21

INTRODUCTION

Networks of Empire The Foreign Leader Program in Global Perspective

The United States has a unique ability to project and manage empire. Above all other nations it possesses an ‘enormous repertoire of instru-ments by which to implement its power’ abroad.1 Alongside its unques-tioned political, military, and economic strength, the cultural capital and ‘drawing power’ of the United States for other nations and individuals as a source of inspiration, modernisation, hope, fascination, knowledge, and opportunity was immense during the second half of the twentieth century. This book examines in detail the Foreign Leader Program, one of the principal means the USA, as a ‘soft power superpower’, has used to project and manage its global ambitions since WWII.

The Foreign Leader Program (FLP) occupies a special place within this imperial endeavour. Inaugurated in 1949-50, it continues to operate today (it was renamed the International Visitor Program in 1965, then the International Visitor Leadership Program in 2004) and its operating principles have largely remained the same.2 It has always involved inviting and bringing individuals and groups from abroad to the United States, with a personal tour arranged around particular interests sug-gested by the participant. Itineraries were flexible and varied, with meetings with professional counterparts interspersed with tourist visits and small-town hospitality. Since the aim was to spread improved knowledge and understanding of the United States abroad, for most participants this would be their first visit to that country.

Since 9/11, public diplomacy – the attempt to influence foreign pub-lics in order to ensure a favourable audience for one’s own policies, culture, and interests – has taken on a new significance for the United States.3 Exchange programmes have been recognised as a vital element

1 Nye, J. ‘Soft Power’, Foreign Policy, 80 (1990), p. 167. 2 For the sake of consistency, and to fit with the terminology used at the time, ‘Leader

Program’ and ‘FLP’ will be used throughout this book to designate the activities in question.

3 See for instance Appendix A of Public Diplomacy: A Review of Past Recommenda-tions, Congressional Research Service, 2 September 2005, which lists 18 separate

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to achieve these goals, allowing individuals the freedom to see the United States for themselves, ‘up close and personal’.4 The renewed application of tried and tested standards is clear to see. In December 2005 Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice announced the inauguration of the Edward R. Murrow Journalist Program, which provides annual fellowships for 100 media professionals from around the world to attend leading US journalism schools.5 The Murrow Program is a continuation of similar journalist exchange projects that were first run by the Com-mittee of Public Information during WWI, and later expanded by the State Department and other government agencies during WWII and the Cold War. The international context may be different but the principles and the goals that motivate this kind of public diplomacy are very much the same.6

From early on State Department officials considered the Leader Pro-gram to be “the most effective cultural and educational activity in support of American foreign policy objectives”.7 Practitioners-turned-historians have pointed it out to be “the most prestigious USIA ex-change operation” and “a key American weapon in the Cold War with communism”.8 Foreign Service Officers (FSOs), familiar with its uses, have regularly referred to it in their oral histories as one of the most useful methods an embassy had to establish constructive relations and gain influence in its local environment.9 On a tour of US embassies in Europe in 1950, the first year of the FLP’s operation, State Department official William Johnstone Jr. found that “every post […] urged consid-

studies on US public diplomacy by government and private agencies that were re-leased between January 2002 and September 2005. Available at <www.opencrs.com/ rpts/RL33062_20050902.pdf> (8 May 2007).

4 See for instance Hughes, J. ‘Winning the War of Words in the Campaign against Terrorism: Exchange Programs help us win Hearts and Minds in the War on Terror’, Christian Science Monitor, 17 May 2006.

5 See <http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/57989.htm> (19 May 2006). 6 On the applicability of Cold War models to a post-9/11 context see Kelley, J. ‘US

Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Success Story?’, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 2 (2007).

7 Ketzel, C. ‘Exchange of Persons and American Foreign Policy: The Foreign Leader Program of the Department of State’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, 1955.

8 Dizard, W. Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the US Information Agency, Boulder, Lynne Riener, 2004, p. 189; Mahin, D. History of the US Department of State’s International Visitor Program, draft manuscript for the History Project, Bu-reau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, US Department of State, 1973, p. 2.

9 See for instance the oral histories collected by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Washington DC, available online via the Library of Congress at <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/diplomacy/> (8 May 2007).

Introduction

23

eration of an expanded leaders and specialists program”.10 US Ambassa-dors continue to rank this exchange programme as the most useful among the range of public diplomacy tools available to them.11 By the end of 1997 it was calculated that 100,000 people had participated in the programme since 1950, 177 of whom thereafter became head of state or government.12 Between October 2003 and September 2004 4,500 peo-ple, either as individuals, members of groups, or as voluntary visitors, went to the United States on this programme alone.13 All those who participated in or received assistance via this programme were in some way or another sanctioned and selected by US embassies on the basis of their local influence and leadership qualities. Commenting on the num-bers of former grantees who subsequently became heads of state in their home countries, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated in November 2004 that “I know tomorrow’s leaders are among the thousands of men and women who will participate this year in US government and pri-vately sponsored educational exchange programs”.14

To manage empire, particularly the American version of informal empire, it is crucial to maintain alliances and nurture friends. The focus of this book is an examination of the ways in which the Leader Program, often in combination with other tools of public diplomacy, was used to cultivate and facilitate relations with three key US allies within the Atlantic alliance: The Netherlands, Britain, and France. Each of these three nations played a special role in US foreign relations during the 1950s and 1960s. Britain was the closest ally, its global reach making it a vital partner, while France, swaying between ambivalence and hostil-ity, was a crucial player in US transatlantic strategy. While much has been written on relations between the United States and these two nations, the Netherlands deserves more attention in Cold War historiog-raphy for its role as a transatlantic bridge-builder and contributor to the

10 ‘Report on European Survey Trip’, William C. Johnstone Jr., 1950, Bureau of

Educational and Cultural Affairs Historical Collection, MC 468, Group XVII Box 337 Folder 9, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville (hereafter ‘CU’).

11 Field Survey of Public Diplomacy Programs, Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, US Department of State, Washington DC, 2000.

12 See the USIA website from 1999 at <http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/E-USIA/ education/ivp/ivhistry.htm> (12 March 2007).

13 See the Department of State information page at <http://exchanges.state.gov/ education/ivp/history.htm> (12 March 2007).

14 Commenting on International Education Week, 15 October 2004, available at <http://exchanges.state.gov/iew/statements/powell.htm> (13 April 2006).

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alliance.15 After WWII the Dutch abandoned their long-standing neutral-ity in foreign affairs to join the Western alliance. Despite some misgiv-ings among the political elite, there was a broad understanding that the enforced decolonisation of the East Indies (in which the United States played a crucial role) pointed to a re-anchoring of Dutch foreign rela-tions around a transatlantic axis. From the perspective of the United States, the Netherlands was an ideal ally. The Dutch were close politi-cally to the UK and were opposed to European affairs being dominated by either a renewed France or a resurgent Germany. Despite a brief wave of support for the Communist party in the immediate post-war years, the Dutch body politic, dominated as it was by the democratic socialists and christian parties, was resoundingly anti-communist in outlook. The Netherlands was also positive towards a US-led free trade regime, and was wholly committed to building a managed post-war economic and political order based around international organisations such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the OECD. Used to negotiating among larger powers, the Dutch were skilled arbitrators who were active in smoothing the paths of diplomacy through both governmental and non-governmental contacts (such as the Bilderberg conferences). The Netherlands’ contribution to regional and global order, underrated in much historiography, was always acknowledged by the US embassy in The Hague, if not always by Washington. As a 1953 embassy report remarked, the Dutch were “perhaps closer ideologically to the United States than any people in Europe”.16

Psychological warfare operations during WWII and the early Cold War placed great hopes in the ability to change the attitude and political opinion of individuals, and this way of thinking inevitably fed into exchange programme operations. However, it became clear that these programmes instead worked best by strengthening and magnifying already-existing favourable opinions.17 Exchange programmes, in con-

15 Good studies of the American impact on post-WWII Netherlands are scarce. A fine

recent exception is Snyder, D. ‘US Public Diplomacy in the New Netherlands, 1945-58: Policy, Ideology, and the Instrumentality of American Power’, Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Illinois University, 2006.

16 Country Plan for USIS The Hague, 30 January 1953, 511.56/1-3053, RG 59, Na-tional Archives, College Park (hereafter ‘NA’).

17 The unique case in that period, where the optimum conditions existed for using exchange programmes to facilitate societal change, was in occupied Germany. The scale and the depth of the German programmes, run first by the military authorities and then from 1950 by the State Department, place them in a special category and several large-scale studies on them already exist. The aim here is instead to track how the lessons learned in Germany were applied elsewhere. See Johnston, H.W. ‘United States Public Affairs Activities in Germany, 1945-1955’, Ph.D. dissertation, Colum-bia University, 1956; Kellermann, H. Cultural Relations as an Instrument of US For-

Introduction

25

tributing to the constant transatlantic traffic in people and ideas, were thus a prime tool for facilitating alliance management during the Cold War. During 1950-70 there were 167 grantees from the Netherlands (including one future Minister President), 512 from the UK (including two subsequent Prime Ministers), and 648 from France (including one subsequent President).18 What follows looks at who these participants were and how their invitations to participate interacted with particular US foreign policy interests in these countries over time.

Defining Public Diplomacy Public diplomacy covers many layers of activity. While cultural rela-

tions refers solely to the unregulated transnational activities of the private sector and society at large, public diplomacy concerns cross-border government-to-people transactions for particular purposes and interests. In short, it is a set of tools for making ideas travel. Public diplomacy can then be divided up into four main categories of activity: International advocacy and public affairs; government administered exchanges; cultural diplomacy; and state-sponsored international news.19 Within this field a basic differentiation can be made between “political advocacy” programmes directly related to immediate policy interests, and “cultural communication […] to help foreign citizens gain a better understanding of […] culture and institutions”.20 Hence, “if culture is a set of control mechanisms and instructions governing human behavior,

eign Policy: The Educational Exchange Program between the United States and Germany 1945-1954, Washington DC, Department of State, 1978; Duggan, S. ‘The Politics of US-German Educational Exchange: Perspectives of German Decision-Makers’, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1988; Schmidt, O. “Civil Empire by Cooptation: German-American Exchange Programs as Cultural Diplomacy, 1945-61”, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1999.

18 A Statistical Profile of the US Exchange Program, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Annual Report, 1971. These figures compare with for instance Germany (5575), Italy (583), Belgium (197), and Denmark (170) during the same period.

19 See Cull, N. American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy 1945-1989: The United States Information Agency and the Cold War, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008. In general, ‘public diplomacy’ will be used henceforth to refer to infor-mation/culture programmes in toto, while ‘cultural diplomacy’ will be used more to refer to deliberate efforts by governments and private actors to direct cultural rela-tions along certain paths. For the cultural relations / cultural diplomacy distinction see Mitchell, J. International Cultural Relations, London, Allen & Unwin, 1986, pp. 2-6.

20 Malone, G. Organizing the Nation’s Public Diplomacy, Lanham MD, University Press of America, 1988, pp. 3-4.

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we can argue that cultural diplomacy aims to influence ‘that complex whole’ abroad along lines dictated by a nation’s foreign policy”.21

In the American case, the level of cooperation between state and pri-vate institutions in this endeavour has always been a unique factor. The government may have retained a leading or guiding role but it was totally reliant on the involvement of the private sector for its pro-grammes to succeed, in terms of administration, credibility, and effec-tiveness.22 Hence the following definition of public diplomacy comes closest to the outlook used in this book:

The ways in which both governments and private individuals and groups influence directly or indirectly those public attitudes and opinions which bear directly on other governments’ foreign policy decisions.23

Exchange programmes, as mentioned above, are a category apart within public diplomacy activities. Not only are they more focused on the individual in contrast to the mass as practiced by most other public diplomacy activities, but by their very nature of operation they defy attempts at social scientific analysis. That they have an impact on their participants, be it positive or negative, is unquestionable. However, what the impact is in the longer term remains difficult to pin down, since the exchange experience becomes one of many variables that need to be taken into account when assessing political trends. As exchanges re-volve around personal experience and insight, and therefore anecdotal and oral history, they tend to fall outside of orthodox fact-finding analy-sis and therefore their contribution to the practice of international affairs has tended to be overlooked. Although interest in its significance is increasing, public diplomacy is often treated in current historiography as a secondary factor of limited value for explaining the passage of diplo-matic activity. Yet this equation can be reversed. Diplomatic activity, after all, functions best within a carefully prepared atmosphere of cul-tural affinity.24 By focusing on how such cultural affinity can be nur-tured and maintained, the study of public diplomacy (and exchanges in 21 Schmidt, ‘Civil Empire by Cooptation’, p. 25. See also Arndt, R. The First Resort of

Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century, Washington DC, Potomac Books, 2005.

22 There is an important (and growing) literature on the role of ‘state-private networks’ within US foreign policy. See Laville, H. & Wilford, H. The US Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War: The State-Private Network, London, Routledge, 2006.

23 Delaney, R.F. ‘Introduction’, in Hoffman, A. International Communication and the New Diplomacy, Bloomington IN, Indiana University Press, 1968, p. 3 (emphasis added).

24 See Frank Ninkovich’s seminal study The Diplomacy of Ideas: US Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations 1938-1950, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1981, pp. 1-4.

Introduction

27

particular) can offer insights into the background of US foreign relations and how this connects to (even, in some ways, provides the basis for) the foreground of traditional diplomatic activity. In short, it provides an opportunity to read diplomatic history from a fresh perspective.

In the last decade or so, a number of worthy studies have been con-ducted that have emphasised the importance of developing cultural affinity in the context of international relations. The operation of the broad range of US cultural diplomacy programmes in certain target countries has received increasing attention.25 In terms of US government exchange programmes, accounts exist of their historical development and institutional apparatus, most significantly via the State Department’s History Project during the 1970s.26 The Fulbright Program has itself generated several worthwhile studies.27 However, in-depth accounts of the Foreign Leader / International Visitor Program on a country-by-country basis are few, with the exception of Germany.28 Recent scholar-ship has begun to argue forcefully for the role of ideas in the fall of the Soviet empire.29 In contrast, this book contributes to the growing litera- 25 See for instance Wagnleitner, R. Coca-Colonisation and the Cold War: The Cultural

Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War, Chapel Hill NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1994; Richmond, Y. Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003; McKenzie, B. Remaking France: Americanization, Public Diplomacy, and the Marshall Plan, New York, Berghahn Books, 2005.

26 Elder, R. The Foreign Leader Program: Operations in the United States, Washington DC, Brookings Institution, 1961; Fairbank, W. America’s Cultural Experiment in China 1942-1949, Washington DC, Department of State, 1976; Espinosa, J.M., Inter-American Beginnings of US Cultural Diplomacy, 1936-1948, Washington DC, De-partment of State, 1976; Mueller Norton, S. The United States Department of State International Visitor Program: A Conceptual Framework for Evaluation, Ph.D. dis-sertation, Tufts University, 1977; Bu, L. Making The World Like US: Education, Cul-tural Expansion, and the American Century, New York, Praeger, 2003.

27 Johnson, W. & Colligan, F. The Fulbright Program: A History, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1965; Dudden, A. & Downes, R. (eds.), The Fulbright Experience 1946-1986, New Brunswick, Transaction, 1987; Arndt, R. & Rubin, D. (eds.), The Fulbright Difference 1948-1992, New Brunswick, Transaction, 1993.

28 See the useful but limited study on South Korea: Kim, Y.H. ‘Public Diplomacy and Cultural Communication: The International Visitor Program’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1990.

29 See Mandelbaum, M. ‘Western Influence on the Soviet Union’, in S. Bialer & M. Mandelbaum (eds.), Gorbachev’s Russia and American Foreign Policy, Boulder, Westview Press, 1988; Kassof, A. ‘Scholarly Exchanges and the Collapse of Com-munism’, Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 22 (1995); J. Checkel, Ideas and Interna-tional Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behaviour and the End of the Cold War, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997; Evangelista, M. Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War, New York, Cornell University Press, 2002; Special Issue: ‘Ideas, International Relations, and the End of the Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 7/2 (Spring 2005).

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ture on the role of public diplomacy and ‘ideological transmission’ in contributing towards a stable Western identity under the tutelage of US leadership during the Cold War.30

Two broad streams of thought filtered directly into the theory and practice of these programmes. Firstly there was the wish to foster ‘mu-tual understanding’ between different nations and cultures, a benign goal that was based on the Liberal ideal of achieving a borderless global community and peaceful international relations through increased inter-personal contacts. However this was not a neutral process, since under this heading the United States, convinced of its universalism, sought to inculcate its values and techniques around the world for the general good. As a study from 1955 put it:

With the exception of many professor and teacher exchanges, the other pro-grams are predominantly ‘one-way streets’, i.e., they primarily encourage the export of American technical knowledge and the development of better understanding and more friendly attitudes toward the United States. Only secondarily, if at all, are they concerned with an understanding of other na-tions or the import of technical skills and cultural values from which the United States, as a nation, might profit.31

Secondly there were the approaches developed through communica-tions research and the practice of psychological warfare before, during, and after WWII. Out of this research came refined assumptions on the targeting of information campaigns on specific social groups to ensure strategic impact. The Leader Program, a direct product of both streams of thought, had the explicit political intent of familiarising existing and up-and-coming elites abroad with the United States and its people, landscape, and values. In short, by introducing and familiarising talented individuals with the American scene, it was a potent means for the US to develop ‘informal empire’ via an ever-expanding community of allies, supporters, sympathisers, and admirers around the world.

Informal Empire The United States extended its influence abroad not only by means

of traditional forms of power but especially via its civil society and its codes of democracy, efficiency, good governance, and best practice. This was done via the export of American products, methods, skills, and 30 See for instance Pells, R. Not Like Us, New York, Basic Books, 1997; Berghahn, V.

America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001; Scott-Smith, G. The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and Post-War American Hegemony, London, Routledge, 2002.

31 Ketzel, p. 70.

Introduction

29

norms, facilitated by the extension of its commercial, military, and cultural diplomacy activities abroad.32 The concept of informal empire extends these processes by referring to the engineering of favourable political communities and decision-making frameworks abroad which allow for the satisfaction of US interests (political, economic, and military), without the need for direct political control.33 As de Grazia has argued, the outlines of this phenomenon need to be taken into account when understanding US foreign relations:

If we hold to orthodox definitions, we miss the specific powers accumulat-ing to the leading capitalist state in the twentieth century. These powers de-rived […] from recognizing the advantages that derived from that position and developing these into a system of global leadership.34

De Grazia outlined several factors that characterised US informal empire, three of which lie at the heart of this study: It “regarded other nations as having limited sovereignty over their public space”, it in-volved the export of US civil society (“meaning its voluntary associa-tions, social scientific knowledge, and civic spirit”), and it projected “the power of norms-making”.35 Within this format, exchange pro-grammes played a vital role as the channels of empire. Thousands of talented and influential individuals went to the United States and experi-enced at first-hand the dynamism and openness of its civil society, learned about American world-views, trained in specific skills, and inculcated its attitudes. In the longer term it also laid the ground for further contacts in their respective professional networks. “Empires have justified their supra-ethnic domination”, argues Charles Maier in his recent study of the subject, “by invoking allegedly universal values or cultural supremacy, and have diffused these public goods by cultural diplomacy and exchanges”.36

32 Rosenberg, E. Spreading the American Dream, New York, Hill & Wang, 1982;

Costigliola, F. Awkward Dominion, Ithaca, Cornell University press, 1984; De Grazia, V. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through 20th Century Europe, Cambridge MA, Belknap Press, 2005, pp. 6-9.

33 See the seminal article on this concept by Gallagher and Robinson (Gallagher, J. & Robinson, R. ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review, 6 (1953), pp. 1-15) where they state that ‘informal empire’ represents channels of influence and power “which the conventional interpretation misses because it takes account only of formal methods of control”.

34 De Grazia, Irresistible Empire, p. 6. 35 Ibid., pp. 6-7. 36 Maier, C. Among Empires: American Ascendancy and its Predecessors, Cambridge

MA, Harvard University Press, 2006, p. 65.

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The Leader Program was very much an active agent in the ideologi-cal drive of US foreign policy after WWII.37 Domestically, it united the US state with a whole array of independent institutions and voluntary organisations to ensure that each visitor received an up-close-and-personal view of the ‘average’ American and the ‘true’ America. Par-ticipants were asked to choose the main themes they would like to explore on their trip, the destinations they would like to visit, and the people they would like to meet. Internationally, it contributed to project-ing the United States as the model of freedom, progress, modernisation, and the leader of the Free World.38 A form of hegemonic power was in operation, with the FLP as one of several channels to invigorate it:

Elites in secondary nations buy into and internalize norms that are articu-lated by the hegemon and therefore pursue policies consistent with the he-gemon’s notion of international order. The exercise of power – and hence the mechanism through which compliance is achieved – involves the projec-tion by the hegemon of a set of norms and their embrace by leaders in other nations.39

Intrinsic to this projection of hegemonic power was what Hunt has identified as the “anti-revolutionary impulse” in American ideology.40 ‘Anti-revolutionary’ here needs to be clarified. From a socio-economic perspective, restructuring reforms which the US championed in Western Europe through the European Recovery Program were certainly revolu-tionary in terms of the long-term impact they had on local societies. What anti-revolutionary meant in this context was a fervent opposition to counter-strategies that contested or undermined the implantation of US norms of economic and political behaviour. In Western Europe this

37 On the importance of ideology for US foreign policy during the Cold War see for

instance Stephanson, A. ‘Liberty or Death: The Cold War as US Ideology’, in Westad, O. (ed.), Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory, London, Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 81-100; Lucas, S. Freedom’s War, New York, New York University Press, 1999; Osgood, K. Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad, University Press of Kansas, 2006.

38 See Smith, T. America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1994; Belmonte, L. ‘Defending a Way of Life: American Propaganda and the Cold War, 1945-1959’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1996, pp. 320-349; Appy, C. Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperial-ism 1945-1966, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 2000; Engerman, D. & Gilman, N. (eds.), Staging Growth, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 2003.

39 Ikenberry, G. John & Kupchan, C. ‘Socialization and Hegemonic Power’, Interna-tional Organization, 44/3 (Summer 1990), p. 283.

40 See Hunt, M. Ideology and US Foreign Policy, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1987.

Introduction

31

included large-scale covert and overt operations to combat communist parties, trade unions, front organisations, and anti-Americanism in general. Yet there was an equal determination on the part of the US to undermine neutralist political trends which searched for Third Way alternatives between the superpowers.41 While tactics utilising economic measures were one way to secure objectives, it was not wise for the US to lean too heavily on its hard power superiority to get its way in West-ern Europe. The rhetoric after all professed a common, united struggle against Soviet communism. It was therefore far more effective for the US to achieve its aims by attracting, nurturing, and co-opting actual and potential allies abroad who would then act according to the same belief-system. The American values of freedom and progress were after all universal and applicable for all, it was only necessary to find advocates abroad to amplify this message. To avoid the negative overtones of a dominant national interest, during the 1950s and 1960s US foreign policy goals towards Western Europe were packaged within the rhetori-cally powerful notion of an Atlantic Community. The Community ideal offered the chance for Europeans to find their own purpose and political identity without feeling overwhelmed by US dominance. The FLP was an important mechanism through which this sense of an Atlantic Com-munity could take on a real meaning.

In this context it is worth reflecting on the concept of leadership that the Leader Program was promoting. A 1955 IES study paper on leader-ship portrays the purely functional nature of the Program as a tool of foreign policy. The report does no more than outline the important groups who, as part of the ‘leadership structure’ of other countries, should be the target groups for exchange invitations. In rather anodyne fashion this referred to “the relatively small group of key leaders in top positions”, young professionals “who are judged to be upwardly mobile in the social and power structure”, student leaders, and “the formally designed opinion molders” such as those in the media and in educa-tion.42 Leadership here is seen in a purely strategic way, as a sign of power and influence over others and therefore as a tool that can be used. But there were other more subtle forces at work. The Program provided the opportunity for, firstly, the US to designate particular individuals as

41 See Carew, A. Labour under the Marshall Plan, Manchester, Manchester University

Press, 1987; Romero, F. The United States and the European Trade Union Movement 1944-1951, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1992; Stonor Saunders, F. Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, London, Granta, 1999; Wilford, H. The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune?, London, Frank Cass, 2003.

42 ‘The IES Approach to Foreign Leadership’, January 1955, Bureau of Public Affairs, Box 2: Evaluation of Programs, Entry 3029, 250/62/35/05, RG 59, NA.

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possessing leadership potential within the US-led world order. Leader invitations “in particular were planned primarily as individual experi-ences and were not meant to be exercises in group dynamics”.43 The whole point was to set the individual apart from others in their local society through their knowledge and prestige, thereby setting them up as ‘mediums’ who could act as legitimate conveyors of the norms of the US-led world order to their surroundings. Secondly, it allowed these individuals to choose a closer voluntary association with the United States, its people, its values, and its policies, for both potential individ-ual gain (career enhancement, skills) and more generally for the good of their local environment (modernisation, productivity).44 Thirdly, the denotation of ‘leader’ (above all by a foreign power) was in many cases a major form of empowerment for the individual involved, with impor-tant psychological consequences. In 1962 Leader grantees represented only 11 per cent of all West European exchange visitors participating in State Department-administered programmes, an indication of its exclu-sivity.45 As one practitioner has emphasised:

Important leaders are brought to the United States upon the invitation of the United States Government rather than through application for specific pro-grams; each leader is essentially free to determine what type of activities he wishes to pursue while he is here.46

The crucial point to emphasise here is the willingness of participants to enter this transaction because of the clear benefits for them. The less the presence of obvious persuasion, the more powerful the impact of this form of exchange.

How far actual ‘exchange’ took place is of course a mute point. Visi-tors were met with openness, curiosity, and genuine interest but their primary function was to learn more about the United States.47 Exchanges 43 Schmidt, p. 19. 44 See Scott-Smith, G. ‘The Export of an American Concept of Leadership: The World

as seen through the US Department of State’s Foreign Leader Program’, in Krabben-dam, H. & Verhoeven, W. (eds.), Whose the Boss? Leadership and Democratic Cul-ture in America, Amsterdam, Free University Press, 2007, pp. 177-186.

45 Educational and Cultural Diplomacy 1962, Washington DC, State Department, 1963.

46 Bodenman, P. ‘Leader and Specialist Programs’, Higher Education, 9 (1 March 1953), p. 155.

47 Occasionally the reverse-influence of exchanges would be picked up. In 1953 it was noticed that the large numbers of German grantees passing through the United States was having an impact on how their American hosts viewed European events. This generated a proposal in the State Department for “an evaluation study on the reverse effects of the exchange programs”. Apart from the practical difficulties of conducting such an evaluation, it was remarked that “the ‘internationalists’ in the State Depart-ment would really get their heads chopped off by groups in this country who

Introduction

33

like the Leader Program occupied a special place within the propaganda pantheon. Too close a connection between the invitation and the specific goals of the United States in a particular country, as if a specific pay-off was expected in return, could destroy the Program’s credibility and scar it with the accusation of political manipulation. However, the issue of credibility cut two ways. Outside of the United States it rested on the presentation of the Leader Program as a form of politically-neutral cultural exchange designed to allow its participants, once better in-formed, to make up their own minds. Domestically it was the opposite, as a respectable budgetary allocation required an argument for the political worth of the Program (and all other forms of public diplomacy) before the Appropriations Committees in the House and the Senate.48

The Aims of the Program Concerning the great diversity of US government exchange pro-

grammes after WWII, Ketzel pointed out that “only two characteristics appear to be common to all programs and categories: the essential element of people travelling to and from the United States, and the fact that each program in its own way contributes to one or another facet of the national interest – military, economic, or political”.49 How was this contribution supposed to be achieved? Overall it reflected President Truman’s demand that the post-war information service “see to it that other peoples receive a full and fair picture of American life and of the aims and policies of the United States Government”.50 Nevertheless, the relative vagueness of this goal led to different interpretations within the bureaux of the State Department, among the private contract agencies, and by the various sections within embassies. Robert Elder, who re-viewed the Foreign Leader Program for the Brookings Institution in 1960, criticised how the general statements of the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act had been enacted in various ways within different settings:

The fact that leaders were coming to America for ‘consultation with col-leagues’ was stressed in the invitations issued overseas by American Em-bassy representatives. Readers of American periodicals were apprised that the leaders were brought to get ‘the full and fair picture of the contemporary

wouldn’t approve” of such a two-way impact. James Donovan to Frank Orenstein, 23 November 1953, & Vaughn DeLong to Frank Orenstein, n.d., Box 3: 1951 Study, Bureau of Public Affairs, 250/62/35/04, Entry 3031, RG 59, NA.

48 See Scott, K.M. ‘The Annual Ordeal: The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs vs. the House Appropriations Subcommittee 1965-1970’, March 1971, General Re-cords of USIA, RG 306, Subject Files 1953-2000, Series 15, Box 48, NA.

49 Ketzel, pp. 113-114. 50 White House Press Release, 31 August 1945, reprinted in Department of State

Bulletin, 2 September 1945, pp. 306-7.

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American scene’. Members of the House Appropriations Committee were told that the program would contribute to meeting emergency ‘political de-velopments’. All three of these emphases were to be accomplished while granting ‘freedom of action’ to the leaders during their visits. Although statements such as the four recounted here are not necessarily in conflict, they have contributed to some confusion among program operators.51

Elder’s comments were justified, up to a point. The demand that the Leader Program fulfil either – or both – a political role in combatting communism and an educational/cultural role in explaining America remained ever-present. However, its methodology did remain constant. Communism was to be contested not through the conversion of commu-nists themselves, but instead through the solidifying and expansion of US-backed norms. Clifford Ketzel, in one of the few in-depth studies of the Leader Program, identified three basic assumptions on which the FLP rested. Firstly, presaging de Grazia, that it was taken for granted that influential individuals from abroad could be invited to gain a better understanding of the United States, in the expectation that this would lead to some kind of political benefit for US interests afterwards. Sec-ondly, that after their trip an individual would return home “with a more tolerant attitude toward the United States, its practices, principles, and policies”. The individual might still be critical of some aspects of American life, but they “will place imperfections of the American system in a perspective that will not weaken our position of world leadership”. Thirdly, that once home the grantee, either locally, within their profession, or perhaps on a national level, would share their ex-perience and use their influence to raise awareness on the United States. This was the most important goal. A 1954 report of the State Depart-ment’s International Educational Exchange Service (IES) noted that exchange visitors generally “become highly creditable sources of infor-mation about the United States, and disseminate reliable and favorable information to their fellow countrymen”.52 The Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) also stated secretly in 1954:

The basic objective of exchange programs is to build a receptive climate of public opinion overseas in which the actions and policies of the US can be correctly interpreted.53

51 Elder, R. The Foreign Leader Program, p. 12. 52 ‘What Evaluation Studies have proved about Educational Exchange’, IES, August

1954, Bureau of Public Affairs, Box 3: Miscellaeneous Evaluations, Entry 3029, 250/62/35/05, RG 59, ‘NA’.

53 ‘Expanded Educational Exchange Program in the Far East’, 15 March 1954, IES: Staff Studies and Reports & OCB Working Papers 1951-1955, Box 1, 250/62/35/01, Entry 3019, Bureau of Public Affairs, RG 59, NA.

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35

The State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs used almost exactly the same language a decade later:

The Foreign Leader Program is intended to develop in other countries an informed nucleus of influential persons who, as a result of their observations and experiences in the United States, can be expected to present to their own people an accurate and understanding interpretation of the United States and its people.54

Likewise, in 1973 the Bureau issued a policy document that argued for the use of exchanges to “favorably influence the environment within which US foreign policy is carried out”, in particular “to enlarge the circle of those able to serve as influential interpreters between this and other nations”.55

As Ketzel commented, those who ran the Leader Program only had control over the first assumption. The stage could be set to encourage the second and the third, but, as with much public diplomacy, it still required “a act of faith” to trust that it would turn out as intended.56 Ketzel identified early on how a key distinguishing feature of the Leader Program was “the extent to which leaders are invited from those areas of the free world in which the United States is most desirous of maintain-ing its leadership or encouraging a maximum degree of understanding and tolerance of this leadership”.57 Skill transfer was important for the Program, since grantees often returned to their own countries convinced of the need to introduce American-style ideas and methods into their respective professions. However, its real power lay in fostering the establishment and expansion of formal and informal policy, knowledge, or other professional networks that could bridge the transatlantic divide. Transnational and transgovernmental issue networks and epistemic communities have become a topic of some interest within International Relations during the last decade.58 This refers to regular cross-border contacts between individuals or groups, outside of diplomatic or inter- 54 ‘Foreign Leaders and Specialists’, n.d. [early 1960s], Group IV Box 153 Folder 21,

CU. 55 ‘The CU Program Concept’, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, 1 October

1973, p. 1, quoted in Mueller, S. ‘US Exchange of Persons Programs: A Question of Quality’, paper presented to the ISA, 28 March 1986 (author’s copy, with thanks to Sherry Mueller).

56 Ketzel, pp. 135-136; Ninkovich, F. US Information Policy and Cultural Diplomacy, Foreign Policy Association Headline Series, No. 308, Fall 1996, p. 58.

57 Ketzel, p. 121. 58 See Haas, P. ‘Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination’,

International Organization, 46 (Winter 1992), pp. 1-35; Stone, D. ‘Knowledge Net-works and Global Policy’, paper presented to the ISA conference, Budapest, 28th June 2003.

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governmental relations, which are generally based on common problem-solving or principal-holding issues and which contribute strongly to the establishment and maintenance of norms in international behaviour.59 Sometimes these informal networks can affect policy outcomes, espe-cially in the case of ‘transgovernmental coalitions’ between mid-level, policy-drafting civil servants who adapt their positions according to contacts abroad as well as according to domestic influences.60 However, the deliberate contribution of exchange programmes to their formation and maintenance remains largely ignored.61 On the whole the Leader Program was used for the ‘diffusion of cultural values and norms’, in particular to strengthen the Atlantic Alliance, but within this approach specific policy networks would often be particular targets. Outcomes are of course difficult to verify, but this book supports the view of one observer who has stated that “in certain conceivable situations the weight of ‘cultural capital’ accruing from such interchanges could tip a doubtful political balance”.62

The use of ‘local opinion leaders’ in this way was the most effective means to strengthen sympathetic elites, fortify pro-democratic forces, maintain pro-market norms, and reduce the legitimacy of communist or neutralist alternatives. A study of the Leader Program in specific coun-tries adds an important extra dimension to this field of research by filling in details on the local opinion leaders themselves. Who did the US embassies identify for this role? An invitation for a Leader grant was one of the most effective calling cards in a Foreign Service Officer’s hand for establishing relations with a selected individual. While several studies have already looked in detail at the apparatus and aims of the US psychological offensive following WWII, the aim of this book is to examine instead the intricacies of US public diplomacy at the front line, “the correlation between policy and action”.63 After all, it was the em-bassies that functioned as key actors in ‘managing’ the local environ-ment and effectively maintaining the threads of informal empire.

59 See Risse-Kappen, T. ‘Introduction’, in Risse-Kappen (ed.), Bringing Transnational

Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institu-tions, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 3-33.

60 Ibid., p. 31. 61 See Scott-Smith, G. ‘Mapping the Undefinable: Some Thoughts on the Relevance of

Exchange Programs within International Relations Theory”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616 (March 2008).

62 Huntley, J. ‘A New Look at US Cultural and Educational Policy in Europe’, Interna-tional Educational and Cultural Exchange (Spring 1967), p. 4.

63 Osgood, p. 5.

Introduction

37

The Challenge of Soviet Public Diplomacy In October 1952, moving away from the rigid ‘two-camp’ approach

that had signified Soviet foreign policy since 1946, Stalin announced a strategy of ‘peaceful coexistence’ with the West. While fundamental hostility remained undiminished, the aim from then on was to seek an improvement in relations in order to exploit differences of opinion both between NATO allies and between governments and people. Following Stalin’s death this resulted in expanded Soviet information and cultural diplomacy programme that aimed for a de-escalation of tensions and promoted, among other things, the idea of Europe as a ‘zone of peace’ devoid of superpower conflict. The potential dangers of opening up to the West via two-way cultural diplomacy were, during the Khrushchev decade of 1954-64, also overcome by “the remarkable upsurge of revo-lutionary exuberance” that considered the Soviet Union to be at the forefront of world socio-econiomic and political development.64

There is no doubt that the scale of Soviet programmes in Western Europe caused concern within the State Department and its embassies abroad. Moscow’s effort to ‘normalise’ relations brought 363 Western European delegations to the USSR in 1955 alone, by far the most from any region.65 US embassies would regularly inform Washington of the competing Soviet programmes, with a special emphasis on the numbers involved. A report from 1956 illustrates the typical US response. A public official in the Pyrenees area of southern France had let it be known that in that year in his Départment alone there had been fifteen exchange participants going to Prague, twelve to Moscow, ten to Hun-gary, and five to Bulgaria. An indignant FSO reported to Washington that this represented “forty-two from one tiny Department of France to iron curtain countries at their invitation and we have 25 leader grants for the whole of France”.66 Another report from Finland, along with Iceland one of the prime targets for Soviet efforts, recounted that 780 Finns visited the USSR in 1957-58 alone, not including another 2000 who attended the Moscow Youth Festival.67 Figures such as these were of 64 Gould-Davis, N. ‘The Logic of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy’, Diplomatic History, 27

(April 2003), p. 213. This article provides an excellent insight into the background and contradictions of the Soviet approach.

65 Barghoorn, F. The Soviet Cultural Offensive: The Role of Cultural Diplomacy in Soviet Foreign Policy, Westport CT, Greenwood Press, 1960, p. 226. Iceland and Finland were particular Soviet targets.

66 ‘Priority Educational Exchange Projects’, 25 January 1956, Group IV Box 153 Folder 17, CU (emphasis in original).

67 ‘Educational Exchange: F.Y. 1958 Annual Report’, US Embassy Helsinki, 12 August 1958, Group IV Box 317 Folder 11, CU. The total number of Finns travelling to the United States in 1957-58, in all categories of exchanges, was 151.

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course used to increase appropriations requests in Congress for an adequate US response. During the 1950s exchanges were promoted as an ideal ‘antidote’ to communist propaganda in order to gain congres-sional support. IES let it be known to the Office of Intelligence and Research that its most valuable reports concerned factual details and statistics on the Soviet exchange programmes, which were “especially helpful in preparing reports for Congressional hearings on IES budget appropriations”.68

While the Soviet programmes won in terms of quantity, they lost in quality. Highly orchestrated group tours, with a fixed itinerary and no free time, were only going to succeed with the already converted. In response IES emphasised the lack of political control and the vital partnerships with private organisations. Its 1955 annual report smugly pointed out how “the ‘guided tour’ and political indoctrination tech-nique, characteristic of Communist exchange efforts, is of course alien to an exchange program based on mutual understanding and respect”.69 Openness was the key to success here. Writing on the Soviet cultural diplomacy drive in 1960, Frederick Barghoorn noticed the following:

The cultural-exchange program, stepped up almost immediately after Sta-lin’s death, continued in many ways to expand, particularly in terms of quantity, but there were striking indications, from early 1957 on, of deter-mination to guard against the dangers inherent in showing too much of Rus-sia to the world, and especially in showing very much of the non-Soviet world to Russians.70

During the Krushchev era the Soviet Union portrayed itself relatively successfully as a genuine rival ‘civilisation’ to the United States, a position boosted by technical advances such as the Sputnik rockets.71 However, while its economic prowess, military might, and development aid had a major effect on Third World clients, Soviet cultural diplomacy in Western Europe was always at a disadvantage. Like the US, its exchange programmes could strengthen the belief of those already convinced. Also like the US, it concentrated attention on trade unionists, youth leaders, and “strategic local people who are shapers of popular

68 Vaughn R. Delong (IES) to F. Bowen Evans (IEV/OIR/CA), 19 May 1954, IES:

Staff Studies and Reports & OCB Working Papers 1951-1955, Box 1, 250/62/35/01, Entry 3019, Bureau of Public Affairs, RG 59, NA.

69 ‘Mutual Understanding in the Nuclear Age: The International Educational Exchange Program’, Annual Report 1956, Department of State, 1957, p. 4.

70 Barghoorn, p. 61. 71 See Taubman, W. Khrushchev: The Man and his Era, New York, W.W. Norton,

2004.

Introduction

39

attitudes and political developments”.72 But doubters were never likely to be swayed by first-hand experience of Soviet society’s secrecy and surveillance. If the exchange experience offered a unique insight into the hosting society, then the American approach based on openness and freedom would always be the more powerful.

The signing of the first two-year US-USSR cultural agreement in Jan-uary 1958 opened up the opportunity for a whole series of similar agree-ments with other nations across the Soviet bloc. Alongside the many exchanges in the arts, education, science, and sport, the Leader Program was also introduced across the Iron Curtain. The Program was most active in Yugoslavia, Poland, and Rumania, but many Soviet grantees, in professional groups, also visited the US.73 The State Department, although maintaining its general aim to use exchanges to transmit truthful information about the United States to the Soviet people, re-mained sober about possible long-term results. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that these exchanges represented a serious threat to the Soviet regime’s ability to control information flow within its own society.74

The Foreign Leader Program’s Global Scale In Fiscal Year 1950, the first year of the Leader Program, the world

total for Leader grantees (excluding Germany) was 148. However, the focus on Germany soon declined through the 1950s as the State De-partment turned its attention to running a worldwide programme. Up to the end of the 1950s Western European grantees dominated. Between 1950-62 there were 7420 Leaders from that region, out of a world total of 11,475.75 Yet global strategy demanded attention for key Third World states early on, so much so that in 1954 IES regarded the “politically important countries” for the Leader Program to be France, Italy, Britain, Egypt, India, and Indonesia.76 By 1970 the programme had been trans- 72 Coombs, P. The Fourth Dimension of Foreign Policy: Educational and Cultural

Affairs, New York, Harper & Row, 1964, p. 93. 73 The expert on exchanges with the Soviet Union is Yale Richmond. See also his US-

Soviet Cultural Exchanges 1958-1986: Who Wins?, Boulder, Westview Press, 1987. 74 See ‘Soviet sees Risk in Cultural Pact’, 5 June 1962, New York Times. 75 Educational and Cultural Diplomacy 1962 (Washington DC: State Department,

1963) 78-87. 76 James A. Donovan to Douglas N. Batson, 20 May 1954, Group IV Box 153 Folder

17, CU. For Fiscal Year (FY) 1954 the authorised budget for State Department ex-change programmes was $19,895,578, of which Smith-Mundt grants took $7,173,682 and the Fulbright Program $8,961,212. From the Smith-Mundt allocation the Leader Program took $1,789,260. Fiscal Year 1954 refers to the financial year July 1, 1953 to June 30, 1954, and this calendar was used for all further statistics given in this book (it was later changed to 31 August – 1 September).

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formed from a predominantly European to a global programme. In 1952, the top ten countries receiving the most grants was as follows: Germany (1058), Japan (200), Italy (66), France (67), Austria (47), UK (46), India (41), Thailand (28), Iran (27), and Indonesia (25). By 1970 the top ten list was Japan (79), Germany (43), Brazil (41), Spain (37), Venezuela (33), Thailand (32), Italy (32), France (26), Nigeria (21), and India (20).77 By 1956 extra funds were being requested for a major expansion of the Leader Program in Latin America, Asia, and Africa in response to expanding Soviet cultural diplomacy programmes. Special emphasis was placed on parliamentarians, government officials, trade unionists, education administrators, women’s affairs, and youth leadership. How-ever, in place of a general expansion, the budget for Western Europe was cut to accommodate the rise in grantees from other continents. The following table illustrates the trend.78

Foreign Leader Grantees: Selected Years 1954-70 Fiscal Year Western Europe Eastern Europe Africa Asia Latin America Total

1954 645 - 93* 82** 35 855 1957 431 - 36 366 262 1,095 1958 273 - 40 249 212 774 1961 306*** - 115 207 141 769 1962 210 29 157 278 200 874 1964 198 48 108 187** 197 738 1967 181 21 138 339 344 1,023 1968 212 19 123 415 292 1,061 1970 222 17 206 329 223 997

* Includes Middle East and South Asia / ** Far East only *** Includes Western and Eastern Europe

77 Ketzel, p. 123; International Exchange 1970: Leaders for Tomorrow, Washington

DC, Department of State, 1970, pp. 28-30. 78 Numbers for Leader grantees, as for all US exchanges, are often inaccurate and can

differ between various sources. The figures presented here are based on arrivals in the United States. Hence, fewer grantees may be registered in any given year than invitations actually issued simply because their trip actually took place within the following fiscal year. Figures compiled from Partners in International Understand-ing: The International Educational Exchange Program, Washington DC, Department of State, 1955; International Educational Exchange Program 1948-1958, Washing-ton DC, Department of State, 1957; Cultural Diplomacy: 1958, Washington DC, De-partment of State, 1958; Educational and Cultural Diplomacy: 1962, Washington DC, Department of State, 1962; A Beacon of Hope: The Exchange of Persons Pro-gram, US Advisory Commission on International Educational and Cultural Affairs, April 1963; Educational and Cultural Diplomacy: 1964, Washington DC, Depart-ment of State, 1964; International Exchange 1967: A Report of the Bureau of Educa-tional and Cultural Affairs, Washington DC, Department of State, 1967; Interna-tional Exchange: 1968, Washington DC, Department of State, 1968; International Exchange 1970: Leaders for Tomorrow, Washington DC, Department of State, 1970.

Introduction

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Despite the urge to expand the Leader Program across the Third World, local sensibilities and suspicions often prevented its smooth functioning. A report from 1969 noted that political instability in Paki-stan and the lack of diplomatic relations with several Arab states pre-vented the Program from operating to its potential in the Near East/South Asian region. Finding suitable candidates was also a prob-lem, since

in a few countries, of which Iran is perhaps the best example, it can be said that we are ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ because most of the meaning-ful leaders – Iran does not easily develop independently imaginative leaders – have already been given grants under this program.79

Aside from this, the arrival of more Leaders from the Third World caused strains within an exchange bureaucracy that developed out of programmes focused on post-WWII Western Europe, and reassessments were needed.

Not surprisingly, the programs operate most easily and with the best results in EUR [Europe], the cultural area for which they were initiated, for which the terminology was selected and for which the categories were devised. Caught between cumbersome administrative techniques and the alien termi-nology and categories of the program, efforts in AF [Africa] and FE [Far East] hardly approach goals which might be expected. While more success is obtained in ARA [Latin America] and NEA [Near East], the fact that we chose to operate within social categories indigenous to the United States and Europe has distorted our efforts and eliminated important areas of cultural impact.80

Instead of promoting US leadership capabilities in the Free World, more attention had to be given to the specific skills these people needed and to answering the question “why we want to assist them in their own countries”.81 More interpreters were needed. It was considered that “existing operational precedents, procedures and staff organization are inadequate for achieving a significant impact in culturally disparate areas of the world”. Even the terminology – ‘grantee’, for instance – caused problems in some cultures, since “there is an undertone of un-

79 Sam Yates (CU) to Francis Colligan (CU), 5 August 1969, Group IV Box 151 Folder

34, CU. 80 Ibid. On these problems see also Alrutz, L.The Foreign Leader Exchange Program

and Africa South of the Sahara, Master’s thesis, American University, 1968. 81 ‘Blueprint for Action 1960’s’, n.d. [1961], Group IV Box 154 Folder 8, CU (empha-

sis in original).

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wholesome complicity in ‘awarding’ a ‘grant’ to a minister of a foreign government and asking him to ‘accept the terms of grant’”.82

The shift of resources from Western Europe to the Third World had a dramatic effect. The table above demonstrates the consequences for the Leader program. By 1961 the overall share of United States Information Agency (USIA) funds directed towards programmes in Western Europe had fallen from 20 to 13 per cent, and United States Information Service (USIS) posts in the region had lost more than one-third of their Ameri-can and local staff.83 This move was contested by many who felt that one of the fundamental purposes of the Leader Program was to contrib-ute towards maintaining the transatlantic alliance. Ketzel had already argued in 1954 “that the United States maintain an interest in nations already basically friendly” instead of taking those relations for granted and pursuing other more recalcitrant targets.84 Ten years later similar views were forcefully articulated by the Advisory Commission on International Educational and Cultural Affairs via its in-depth survey A Beacon of Hope. This argued that a global programme reaching out to the Third World was vital for US interests, but that this must not ob-scure the fundamental importance of established relationships. Commis-sion member Walter Adams, in a separate report on Western Europe, went further by claiming that if cultural diplomacy, in tune with US foreign policy in general, was meant to further the national interest, then of all the regions in the world it was Western Europe that required a rapid expansion of such activities. The growing strength of its econo-mies, its increasing weight in international organisations, its continuing role in the Third World, and the security cornerstone of the Atlantic Alliance all pointed towards this logical conclusion. With its modern societies, Western Europe also had more “absorbtive capacity” for an upgraded programme.85 What is more, as the United States looked to strengthen its relations around the world in answer to Soviet strategy, a greater use could be made of the continuing close cultural ties between European states and the newly-independent nations of their former colonial empires. In 1967 these views were echoed once again by James Huntley, previously of the Ford Foundation and the Atlantic Institute,

82 ‘Recommendations to Improve the Foreign Leader and Foreign Specialist Programs’,

9 June 1961, Group IV Box 153 Folder 20, CU. 83 Lowry, W. & Hooker, G. ‘The Role of the Arts and Humanities’, in Blum, R (ed.),

Cultural Affairs and Foreign Relations, Englewood Cliffs NJ, Prentice Hall, 1963, p. 72.

84 Ketzel, p. 226. 85 A Beacon of Hope: The Exchange of Persons Program, April 1963, pp. 58-59;

Adams, W. ‘A Report on the Strategic Importance of Western Europe’, September 1964, p. 5.

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43

who argued for the special status of US-European relations and the need to direct US exchanges towards developing and nurturing cosmopolitan European elites for the sake of a stable and effective transatlantic inter-dependence.86

As economic and political relations between the United States and Western Europe became ever denser and more intricate, so too did the Leader Program follow these trends and take on a new role. By the 1960s the post-war recovery of Western Europe was complete, the European Economic Community (EEC) was developing its own voice in economic policy, and US leadership in NATO was no longer taken for granted. These changes had to be accommodated in US foreign policy, and cultural diplomacy offered useful ways in which this could be done. Elder had already noticed in 1960 that the original thrust of the Leader Program, essentially reactionary in “opposing certain regimes and ideologies”, was gradually giving way to “a more positive response, stressing the need for a freer or more intensive merging of thought and action”.87 Although Elder was thinking globally, the main results of this shift in approach were seen in Western Europe. The sheer scale of exchanges that had taken place during the 1950s, coupled with the intense transatlantic traffic in intellectual, policy-making, economic, and security fields, were beginning to normalise US-European contacts in significant ways. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ annual report for 1964 reported that there was “a growing recognition that for a European to be considered fully and properly educated he should have gained substantial knowledge about the United States through either travel or study or both”.88 In contrast to the ideologically-driven programmes of the 1950s, exemplified by the Campaign of Truth and the focus on fast media, during the 1960s a shift gradually occurred towards ‘alliance management’ and the establishment of transnational networks of professionals working around common problems. Dean Mahin, who had been directly involved with the Leader Program almost since its inception, wrote how

in the 1950s and early 1960s, while there were many references to the ex-change programme as a two-way street, the main emphasis was on talking to rather than with international visitors. In that period most Americans were confident that most of our institutions and practices were superior to those

86 Huntley, ‘A New Look’, pp. 1-7. 87 Elder, R. The Foreign Leader Program, p. 11. 88 Educational and Cultural Diplomacy: 1964, Washington DC, Department of State,

1964, pp. 32-33.

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abroad […] Yet in the later 1960s there was increased interest in the aspect of the exchange program involving professional interchange.89

Thus, whereas the US had pushed itself forward as the role model after WWII, by the end of the 1960s the FLP was being used as a more defensive means to maintain the alignment of foreign elites within the Western alliance. The arrival of television and the increasing availability of information on the United States reduced the effectiveness of grantees as channels of general information. As the length of time for visits was reduced, so the professional value became emphasised at the expense of more time-consuming touristic impressions. The sharing of specialised knowledge, and not ideological commitment, became the main currency for building lasting contacts. There was “a ‘new breed’ of visitors who are considerably more sophisticated than the average visitors of the immediate post war period”.90 The status of the United States had also changed, and its decline in prestige in both foreign policy (Vietnam war, economic difficulties) and domestic upheavals (urban decay, racial tensions, crime and drugs) led to a shift in how exchanges were put to use. By the end of the 1960s the US had become “the fallen idol”, as one commentator put it, in that Europeans “no longer see America as the goal for the future, but now they fear that what we have been, they too will become”.91 Whereas in the post-war decade there was a strong impulse to transmit and export American know-how and technical expertise for the general good of more efficient socio-economic organi-sation, from the mid-60s onwards this impulse had died down. Certainly the United States continued to be a principal source of technological innovation and advancement, as the ‘Brain Drain’ concerns of the late 1960s confirmed. Nevertheless, the rise of countervailing forces (in Europe, for instance, the desire for greater ‘independence’ from the US, and the increasing political influence of youth) meant that a greater effort needed to be made in socialising new elites within the US-led informal empire. Post-war generations who had no consciousness of the Marshall Plan were beginning to enter public life, and thus they needed to be incorporated within the norms of transatlantic relations. Public statements and policy documents on exchanges during the late 1960s and early 1970s are replete with aims such as “a widening web of professional and other personal associations”, “a new transnational 89 Mahin, History of the US Department of State’s International Visitor Program, p. 57

(emphasis in original). 90 Mahin, D. ‘Programming International Visitors in American Communities: Problems

of the 1960s’, May 1967, author’s copy (with thanks to Dean Mahin); Charles Frankel to H. Field Haviland Jr. [Brookings Institution], 11 July 1967, author’s copy (with thanks to Sherry Mueller).

91 Former CAO John Brown, quoted in Mahin, p. 11.

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45

fraternity of men and women in intellectual, public, and cultural life”, “cooperative problem-oriented activities”, “the breaking down of na-tional barriers to collaboration”, and “to stimulate institutional develop-ment in directions which favorably affect mutual comprehension”.92 By 1972 a State Department internal memo on the Visitor Program ac-knowledged the standard goal as to remove “myth and prejudice” about the United States, but added that “by sharing information and view-points on key problem areas – such as drug abuse, environmental pro-tection, and educational development – participants in the program are furthering world progress on these vital matters”.93 However, the same memo also laid bare the strategic value which FSOs had always seen in the Leader Program:

US Ambassadors and senior diplomats around the world have repeatedly praised the International Visitor Program as a highly successful tool in changing perspectives of key individuals in their countries and in providing US diplomats with keys to more frequent access to these people, both before their departure and after their return home. For many of these diplomats, the budget allotted for this program could be increased many times over.94

Organisation of the Book The first section looks at where the Foreign Leader Program came

from and the impulses that fed into its modus operandi. Chapter 1 covers the history of exchange programmes as political tools of US foreign policy, from the first schemes in Latin America and China through WWI and the development of approaches to psychological warfare in WWII. Chapter 2 looks at the administrative apparatus of the Leader Program, and how it operated as a unique example of public-private cooperation involving US embassies, the State Department, private ‘programming agencies’, and local visitors’ centres and citizens groups spread across the United States. Having established the framework and outlook of the FLP, the following section provides an in-depth look at the Netherlands as the principal case study of the book. Chapters 3 to 7 examine the application of the Leader Program, investigating and as-sessing the Program’s impact in the fields of Dutch politics, socio-economic management, the media, and the cultural realm through the 1950s and 1960s. Special attention is given to specific cases where the 92 Mahin, History, pp. 57-58; The CU Program Concept’, Bureau of Educational and

Cultural Affairs, 1 October 1973, p. 1, quoted in Sherry Mueller, ‘US Exchange of Persons Programs: A Question of Quality’.

93 ‘International Visitor Program: Purposes, Cost and Effectiveness’, July 1972, Group IV Box 152 Folder 4, CU.

94 Ibid.

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Program was used to influence a particular field of activity, such as to encourage the Dutch Labour party’s opposition to communism, influ-encing the Dutch media during awkward US-Dutch relations during the early 1960s, and trying to galvanise pro-US elites to overcome the negative impact of the Vietnam war. Chapters 8 and 9 look at the im-plementation of the Leader Program in Britain and France respectively, tracking the functioning of the Program over the same two decades and following the efforts of the US embassies in London and Paris to utilise this valuable medium in support of productive bilateral relations. The conclusion covers the problem of evaluation, looking at the methodol-ogy and results of the many surveys that were carried out, and adding to them with observations gained from this research.