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Getting Serious About Strategic Influence

Center for Security Policy | Dec 02, 2009
By J. Michael Waller

A decade has passed since the Clinton administration and the late Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) joined hands in destroying America's public diplomacy machinery. The shocking development occurred for a combination of reasons: a turf-conscious State Department that wanted total control of public diplomacy that previously had been the purview of the semi-independent U.S. Information Agency; an administration that thought public diplomacy was only for fighting the Soviets and now, with the end of the Cold War, no longer needed; and a staunchly conservative senator who had some bones to pick with U.S.IA and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

 

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About the Author
 
J. Michael Waller is the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Professor of International Communication at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of national security and international affairs in Washington, DC. He is author of Fighting the War of Ideas  like a Real War (IWP Press, 2007) and editor of The Public Diplomacy Reader (IWP Press, 2007).

 

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