Cold War Frequencies PDF Download

By 1990, the confluence of three developments provoked a serious policy debate over the place and role of public diplomacy and international broadcasting in the U.S. foreign policy agenda. The first development was the proliferation of communications technologies, especially to parts of the world that had been isolated, because of geography, economics, cultural gaps, or political animosities, from the West generally and the United States in particular. The spread of these technologies created the potential for vastly improved communications with publics that had had little if any exposure to Western ideas, ideals, policies, or institutions. The second development was the spread of democracy (or at least democratic impulses) in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Although the revolutions in these countries were prefaced by social, political, and economic liberalization during the 1980s, the formal replacement of socialist regimes with more democratically oriented ones marked a watershed, the full implications of which we still do not fully understand. These revolutions carried two contradictory implications for public diplomacy and international broadcasting. On the one hand, the increased openness of the formerly socialist societies allowed international broadcasters greater access to both their subject matter (for example, they could interview public officials and other relevant people for the first time in history) and to their audiences (by a switch to medium wave and to some extent frequency-modulated FM frequencies, and by interacting and cooperating with the indigenous media). On the other hand, as the security threat from these countries dissipated, and as evidence emerged that democracy and a free press were beginning to take root, some in the foreign policy community raised doubts about the relevance of at least some of the U.S. international broadcasting operations.