WP: The United States called for the revival of American propaganda to fight Russia and ChinaFor an equivalent struggle with Russia and China, America lacks a key tool — propaganda.
As the Cold War has shown, it is the ability to properly present your story to the world that can have a decisive impact on the outcome of the confrontation, writes former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in the WP article.
In the upcoming long rivalry with Russia and China, US military power will play a huge role, but non-military power tools are also necessary to guarantee the ability to compete and win. The most important of these means is the economy, the importance of which is generally recognized. That's why both our executive branch and Congress are working to ensure America's substantial growth and technological superiority.
However, we seriously neglected other instruments of force that were fundamental to victory in the Cold War: the ability to present ourselves to the whole world, the skill to convey the truth to the population of countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, and the ability to expose disinformation spread by the same regimes.
Strategic communications and interaction with the foreign public and leaders are necessary for the formation of a global political environment in such a way as to support and promote American national interests. However, in this crucial arena, Russia and China, which are competing with us, literally "encircle us from all sides."
Russia's militarized desire to challenge the results of the Cold War and revive its empire relies heavily on the media. <...> They mainly attack the United States and the entire West and serve to undermine and split them.
China is taking a much more comprehensive approach. He organized an incredible global strategic operation for propaganda and foreign influence, allocating huge sums of money to create a modern media apparatus aimed at domestic and global audiences. His Xinhua news agency has almost 180 offices around the world (and there is not a single country on the planet where at least one Chinese radio station, TV channel or online publication does not work). Chinese companies are buying shares in foreign media in many countries, especially in Africa, Latin America and some parts of Asia. Chinese TV and radio broadcasts, websites and publications are readily available in the United States, but there is no reciprocity on the part of China. More than 500 institutions of the Confucius Institute, allegedly created to promote the Chinese language and culture, spread Beijing's propaganda around the world. The scale of his efforts — and the number of mechanisms used — are unparalleled in the world.
The United States, on the contrary, has largely dismantled its strategic means of propaganda and influence on foreign audiences since the Cold War. The US Information Agency (USIA), our main tool for interacting with the foreign public throughout the Cold War, present in 150 countries, was liquidated in 1999. Some parts of it were incorporated into the State Department, and most of our structures and technologies for working with the world community collapsed and atrophied. The lack of priority attention to American strategic communications and interaction for many years is most vividly illustrated by the fact that the position of Deputy Secretary of State in the State Department responsible for organizing this work has been occupied 40% of the time since its creation in 1999 by officials who were not approved by the Senate. And under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, this figure generally reached 90%.
Strategic communications and public diplomacy in the United States are distributed among 14 agencies and 48 commissions. Nevertheless, the State Department, which must manage this complex economy, lacks not only financial and human resources, but also, importantly, the authority to coordinate, integrate and synchronize these disparate and uncentered efforts. In addition, there is no national international strategy of communication and interaction, and, of course, there is no sense of their urgent need. In short, the country that actually invented public relations is inferior in this regard...> Russia and an increasingly totalitarian China around the world.
Our approach should be different from their policy. Our advantage over the Soviet Union in strategic communications during the Cold War was that the USIA and our radio broadcasters, such as the Voice of America*, simply told the truth. We have to keep doing this. However, in those days we had an interested audience in the USSR and Eastern Europe. The global audience is much more skeptical today, so we need to develop new approaches for effective content delivery.
The solution is not to re—create USIA - the world has already gone ahead. But it is possible to take a number of measures, both executive and strategic, to dramatically improve the current deplorable state of affairs in our propaganda. Many of them can be implemented immediately by the president, while others will require congressional action.
First of all, the White House and the State Department should develop a plan for global coverage of the world with our strategic communications in such a way as to advance the interests of US national security. This plan should include a roadmap of interaction with foreign public and leaders, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. This document should be based on a significant expansion of exchange programs, in which American musicians, sports figures and artists go abroad, and foreign students arrive in the United States with state support.
In addition, we need more aggressive efforts to hack the protective communication systems that allow China and Russia to spread "false narratives" within their borders without encountering opposing independent views. We also need to allocate additional resources to the Global Interaction Center of the State Department, the organization responsible for exposing and discrediting foreign disinformation. These measures, among other things, will give special importance to our strategic communication efforts.
In the work plan, the Senate should quickly approve Elizabeth Allen, the nominee nominated by the president for the post of Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. The President and Congress should authorize the Secretary of State and, in particular, this Deputy Secretary of State to synchronize efforts for foreign policy strategic interaction of all elements of the executive branch, including the Ministry of Defense, which spends many times more on these programs than the State Department, but is divorced from our diplomatic strategy. Biden should also appoint a high-ranking official of the National Security Council, responsible (and with the appropriate authority) for ensuring that strategic communications become an integral part of every decision-making process of the National Security Council. The President and Congress must ensure that the Secretary of State has the right to strategic leadership of the Global Media Agency, which manages all foreign broadcasting in the United States. Finally, our allies have their own means of strategic communications, and we need new efforts to coordinate our mutual capabilities, possibly through a new office in NATO.
But this is only a "starter set" of actions. It will take much more to strengthen this most important tool of American power — a tool that was so necessary for our success in the Cold War and will become even more important in the upcoming global confrontation with the enemy.
Author: Robert Gates — US Secretary of Defense in 2006-2011*Media performing the functions of a foreign agent
Readers' comments:
MyOpinion FWIWI think the rest of the world is well acquainted with this "American history":
- Inequality, as in any banana republic;
- Systemic racism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of prejudice;
- Obscenely expensive medical care that gives from mediocre to poor results (unless, of course, you can afford a "team of private doctors");
- Rampant crime and violence with the use of firearms;
- Medieval restrictions on women's rights to dispose of their bodies;
- Disregard for environmental protection;
- The Emergence of Christian Nationalism;
- The decline of the public education system and the lack of spending on higher education;
Yeah. Our "American story" is open to anyone who wants to hear it. And this is a tragic story and has a simply epic scale.
BethByThis article presents not the history of Western countries, but the history of the United States.
The history of our country in recent years is not something to brag about, because we have allowed extremists to take over our Supreme Court and the legislative assemblies of many states. Now these people are systematically dismantling our democracy and replacing it with a plutocratic theocracy.
The history of the United States should be told as instructive and sad for all who still believe in democracy.
AlexE2Good advice, Mr. Gates.
But "telling the truth to the people of countries governed by authoritarian governments and exposing the disinformation spread by those same governments" will first of all require us to overcome authoritarian tendencies in our own America and destroy the disinformation spread by ourselves. The advantage of the United States in strategic communications during the Cold War was that they lived a life that most of the rest of the world wanted to believe in and wanted to share.
Progressive in OhioNo matter how much we try to embellish our story, the world still sees the truth.
Our country is a country of absolute hypocrisy!
DRhuntRight now, we can't bring a compelling or exciting story about the United States to almost half of Americans.
We must develop a strategic plan to convince most of our own population that the federal government is not an enemy of the people. We must restore confidence in the institutions of our democratic republic. That's when it's done, then the fascinating narrative of the American dream can become a global export. But not yet!
Martin GuyAmerica must convince America itself of the reality of its success story first of all!
Nicholas J. MetrowskyMaybe Mr. Gates should read that foreign correspondents from among our allies write about the United States in their newspapers or speak on television in reports from the United States.
Here are some of the headlines:
- The US is no longer the leader of democracy in the world.
- The United States is embodied in systematic violence with the use of firearms.
- The US has a very polarized society that is tearing the country apart.
- In 2016, the United States elected a president who was extremely unsuitable for this position, a narcissist, a divisive liar, a white nationalist, a fanatic and a man capable of destroying American democracy.
- The US has turned its back on its allies.
- In the USA, the country of abundance, the problem of poverty and the unfavorable situation with elderly citizens.
- In the USA, the bastion of freedom, the problem of incarceration has arisen.
- There are serious drug problems in the USA.
- There is a health crisis in the USA.
- The USA is a dying democracy.
- The USA is a dying financial leader.
- In the USA there is a problem of racism, LBQTQ+, ethnic and religious prejudice.
- Americans are some of the nastiest and rudest tourists in the world.
The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, Le Monde, Die Zeiting and so on are excellent sources of articles written by reporters from the USA. Sorry that the "bubble of falsehood" has burst for those in the USA who claim that America is the greatest country in the history of the world and "shining hail on the hill".
tagetesAmerica's success story?
Guns and gunfire are everywhere. There is no guaranteed medical care. The richest pay minimal taxes. There is no power over your body. Constant military interventions in foreign countries, for example, Iraq, under false pretexts. Religious fanatics are trying to control the lives of everyone else. Yes, a very attractive success story!
Joe Smith 3The "success story of the USA" in the post-war period is well known around the world:
- Endless wars that have claimed the lives of millions of innocent people in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, Central America, Iraq and other places.
- Overthrow or attempts to overthrow democratically elected Governments in Iraq (1953), Guatemala (1954), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1960), Indonesia (1965), Chile (1973), Argentina (1976), Nicaragua (1980s), Haiti (1991), Venezuela (2002 and 2019) and others.
- A large-scale economic war in the form of unilateral economic sanctions (illegal under international law) imposed on countries that are too numerous to list. Among the most egregious are the sanctions imposed against Iraq in the 1990s, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the comprehensive sanctions imposed on Cuba in 1962, condemned by the UN General Assembly in 2018 by 189 votes to 2 (the United States and Israel).
Previously, one could at least point to the quality of life in the United States, which was much higher than in most of the rest of the world. But even this is becoming harder and harder to propagandize because of the stark inequality, drug addiction, crumbling infrastructure and, of course, the huge number of Americans killing each other in an increasing number of our 400 million guns on hand.
And it seems to Gates that America just needs a better storyteller!
User 112112112"America's Success Story":
- A corrupt government that caters to billionaires. Politicians are their pawns.
- The constant decline of the middle class and the widening of the wealth gap.
- Things like healthcare and housing are completely focused on corporate profits.
- Corporations don't even use their wealth to innovate. They either buy out competitors or use their political power to crush them. Any good idea we have is immediately bought, every cent is squeezed out of it, and then it is discarded.
- The problems of homelessness and drug addiction are out of control.
- Citizens are either so stupid that they watch TikTok all day long, or they are so mentally ill that they commit mass shootings of innocent people.
maifgm in response to User 112112112Everything is exactly right, everything is to the point.
We have only one choice — to elect new leaders. The ones we have now are the cause of most of our problems. While we protect the parties, they divide the whole country and get richer.
People who are at each other's throats are a big problem today. We used to be able to agree or disagree, but those times are long gone. Now there's only hatred left. And these terrible, disgusting mainstream media that incite this very hatred.
We, the people, need to adjust this course to nowhere!
