By PHK
“Better to see once, than hear a hundred times,” – an Old Russian Proverb
Last Sunday, the New York Times “On this Day” in history featured its July 24, 1959 report from Moscow entitled “Nixon and Khrushchev argue in public as U.S. exhibit opens; accuse each other of threats.” This front page, top of the right hand column story (now in the pay for view only archive) was written by the Times’ then gray haired, veteran Soviet correspondent Harrison Salisbury. The famous “debate,” of course, occurred at the height of the Cold War. It also took place in a model American kitchen that was a part of the much larger American National exhibition, the first ever on display in the Soviet Union where it debuted in Moscow’s large Sokolniki Park and where twenty years later my then three year old would occasionally play.
The American National Exhibition, the 22 others that followed, and the young Russian speaking American exhibit guides who tended those exhibits and their thousands of visitors became stars in their own right. This was one of the few ways the U.S. had to reach the internationally isolated Soviet public – but it was amazingly effective.
This was the time when our small Embassy staff was largely confined inside Moscow’s outer ring road. But our exhibits traveled off the beaten path – to places like Ufa, Novosibirsk, Rostov, Tashkent, Baku and Kishinev (now Chisenau, Moldova). These exhibits about American life and American people made millions of American friends. They made friends because Soviets, for the first time, had the opportunity to meet Americans and see for themselves how we lived. On a personal level, Soviets and Americans often got along very well - even in the worst of times.
Sure, one can argue that the exhibits were part of America’s anti-Soviet propaganda campaign. But I would suggest that they were much more: they created some of the first bridges between Americans and Russians – and despite the Khrushchev-Nixon blustering that took place over a built-in panel washing machine that day in July (an aside: how much do you want to bet neither of these men used a washing machine or had seen the insides of a kitchen in years – or, if so, did more than raid the refrigerator), the presence of these exhibits helped breakdown the stereotypes that had been built up by officialdom on both sides. The Berlin Wall had yet to be erected, but the U.S. exhibits helped – over their 32 year lifespan – to tear down the anti-American propaganda wall that the Soviet government had so carefully erected brick-by-brick and tended with utmost care.
I heard it said more than once that the U.S. exhibits were simply stage sets for the youthful guides’ performances. The exhibits offered Soviet visitors personal contacts with Russian-speaking Americans. This is what made the most difference – not the sinks, washing machines, frozen food packaging, lipstick or whatever other commodities that our guides were there to discuss.
I will also tell you that in the early 1980s when I served in Athens, Greece and U.S.-Greek relations had plummeted, one of the first things our then experienced career ambassador asked for from USIA was a traveling exhibit along the lines of the ones touring the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. USIA still had its professional exhibits service and “Theater USA, Today” was made available. It was displayed at a major Athens art museum, the Ethniki Pinakothiki, just off Vassilias Sophias, a main north-south artery where November 17’s Greek terrorist anti-American motorcycle gunmen, then plied their trade. They had killed our Naval Attache as he drove to work along that very boulevard. Yet, November 17th's relentless succession of anti-American terrorist acts – including rockets launched against American-owned businesses - did not deter Ambassador Monteagle Stearns from bringing to Athens the best of American art and culture for all to see. Nor did it stop me from driving daily to and from the Hellenic American Union, our binational center, in downtown Athens where I was Executive Director and where we then taught over 3,000 Greeks at a time the English language, ran two libraries (one Greek and the other American), held art exhibits, showed American movies to standing room only crowds, staged concerts, plays and other theatrical events in our 250 seat auditorium with one of the best Steinways in town.
And while the Athenian crowds were not perhaps as thick, or the lines as long as for “Theater USA” in the Communist countries, the exhibit was acclaimed by skeptical Greeks. That same period, New York’s Alvin Ailey Dance Company danced at the Herod Atticus Athens Summer Festival to rave reviews, standing ovations and sold out performances.
The points I’m trying to make here are that if, and when, the U.S. Government ever becomes serious about using public diplomacy to improve its image abroad, and if by chance, it happens during the second Bush Presidency, Karen Hughes, Dina Powell and others in position to make a difference need to look at past successes as well as at the present.
Yes, times have changed. Yet, television did not make radio obsolete. Radio did not put books and magazines out to pasture to molder along side those Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Assyrian stone tablets in farmers’ fields in the Eastern Mediterranean. Electronic broadcasts did not make the written word a thing of the past. Those in charge of this nation’s image abroad need, therefore, to explore all possibilities. They should think particularly hard about the advisability of the current “small presence,” the emphasis on the “hard” policy sell to selective “opinion leaders,” and their minimalist, security enhanced public diplomacy staffs largely hidden behind today's fortress embassy walls.
Current Bush Administration public diplomacy strategies have, in part, failed because most people abroad don’t agree, won’t agree, and profoundly dislike the President and most of his cohorts. Frankly, unless the policies change – and perhaps the White House, too – the “hard sell” won’t matter even if its policy sound-bites were emblazoned on gigantic billboards gracing London’s Trafalgar or Athens,’ Constitution Squares. But there is another side to U.S. public diplomacy that can be effective in the long run – as Ambassador Stearns demonstrated in June 1983 with “Theater USA” and as did Soviet specialists like Yale Richmond and others who fought for the continuation of those exhibits that traveled throughout the then Communist world for 32 years.
What overseas Muslims and others do like about the U.S. has a lot to do with American society and culture – and this goes well beyond the deluge of mindlessness dished out by MTV and other satellite channels. The data tell us that many Muslims do not hate our values and wouldn’t mind having a bit more democracy thank you very much. The polls from Indonesia also tell us that the US military’s help to Tsunami victims in December made a major, positive difference on the US image among Indonesians. This includes Indonesians in the arch-Islamic, secessionist Aceh where the tidal wave’s brunt occurred.
But Muslims and others strongly opposed, and continue to oppose the US invasion/occupation of Iraq. No amount of hard sell or re-branding on the part of the administration will change this. Up the volume all you like, but unless policies are profoundly changed not much is going to happen to improve the poll data.
What the keepers of our image abroad, however, can do is emphasize the “slow” train – and this is what cultural and educational public diplomacy is all about. But that means getting out from behind those fortress embassy walls, reestablishing cultural centers, binational centers, libraries and exhibits. It includes bringing in orchestras, dance troupes theatrical performances, filmmakers, and basketball coaches. And it means increasing Fulbright and other bilateral long term educational exchange programs (I mean bilateral not the one-way, AID-type training programs that the Clinton Administration favored – or the far too short International Visitor Programs that bring foreigners here for two to three weeks, but fail to send American counterparts abroad.)
I don’t know whether working this kind of magic is in Karen Hughes’ purview or abilities, but as a taxpayer, I sure wish she’d give it a try.
With special thanks to Yale Richmond and his book, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain, University Park, Pennslyvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003, pp. 133-135, Ambassador Monteagle Stearns for bringing “Theater USA to Athens, June 1983, and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company for continuing to perform abroad.