Culture Communicates: US Diplomacy that Works

Cultural diplomacy is a prime example of ?soft power?, or the ability to persuade through culture, values, and ideas as opposed to ?hard power?, which conquers or coerces through military might. Cultural diplomacy helped to win the Cold War, but today when the US struggles to communicate its ideals of democracy and individual rights to a hostile world, cultural diplo-macy plays a negligible role in the broader endeavor of public diplomacy. Even though significant foreign policy experts from the right and the left have argued for the importance of cultural diplomacy, in the current climate it is easily dismissed as too soft and peripheral to the real issues. This paper will examine the reasons behind the decline of US cultural diplomacy from the 1990s, when the United States Information Agency, the home of cultural di-plomacy, was dismantled and merged into the State Department. In addition the past and present components of successful cultural diplomacy in the US and elsewhere. Finally, challenges facing the US in the post- 9/11 world and the potential and limitations of cultural diplomacy in meeting them will be discussed.