Up with USIA

IN WHICH A SKEPTIC IS CONVERTED TO THE CAUSE OF A NEW, INDEPENDENT U.S. INFORMATION AGENCY.

I spent part of last Friday afternoon at the semi-annual meeting of the Public Diplomacy Council, a group of retired State Department and U.S. Information Agency employees whose primary goal seems to be to revive USIA through any means necessary. (I'm a member primarily because I write about PD and soft power, not from any past affiliation with these agencies.)

Not having been involved in foreign policy the Cold War, I've always wondered at some advocates' messianic zeal about reviving USIA. Luckily I ran into WhirledView's Patricia Kushlis, with whom I'd corresponded over the past few years but never met.

Pat boiled it down to unity of effort: When USIA was around, you had a specific group of people who had one mission, who had their own budget, and who had institutional knowledge and memory of how to communicate with overseas publics. Contrast that with today, where budgeting and control of USIA's functions is fractured among State, the BBG and even the Defense Department.

She implied that getting everything back under one roof would lead to smarter, more focused PD. I'm also sure that a reconstituted, independent USIA would be able to persist and carry out its work even in periods of parent-agency neglect, as the empty chair of the Undersecretary for PA and PD demonstrates today at State.

So I'm now fully on board with the new-USIA program. Extract the former USIA's functions from their current agency homes, and pour them into a new agency. Give nouveau USIA the authority to ask for its own budget. And let it start the quiet, decades-long business of rebuilding the U.S.'s reputation abroad.