USIA: Let It Be, by Gordon Duguid
Whenever foreign confidence in American leadership declines, one regularly hears calls for the recreation of the U.S. Information Agency. The popularly assumed success of malign information manipulation or disinformation from China, Russia, and Iran has resuscitated this call. The notion seems to be that a fresh entity would be more successful than the State Department, which assumed USIA’s functions in 1999, in countering disinformation that harms U.S. interests and America’s image abroad. This assumption is wrong. USIA, as it was from the 1950s to the mid-1990s, could not operate in today’s foreign policy establishment. It worked then because there was a political consensus to fund the promotion of an agreed-upon narrative across the decades. Along with adequate funding, USIA was given the freedom to flexibly advocate policy in the myriad local media markets of the day. Such luxuries no longer exist.
With today’s budget constraints and centralized messaging, the viability of a small, independent agency being allowed by any Administration to pursue a bipartisan approach to championing America’s virtues is very unlikely. Indeed, I am not sure there is a consensus today on America’s virtues. Without the expense and political battles needed to recreate USIA, however, we can reproduce its effectiveness efficiently by increasing resources, easing message centralization, and better using the Foreign Service’s Public Diplomacy Officers in the field to analyze and influence public opinion in their countries of assignment, as USIA did so well.
Different mandate, new media environment
Nostalgia for USIA’s mandate to tell America’s story directly to foreign audiences is attractive. That agency presented American policies, practices, and culture without prejudice of political party. Many was the Ambassador who waxed livid after learning that his USIA team had invited a critic of the administration of the day to speak to a high-profile audience in the host country. But USIA’s single mission is gone. A broad telling of America’s story from all points of view has not been any administration’s priority since 1999. Gone too are many of the tools used: television and radio programs, books and magazines, art exhibits, concerts, films, and cultural centers. All but one or two libraries and some English teaching programs remain. Our speaker program is underfunded, but rarely fields critics of the administration, even though this practice can lead to enhanced credibility.
Meanwhile, autocracies across the globe have spent the last 25 years capturing their domestic media and cutting off their information space from the outside world. USIA’s tools and assets may have helped crack such closed markets, but we now rely on Information Resource Centers and American Corners. These were developed when we realized the mistake of closing libraries. The best of them work heroically to advocate for all Americans as well as U.S. policy, but many are but a shelf of U.S. publications in someone else’s library.
Audiences in captured media markets are looking for dialogue, especially on U.S. policies they initially perceive as contrary to their interests. The more we can address the concerns in-person, the better, but too often today, there are not enough people left in our embassies to do this effectively. Scores of existing foreign and civil service positions are unfilled due to budget cuts. For some, the answer to the lack of people is virtual platforms. These gained prevalence during the pandemic for expanded engagement, but the reliance of technology over human interaction began as soon as the “information super-highway” became a catchphrase. Technology and human resources must complement one another, but we are not investing enough in either.
Thankfully, bi-national centers remain, especially those in South America, and could be a model for a re-expansion by the State Department in some authoritarian countries. People-to-people exchanges such as the Fulbright program and International Visitors Leadership Program remain as well and are irreplaceable means to connect American and foreign communities. In a U.S. political environment that is increasingly polarized and fractious, there remains bi-partisan support for programs that bring American citizens and communities together – virtually and in-person – with foreign counterparts. As these programs are working well, what is the motivation to move them into a new agency? The angst over disinformation seems to be the answer.
Today’s challenge
Although information manipulation has always existed, the development of global mainstream and social media has rendered it faster, less manageable, and more ubiquitous. Billions of people also have direct access to American broadcasts, publications, and social media that may or may not offer factual information -- a situation USIA never faced. This has led to greater centralization and message control from Washington. A mis-spoken word on policy made to a local paper in Uruguay can find its way to the president’s desk in just over a heartbeat. USIA nostalgists ignore the importance of message centralization to administrations of both major parties. U.S. policy must be championed, explained, and supported by public diplomacy. There is no disagreement about this. While advocating controversial U.S. policies abroad, however, public diplomacy officers often must follow a strict script from Washington frequently leaving little room for tailoring a message to a local audience. As such, we can expect only limited nimbleness or “getting ahead of the story” from any foreign affairs agency. We can also expect that our adversaries are busy tailoring our message for us.
The State Department is also saddled with the notion that the U.S. must “win the information war.” This is the wrong way to address the problem of disinformation. There is no question that disinformation has surged since 2016, but it has always been with us. The Soviet Union pursued “active measures” to disinform foreign publics from the 1920s. I can recall vividly USIA’s efforts to counter the malign information known as the “baby parts story” in the 1980s. That was a whispering campaign started by the KGB in the poorest neighborhoods in South America, claiming that the U.S. was kidnapping local children to harvest their organs to save American children. USIA never “won” the fight against that story. It surfaced regularly for years and is probably still out there in the dark corners of cyberspace. What USIA did was provide clear evidence for over two decades that the story was not true, and to investigate and expose its Kremlin source. Thus, the story went back into its loathsome den. We are still in a constant struggle to promote American values, but we lack the commitment to sustained engagement that we as a nation had from 1948-1999. That alone would seem to set up a new agency for failure.
Work the problem, not the org chart
Funding for all U.S. diplomatic activities has been declining for decades, and funding for all forms U, S, public diplomacy is a fraction of what Moscow and Beijing spend on disinformation alone. With the draining of funds from the State Department, the Pentagon tries to fill the gaps. Combatant Commands field many more public affairs resources that any State Department bureau could match, but the Pentagon’s money is focused on supporting U.S. military activities, not all U.S. activities abroad. If members of Congress really care about fighting foreign information manipulation, they would put funding for it into the State Department’s budget, rather than trying to cut ever more funding while also shutting down public diplomacy entities such as the Global Engagement Center, which directly works to counter malign information.
Creating a new agency would lead inevitably to in-fighting over resources. Global media relations are managed by a complex infrastructure in the Bureau of Global Public Affairs. It is unlikely that State would relinquish this infrastructure to a new agency, nor should it, given the disruption and policy dysfunction such an amputation would cause. More likely, the press and media functions would remain at State, both at home and abroad. Thus, a new USIA would be an orphan agency with an ambiguous relationship to the chief foreign policy institution, the Department of State, assigned to manage cultural, educational, and professional exchanges among other programs. A new foreign affairs agency dedicated to public diplomacy would also undo many years of integrating the field into the valuable daily work of the State Department.
One USIA practice that State can implement now is to instruct all U.S. embassies to implement a reporting plan that covers the local cultural, media educational and public opinion issues in their host country, as USIA did. This is still done by some embassies, but those where we have only one public diplomacy officer -- mostly in the Global South, where Russia and the PRC are gaining ground at America’s expense – reporting suffers from all the other duties with which a single officer gets saddled. The State Department should ensure that all Ambassadors know that the public diplomacy section is an essential reporting office, as well as an operational office.
My answer to champions of a “new USIA” is, however, that conditions at home and abroad would set a new agency up for failure. Adequate funding and resources, however, as well as increasing U.S. civilian presence abroad, is not on Congress’ agenda. If it were, the State Department could manage the problem from its existing bureaus. Creating a new entity would simply be an exercise in stripping assets from the State Department and flinging them at a problem State is already working on.
I advocate working on the problem, not the organization chart. I loved working for USIA. Its focus on the field, rather than on pleasing Washington, was unique for a foreign affairs agency, as was the freedom USIA gave its officers to develop and run information and cultural programs adapted to local needs. But USIA had its day, it did well, we should let it be.
Gordon Duguid is a retired Foreign Service Officer. He served in public diplomacy and senior positions in Washington, Africa, South Asia and Europe. He is currently co-chair of the PDCA Program Committee.