By Patricia Lee Sharpe
For decades now the US has been closing its cultural centers and trying to whip up enthusiasiam for cheap substitutes which surveys have shown to be ineffectual. The rationale for the cost cutting jag? That old end of history canard. Once the Cold War was over, there’d be no need to promote the American brand. We’d won. The future was us—the U.S.
The Greeks were so right about the need for self-knowledge and the dangers of hubris. Our joy and relief when the Berlin Wall came down were so extreme that we thought the U.S. would be on top for ever—well, there were some level headed sorts who considered such thinking to be absurd, but they were pooh-poohed. We cut back on our public diplomacy programs, and within ten years our public diplomacy agency went poof! Gone. In all fairness, I need to add that the Brits were cutting back on British Council expenditures, the French were less generous to their Alliance Française operations and the Germans were closing Goethe Centers, too. The West, in general, was pretty smug about winning the Cold War and was determined to reap financial dividends.
But history, as it will, moved on. Islam exploded, Russia refused to play the role of deferential poor provincial cousin, and if the 20st century was the American century, the competition for which country will dominate the 21st century seems to be constrained only by the never properly appreciated or understood efforts of India to deny the honor to the Chinese. However, the Chinese are looking so good that the Russians, evidently, have decided to follow the Sino one-party-capitalism model to prosperity.
For decades now the US has been closing its cultural centers and trying to whip up enthusiasiam for cheap substitutes which surveys have shown to be ineffectual. The rationale for the cost cutting jag? That old end of history canard. Once the Cold War was over, there’d be no need to promote the American brand. We’d won. The future was us—the U.S.
The Greeks were so right about the need for self-knowledge and the dangers of hubris. Our joy and relief when the Berlin Wall came down were so extreme that we thought the U.S. would be on top for ever—well, there were some level headed sorts who considered such thinking to be absurd, but they were pooh-poohed. We cut back on our public diplomacy programs, and within ten years our public diplomacy agency went poof! Gone. In all fairness, I need to add that the Brits were cutting back on British Council expenditures, the French were less generous to their Alliance Française operations and the Germans were closing Goethe Centers, too. The West, in general, was pretty smug about winning the Cold War and was determined to reap financial dividends.
But history, as it will, moved on. Islam exploded, Russia refused to play the role of deferential poor provincial cousin, and if the 20st century was the American century, the competition for which country will dominate the 21st century seems to be constrained only by the never properly appreciated or understood efforts of India to deny the honor to the Chinese. However, the Chinese are looking so good that the Russians, evidently, have decided to follow the Sino one-party-capitalism model to prosperity.
Not that China has everything figured out. After demonstrating that a centralized Chinese state can orchestrate a stunning Summer Olympics (though not all of the less-than-savory methods could be concealed), the bumpy Chinese performance at the Frankfurt Book Fair earlier this month proved that Beijing has much to learn about PR operations in the larger world. Efforts to control the image backfired when foreign publishers showcased the books and authors that Chinese officialdom had relegated to the status of non-existent. Nevertheless, the Chinese were the guests of honor. This is no small accomplishment.
Both China and India are reaching out to the world, and they have decided to model public diplomacy efforts on the integrated and comprehensive model the U.S. has abandoned. Re China:
Since 2004, China has pursued what it calls its “going out” policy on the cultural front, trying to square its economic influence and new status as a global power, while trying to defuse criticism on issues like Tibet, Taiwan and human rights.India seems to be even more ambitious:
There have been year long cultural exchanges with many countries; the opening of hundreds of language teaching centers known as Confucius Institutes; new foreign-language services from official media like Xinhua and CCTV; and new interest in foreign platforms like the Kennedy Center and the Europalia festival in Brussels.
Riding on the soaring popularity of yoga and Bollywood, India is poised to nearly double its network of cultural centres across the globe in places as diverse as the US, Africa and Latin America.India’s drive to project soft power will see an increase in cultural centers from the current 24 to 40 in the near future. New centers will open in Dhaka, Jakarta and Abu Dhabi in the next three months. Nigeria, Tanzania and Brazil will follow soon.
The opening of new cultural centres is an important initiative in cultural diplomacy to achieve range and depth of cultural coverage, said Karan Singh, president of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR)....
"They make a statement about a resurgent and dynamic India. In culture, India is a superpower," Karan Singh said after he formally inaugurated two cultural centres at Bangkok and Tokyo this week.
The expansion of India’s cultural presence in Afghanistan is worrying Pakistan. “They do not share a border with Afghanistan,” observes Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Quereshi, questioning the appropriateness of India’s growing presence in a country with which Pakistan does share a border.
Shades of old Cold War rivalries!
Americans laughed at the U.S.S.R. for imploding economically despite or because of its enormous military machine. How ironic that America should be in a nearly equivalent position just twenty years later. Like the Soviet Union, we are over-militarized. There’s no money for anything else, not for universal health care, not for education, not for civilian infrastructure. And yet the Pentagon continues to rate an obscenely dominant wedge of the budget pizza year after year.The U.S. has shrunk its cultural presence abroad. India and China are expanding theirs. Even in the era of electronic media, a bricks-and-mortar presence expresses confidence and power. But hey! We can twitter.