of the public diplomacy chief is discordant: “Public Diplomacy and
Public Affairs.”
The lesson here is that each successful change followed a clearly defined and
articulated requirement to fulfill a strategic purpose. Consolidation, or dis-
aggregation, is not a strategy and it will not conjure up a strategy. In today’s
noisy communications environment, we need coordination that comes not from
a supremely empowered individual or central organization, but comes from a
clear mission and purpose. USIA is held out as a symbol of our success to
organize for information warfare, but it really was part of a larger effort. And
ultimately, it came to reflect the segregation of “public diplomacy” from
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“diplomacy” that remains today. Today is not yesterday, so let’s stop looking at a
mid-twentieth century solution for a 21st century problem.
Matt Armstrong is an author and lecturer on public diplomacy and international media.
He is almost done writing his book on how the White House, State Department, Congress,
and the media fought, struggled, and ultimately collaborated in 1917-1948 to establish U.S.
“public diplomacy” and to export the First Amendment. He blogs sometimes at
mountainrunner.us. The views expressed here are his own, so don’t blame anyone else.
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