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Issues in the Genesis and Organization of Cultural Diplomacy: A Brief Critical History

2009; Routledge; Volume: 39; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10632920903449019

1930-7799

William P. Glade,

Diverse multidisciplinary academic research

ABSTRACT ABSTRACT Cultural Diplomacy did not begin until the later 1930s as a permanent function at the State Department. However, owing to circumstances then prevailing in the world, it, along with public diplomacy, became increasingly important in the 1940s−1960s. This Golden Age came to an end thereafter not only because of new conditions at home and abroad, but also because of the way the practice of cultural diplomacy was structured into the foreign policy machinery and subordinated to other ends. Changing fiscal priorities also had a hand in diverting resources into alternative uses. However, the challenges facing the United States, and the West in general, since 9/11 have the potential for restoring cultural policy to a place of prominence in the armamentarium of policies for dealing with the rest of the world—though its revival is by no means assured. KEYWORDS: the cold war cultural diplomacy foreign policy international cultural relations relations with Islam Acknowledgments William Glade is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Texas in Austin and taught previously at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland. He served in 1989–1992 as Associate Director of the USIA in charge of Educational and Cultural Affairs. He has also been a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Peru, a Mellon Visiting Scholar at UCLA, and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. Notes 1. Three useful works for the period that antedated the institutionalization of cultural diplomacy are Espinosa 1976 Espinosa, J. M. 1976. Inter-American beginnings of U.S. cultural diplomacy, 1936-1948, Washington, DC: Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. [Google Scholar]; Bullock 1980 Bullock, M. 1980. An American transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College, Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; and Bays and Widmer 2009 Bays, D. H. and Widmer, E. 2009. China's christian colleges: Cross-cultural connections,1900-1950, Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press. [Google Scholar]. As these indicate, nongovernmental organizations pioneered the field of international cultural exchanges, especially the American missionary organizations active in China and elsewhere (e.g., the establishment of the American University of Beirut). However, secular organizations and private individuals were also very much involved, as in the case of Robert College in Istanbul, the work of the Institute of International Education, the early archaeological expeditions sponsored by American universities in Egypt, Mexico, and Peru, or travel accounts penned by wandering Americans and the travels of American artists. Nelson Rockefeller developed an international outlook through the work of his family's foundations, but in addition he made a lengthy trip through Mexico to study Mexican arts and architecture. He was mentored by René d'Harnoncourt, who subsequently started the Latin American collecting for, and later headed, the MoMA. 2. For a quick but incisive look at origins and early expectations, see Mulcahy 1999 Mulcahy, K. 1999. Cultural diplomacy and the exchange program: 1938–1978. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 29(1): 7–29. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] and Cummings 2003 Cummings, M. 2003. Cultural diplomacy and the United States government: A survey, Washington, DC: Center for Arts and Culture. [Google Scholar]. Ninkovich (1981) Ninkovich, F. 1981. The diplomacy of ideas: U.S. foreign policy and cultural relations, 1938–1950, New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. [Google Scholar] provides a longer account that is particularly instructive for understanding the predicament of recent years. For the same reason, Frankel (1966) Frankel, C. 1966. The neglected aspect of foreign affairs: American educational and cultural policy abroad, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. [Google Scholar] bears close study, not least for its thoughtful exploration of the philosophical underpinnings of cultural diplomacy. Both the Ninkovich and Frankel works may be said to cover the formative period of U.S. cultural diplomacy. A fine-grained review of the field's evolution is found in Arndt (2006) Arndt, R. T. 2006. The first resort of kings: American cultural diplomacy in the twentieth century, Dulles: Potomac Books, Inc. [Google Scholar]. Also of particular use are Richmond 2003 Richmond, Y. 2003. Cultural exchange and the cold war: Raising the iron curtain, University Park: State Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Saunders 2000 Saunders, F. S. 2000. The cultural cold war: The CIA and the world of arts and letters, New York: New Press. [Google Scholar]; Krenn 2005 Krenn, M. L. 2005. Fallout shelters for the human spirit: American art and the cold war, Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. [Google Scholar]; and Caute 2003 Caute, D. 2003. The dancer defects: The struggle for cultural supremacy during the cold war, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. [Google Scholar]. 3. The extension of government into inter-American cultural relations was no doubt facilitated by the several Depression period programs through which the federal government already supported the arts; these programs were partly modeled on the Mexican government's lavish patronage of the arts that has attracted much attention in the U.S. and Europe. During WWII, a good many painters, photographers, and other artists were also hired or commissioned to produce a pictorial record of combat and, in the cases of performing artists and actors, provided diversion for the military, including overseas and domestic concertizing at USOs, military bases, and field stations. From this period too came the memorable editorial cartoons in Stars and Stripes, drawn by Bill Mauldin. 4. Rodó (1900) Rodó, J. E. 1900. Ariel, Montevideo: Imprenta de Dornaleche y Reyes. [Google Scholar] wrote a singularly influential book that contrasted the idealism of Hispanic culture with the materialism of the U.S., a dichotomization that was well received in intellectual circles far beyond the boundaries of Uruguay. 5. These efforts were complimented by the first U.S. foreign economic and technical assistance programs, which were backed up by financing from the Exim Bank of Washington. These programs were established in the 1930s to create major new state-owned iron and steel mills in Mexico and Brazil during the war, and to round up German nationals from Central American countries, Colombia, and other parts of South America for internment in camps in the U.S. for the duration of the conflict. See Friedman 2003 Friedman, M. P. 2003. Nazis and good neighbors: The United States campaign against the Germans of Latin America in World War II, New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. [Google Scholar]. 6. Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber was the author who was sounding the alarm, which spread beyond the borders of France. For other studies of the supposed Americanization of Europe, see Kuisel 1993 Kuisel, R. 1993. Seducing the French: The dilemma of americanization, Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. [Google Scholar] and Pells 1997 Pells, R. H. 1997. Not like us: How Europeans have loved, hated, and transformed American culture since World War II, New York: Basic Books. [Google Scholar]. 7. Dizard (2004) provides both the most recent of several studies of this policy instrument and an authoritative place to examine the evolving mission of the agency from its beginning to its end in 1999. See also Comptroller General of the United States 1974 Comptroller General of the United States. March 1974. Telling America's story to the world—problems and issues, United States Information Agency Washington, DC Report to Congress [Google Scholar]. Those interested in the work of the agency are fortunate for the reasonably rich bibliography available on its activities before it was abolished and its functions transferred. 8. Some of the assistance provided to these students came from U.S. libraries abroad through English language instruction and counseling services, and were generally housed in libraries and binational cultural centers. This assistance helped steer students from developing countries to appropriate institutions in the U.S. The Fulbright awards for student exchange came to be supplemented in important measure by scholarships awarded by U.S. foundations and by many additional exchanges generated through projects of development assistance. 9. According to Barry Fulton, a seasoned diplomat who enjoyed a distinguished career in public diplomacy and who later directed the George Washington University Public Diplomacy Institute, the function of public diplomacy had been severely crippled to the point of becoming almost moribund (2004). A multitude of others, such as specialists in the Department of Defense, have spoken of the field of public diplomacy as being in crisis. What has been said of public diplomacy applies in spades to cultural diplomacy. 10. This is not necessarily bad as it has at times protected the exchanges budget and thwarted encroachments on it from other divisions of the USIA. But it can be troublesome. Following WWII and the Korean War, both Congress and the Executive Branch eventually recognized a national need for increased foreign area expertise. Prompted in part by Sputnik, the National Defense Education Act was enacted in 1958 to support foreign language and area studies in American universities. This repeated, albeit through a different agency, what the State Department had done in the early 1940s when it made grants to American universities to strengthen academic expertise on Latin America. To add to the area competence on Asia, a particularly critical region, the East-West Center in Hawaii was funded in 1960 through the Cultural Affairs Division in the Department of State, Hawaii being, at that time, a stopping point on flights across the Pacific. However, NDEA funding built up significant Asian expertise at mainland research universities, and in time passengers could easily over-fly Hawaii in trans-Pacific travel. Nonetheless, the clout of the Hawaiian congressional delegation protected the large earmarked appropriation for the East-West Center, favoring it over arguably stronger research centers on the mainland. 11. Radio Martí had been established in 1985, before the end of the Cold War, but TV Martí, a more costly endeavor, went on the air in 1990. New broadcasting capabilities were added for Africa in the same period, adding further to the huge production costs absorbed by the Congressionally popular Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Worldnet Television, and Radio Free Asia. 12. See Iyer 1988 Iyer, P. 1988. Video night in Kathmandu: And other reports from the not-so-Far East, New York: Knopf. [Google Scholar] and Cowen 2002 Cowen, T. 2002. Creative destruction: How globalization is changing the world's cultures, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar].