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Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: How the West Won

By Yale Richmond, Guest Contributor

Yale Richmond, a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer and author of 11 books on intercultural communication, worked on U.S.-Soviet cultural and other exchanges for more than 20 years.  He delivered the following speech at the Aleksanteri Institute’s 9^th Annual Conference “Cold War Interactions Reconsidered” 29-31 October 2009, University of Helsinki, Finland.

This is the first of a two part series.  The second part will appear on Thursday, December 10.

I want to thank the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki for this opportunity to speak to you. It is an honor to be asked to address such a well-informed audience.                              

First a disclaimer. Although I worked for the US Government for more than 35 years, and many of those years on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, I do not speak for the State Department today. The views I present here today are my own.

There are many theories of why communism collapsed and the Cold War ended, as you will likely be hearing in this conference.   

There are a few grains of truth in some of those explanations, and more than a few in others, but I will provide today many grains of another explanation—that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism were consequences of Soviet contacts and cultural exchanges with the West, and with the United States in particular, over the years that followed the death of Stalin in 1953.

When cultural exchange with the Soviets is mentioned, most people think of Soviet dancers, symphony orchestras, ice shows, and circuses that came to the West and filled our halls with admiring spectators. But cultural exchange consisted of much more--exhibitions, motion pictures, and most important, exchanges of people.

The Iron Curtain was almost impenetrable. Information about the West was closely controlled. There was no free press and no internet. Foreign travel for Russians was very limited, and few visitors came to the Soviet Union. Moreover, most of Soviet territory was closed to travel by foreigners, except for a few large cities. Most Russians thought they were better off than people in the capitalist West.

However, over a 30-year period (1958-1988), more than 50,000 Soviet citizens came to the United States under various exchanges of the US-Soviet Cultural Agreement, and tens of thousands more came to countries in Western Europe. And those are conservative estimates. They came as scholars and students, scientists and engineers, writers and journalists, government and party leaders, musicians and athletes, and they were all cleared by the KGB for foreign travel. But they came, they saw, they were conquered, and the Soviet Union would never again be the same. Those exchanges changed the Soviet Union and prepared the way for Gorbachev’s glasnost, perestroika, and the end of the Cold War.

I will speak here about United States exchanges with the Soviet Union because we had the largest exchanges with the Soviets, but much of what I say can also apply to exchanges other countries had with the Soviet Union.

What were our objectives?

100,000 American Students to China?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Why is it that the US media focused almost exclusively and sometimes even rather "creatively" on the atmospherics surrounding President Obama’s recent trip to Asia but ignored much of the substance? Didn’t the White House reporters who accompanied the president understand that foreign affairs and substance are related? Don’t they realize that parsing the sentences of a joint communiqué or even reading the text of or listening to a Town Hall meeting (as opposed to being frustrated because they couldn’t use instant messaging to contact their editors – or Twitter their fans due to over-zealous Chinese censors) can bear not only fruit but a few surprises? And maybe even a news article at that? Or don’t they care? Or perhaps future educational opportunities for young Americans just don't rate.

One US media ignored surprise

One of those media ignored surprises was President Obama’s commitment first announced at the Town Hall meeting in Shanghai to expand the number of American students studying in China from 20,000 to 100,000. This commitment was reiterated in more detail later in a joint communiqué issued in Beijing. The number 100,000 was likely selected to match the approximate number of Chinese currently studying in the US. Regardless, it would also represent a huge jump in American students studying abroad. Furthermore, it would be an about-face from the Bush administration’s policies that emphasized one way “exchanges” – namely foreigners coming here – while specializing in sending Americans abroad on troop ships or planes.

I had decided ever since I lived in the Philippines in the early 1990s that it was as important for Americans to travel, live and work abroad as it is for the US to play host to foreigners. Unfortunately, the successive administrations all too often saw it differently. The US government related programs that did involve two way exchanges – with the exception of Fulbright and the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange – were defunded, eliminated or devalued. But in reality, several of them were by far the most cost effective. They also had the greatest chance of furthering long term people-to-people connections - which is what I thought student and youth exchanges were all about anyway.

An Agreement "in principle"

According to the US-Chinese communiqué, the two governments agreed “in principle to establish a new bilateral mechanism to facilitate these (student) exchanges.” The communiqué also states that the US “seeks to encourage more Americans to study in China by launching a new initiative to send 100,000 students to China over the coming four years.” Presumably this would occur under the rubric of the US-Chinese Cultural Agreement to be renegotiated in 2010 - although the communiqué itself does not so state.

The Dangerous Business of Female Education

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I mentioned the International Islamic University in Islamabad yesterday.  That’s where the latest suicide bombings in Pakistan took place.  Six not five persons were killed.  Three were girls and not by coincidence.  This was not one of those "senseless" incidents.  Here's an interesting Pakistani take on the bombings.

The best way to get an idea of the ambiance at the IIU is to take a look at the university’s website.  Women attend, but it's not really a co-educational institution.  It’s a highly segregated place.  Do a little browsing on the site, and soon you will realize that you are being bombarded with references to “the female wing”  of the IIU.  Naturally there are no references to the “male wing.”  If you find this as irritating as I do, think of similar practices in our own society. For instance, it is quite “normal” for  female high school athletes to be called by the hideous term of, say, the “Elkettes,” while the real teams, the male teams, are always the “Elks,” the nickname that would  apply to the school taken as a whole.

In pictures of classes and activities at IIU, you will note that most of the female students are very heavily veiled, even with no male present (unless the eye of the camera counts).  Only at the highest administrative level is an occasional female faculty member or dean represented with face fully revealed, often in the context of receiving foreign visitors, eg. pandering to the outside world.  

Otherwise the IIU world is male male male.  Male students.  Male teachers.  Male administrators.  Not so different from the way it used to be, not so many decades ago, in  many contexts in the West, for that matter.  Only recently have female faces turned up regularly in leadership roles or even as a good percentage of street crowds.  Re this, I’m going to see that both my sons get copies of the new book by Gail Collins: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.  Being a woman was pretty horrible when I was a kid—and lots of us vowed we’d change things or die trying.  Fortunately, the latter wasn’t needed in our case, but Pakistani girls who want an education and a professional life may be targeted by those who fear social change.    And their schools certainly aren't safe, not even the schools for primary students.

All the above notwithstanding, there is much to be said for the IIU as a way to provide a higher education for girls who would never otherwise be able to obtain a college degree.  As the website photos prove,  there's nothing like equality between the sexes here and the curriculum certainly does not offer anything close to a liberal education, but IIU does signify a step in the right direction.   Above all, the young women who graduate will be able to read the Koran for themselves and do some thinking of their own, which is unlikely to please the village mullahs who accustomed to quoting convenient

The Field: Where Foreign Policy Succeeds or Fails

Public Diplomacy Today

Part 4

By Patricia H. Kushlis and Patricia Lee Sharpe

Foreign policy needs and goals are defined in Washington, but foreign policy succeeds or fails in the field.  Attention is sought.  Criticism is met.  Competing influences are neutralized or co-opted. Friends are made. Alliances are built.  Goals are achieved—or not.   It helps hugely when policy is intrinsically attractive.  Being militarily strong helps, too, up to a point. Overwhelming strength is often resented.  It becomes, paradoxically, a disadvantage to be adroitly overcome, since no other country wants to appear to have been coerced.  But raw power flaunted or sheathed, even the U.S. can’t go it alone in today’s world.  Public diplomacy’s role is to move governments by inspiring their citizens to see American goals as good for them, too.

The Trifecta:  Information, Culture, Education

Public Diplomacy in the field, at post, works both directly and indirectly.  It aims simultaneously for immediate and longer term impact, the two time lines corresponding roughly to the two branches of traditional PD work: information and culture.  Sometimes the information function is confused with the manipulations better known today as propaganda, although PD’s need for reliability and credibility makes it more akin to journalism.  Cultural programs are often dismissed as frills, expensive indulgences whose impact is difficult to measure, which is true, but only because conventional polling is at its weakest when assessing qualitative phenomena and complex interactions. Straddling the two, though not customarily administered as such, are the educational programs which involve knowledgeable Americans interacting with foreign audiences, short trips to the U.S. for promising mid-career foreign citizens, youth exchanges, academic exchanges like the Fulbright program and even, until recently, university linkages. 

Informational, educational, cultural—these are the co-equal mutually-supportive elements of an effective PD program.  Properly orchestrated, they enhance the overall American image, making the U.S. better understood and more attractive as an ally.  They create lasting links between individuals and institutions, which keeps doors open and ensures a hearing when tough or sensitive issues need support.   They provide, via all media platforms, relevant, accurate and timely information to foreign publics whose mobilization is critical if American foreign policy goals are to be met.

Planning for Success

Because every country is different—even Canada and the United States differ in ways that would call for modulated communications strategies—a Washington-dictated, one-way, one-size-fits-all approach to public diplomacy, however tempting it might seem to bean counters, doesn’t work. Therefore, once Washington establishes policy priorities, experienced, skilled, perceptive  and imaginative field officers must be trusted to devise ways to sell it. 

In the past, USIA posts were required to submit an annual country plan assessing the state of the bilateral relationship, describing (in cooperation with the entire mission) how the post proposed to nourish the relationship while promoting, according to carefully specified strategies, Washington’s policy priorities and, last but not least, requesting the financial, human and material resources to do so.  Expectations for evaluation and feedback were built in.   Naturally big posts in big countries enjoyed more staff and bigger budgets.  But all posts in all countries were guaranteed sufficient resources—Public Affairs Officer plus American and/or locally-hired personnel; a vast range of highly-responsive, Washington-based backup services; firewalled budgetary authority; the wherewithal to run a full service American Center; an appropriate inventory of up-to-date equipment; and, last but not least, PD-controlled vehicles—to offer a high-quality, well-balanced, year-round program that could and would put America in the best possible light.  

The State Department has a habit of bemoaning the lack of administrative skills among its high level officers—and yet, at every post, there was, for decades, a whole cadre of field-tested managers who were also Foreign Service Officers: the public diplomacy people.  Even fairly junior officers had managerial responsibilities, and anyone who wanted to be a Public Affairs Officer had to be an adroit CEO, a dollar-squeezing CFO, a supervisor with a knack for delegating, a program coordinator, a cultural impresario, a human resources geni, a master of media, a public relations whiz, a social psychologist, a linguist, a self-confident performer—and make it all look smooth and easy to the public, which is why, perhaps, the typical State Department officer found it so difficult to appreciate what those public diplomacy colleagues were doing.  Even today there are calls for outside hires to supply the State Department with managerial talent.  Meanwhile, the superb managers that State acquired when it absorbed USIA, were ignored or devalued.  Many, therefore, retired prematurely.  Although a very few prospered and even became Ambassadors, Deputy Chiefs of Mission or Consul Generals, most public diplomacy operational skills are in a state of disuse bordering on atrophy and will soon be lost, except as recorded in the memoirs of better times. Talk about squandering capital!

Global Intentions Local Results – Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

The subtitle of William P. Kiehl’s comparative study about the international activities of three Pennsylvania colleges is entitled How Colleges Can Create International Communities. Whether this subtitle should have ended with a question mark and been rephrased to read “How Can Colleges Create International Communities – Or Can They and Should They?” is a question worth asking. Each of the three private colleges in question approaches the problem of internationalization differently.

These colleges range from Dickinson College (Carlisle) with its decades old international orientation which attracts a nationwide student body to Elizabethtown and Gettysburg Colleges both of which have been – and remain - more inwardly focused. This, despite their recent attempts to jump – albeit half-heartedly - on the “internationalization” bandwagon in the aftermath of 9/11. Gettysburg College has been the more successful of the two – but both have far to go before they even reach – in my view - the 50 yard line.

In all fairness, Dickinson’s student body is far more diverse geographically. Students are attracted to the college because of its long term focus on international affairs as opposed to either of the two other colleges included in Kiehl’s study. In contrast, Elizabethtown in particular but also Gettysburg College has mostly appealed to students locally.

Town vs. Gown: Parallel not Mutually Supportive Universes

Hilary in India

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

It was a master stroke: arranging for Hillary Clinton to stay at the Taj Mahal Hotel during her visit to Mumbai.  Think of it!  The U.S. Secretary of State dares to sleep on the spot where terrorists murdered so many people toward the end of last year. And the arrangements held, despite the hotel bombings in Jakarta a couple of days ago.  The Taj gesture sends a message to terrorists that U.S envoys aren’t going to skulk around in dreary safe havens.  It also signals to the government of India: we trust you to take care of our Secretary of State.

Kudos to Organizers

So let me pause here to compliment whomever it was in the State Department (or in our mission in India) who dreamed up the Taj idea.  And let me also compliment the State security people (whom I often found to be stultifyingly obstructive when I was working abroad) for a stroke of imaginative support for diplomacy.  Naturally, I'm aware that security, American and India, was thick on the ground, but the gesture still counts, as does the length of the visit.  On such intangibles important international relationships are built.

Finally I compliment those who nixed any visit to Pakistan during this trip which takes Clinton next to the ASEAN meeting in Bangkok.  Lately we've been treated to the hypenenated expression Af-Pak.  In referring to a very hot war that seesaws across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, that combo makes sense.  But India has long seethed over the Indo-Pak reflex in U.S. foreign policy.  There are many hard-nosed reasons why India deserves to be a singular locus of attention, and Hillary made those points clearlly, though she also rightly introduced the realities arising from border sharing: what happens in Pakistan affects India; an unstable Pakistan is not good for India.  Happily avoided was mindless equivalence, as if India and Pakistan were a South Asian Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

India and China: Many Minorities, Two Paths

PART ONE

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Both China and India have faced challenges from restive minorities with real grievances.  Their default solutions have been vastly different. 

From the moment India emerged from the blood-soaked partition that created Pakistan, doomsyers have been predicting that the country would fall apart. The wonderful word for the threat was “fissiperous tendencies.”  Right after independence India had 14 constituent states and a federal constitution with some impressive central powers.  Today, thanks largely to successful minority agitation, India has 28 states.  Although there are still some tiny minorities, especially in the Eastern border areas, with “freedom fighters” who mask extortion operations in demands for statehood with a capital S,  I haven’t heard the F-word in a long time. The Maoist insurgency with its heart in the mountainous areas that parallel the Bay of Bengal is, however, a serious concern.  New state-creation is not going to solve this one.  Kashmir is sui generis.

China’s word for the fear of falling apart is “splitism,” evidently, which I must take on faith, since I don’t read or speak Chinese.  For the longest time the focus of Chinese separatist worries has been on Tibet.  Now we learn that Muslim Turkic Uigher ethnics in the vast northwestern Xinjiang area are equally unhappy.  What's more, ethnic minorities most of us have never heard of are causing law and order problems for authorities  in other parts of the country.   So China isn't quite the tidy entity it would like to be and be seen as.  China’s solution to ethnic aspirations tends to combine isolation with repression along with a policy of flooding a discordant area with Han Chinese, the goal being cultural homogeneity.  One country.  One ethnicity—except when folk dancers are needed for some festival.  The problem is that most minorities don’t seem to be grateful for the opportunity to become 100% Han-like, especially since it isn't exactly voluntary. 

Pakistan: The Slippery Slope

by Patricia Lee Sharpe

The complete Islamisation of Pakistan, I wrote a little while ago, “may very well creep in by degree—and decree,” not necessarily suddenly, by Kalashnikov.  In fact, the process began decades ago, as Pervez Hoodbhy explains in an article which appeared in the January 2009 issue of the premier Pakistani newsmagazine Newsline.  Over the years, I too have watched the evolution of a certain sort of religio-cultural “cleansing.”  It’s been gradual but relentless—and should have been obvious to anyone who chose to pay attention.  You don’t have to be a C.I.A. operative to see things changing and figure out where the nudge is coming from. 

And yet, just a few weeks ago, the Jim Lehrer News Hour was presenting supposedly knowledgeable observers who were arguing that the Taliban problem (to use an admittedly simplistic collective label) was essentially a Pashtun problem, especially in the Afghanistan-bordering tribal areas.  According to this point of view, Talibanization is a self-limiting phenomenon like tribal culture itself.  Thus, they argued, panic-stricken doom-and-gloom responses to the recent events in Swat are ludicrous. After all, Swat is only a few valleys over from the F.A.T.A. area proper.  Punjab and Sindh, these ostrich-like experts argued, could never succumb to the Taliban and, since Punjab and Sindh are culturally immune, the million man Pakistani army is big enough to handle any threat.  There will be no messy civil war-like battles throughout the country.  Fighting will be limited to border skirmishes, ugly but containable, assuming the Army is finally taking the task seriously.

But, of course, Sindh and Punjab are not immune, as Hoodbhoy demonstrates, painting a picture that’s only slightly less bleak than that in “Pakistan on the Brink,” Ahmed Rashid’s contribution to the June 11 issue of The New York Review of Books.  As for me, I can attest to the growing influence of salafi Islam on Pakistan’s two most sophisticated, secular cities.  That’s Lahore in Punjab and Karachi in Sindh.  I’ll be describing below some of the out-in-the-open signs and symptoms that any alert and interested outsider could have picked up over the years.

The Vision Fades

It all began with the ham-eating, scotch-drinking lawyer Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who married a Parsi, not a Muslim, and was, when all is said and done, responsible for the partition of British India which gave rise to Pakistan.  He envisioned a Muslim-majority secular state with room for minorities to participate as equal citizens, but he died in 1948, a year after Pakistan was born. Gradually, thanks to greed and complacency among secularists and the Islamists’ dogged perseverance, Jinnah’s vision became irrelevant.  (More extreme simplification.  Sigh!)

Let’s fast forward to the mid-70s, when General Zia-ul-Haq staged a coup that eventually led to the hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the father of the recently assassinated Benazir Bhutto.  Under Zia the on-again-off-again opportunistic nexus between military power seekers and Islamists became more like a bear hug.  Sharia-inspired Hudud Laws (sometimes fatal to women) and Blasphemy laws (murderous for Christians with prosperous farms) were put on the books.  No one since then has been able to annul these draconian laws, not even the avowed secularist and subsequent coupist General Pervez Mussharaf who vowed early on that he would do so.

Culture on the Defense

Back then, in the 70s,  I was teaching American literature at Punjab University in Lahore under a Fulbright grant (and my husband was doing research on politics and economics, which gave me access to all kinds of social science type data).  My female M.A. students* were very concerned during those days of legal transformation.  Their mothers and grandmothers had come out of purda to march in the streets and demonstrate against Great Britain, the colonial occupier.  These girls had no desire to go back to the bad old days of seclusion.  Even so, their male classmates thought it was funny to threaten them with the veil.  The girls were terrified.  They were genuinely fearful of losing the freedoms the older generation had won for them.