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Selling
America's Culture to the World
Nancy Snow
The USIA's future strategy emphasizes public-private partnership
and reinventing itself through "collecting, evaluating and using
performance data to improve our program results." Once again,
public-private partnership is government doublespeak for private
domination and public acquiescence in budget-cutting times. Under
this context foreign trade and economic policy are fully partnered
with U.S. cultural and information policy. As pressure increases
for the USIA to measure its performance, a "good" USIA program
is one led by bottom line corporate considerations: Does it expand
American markets? Does it promote American competitiveness? Does
it link American business to overseas counterparts? Mutual understanding
becomes a straw man concept by which the U.S. government, coached
by business, informs and influences while other countries listen
and understand.
Current public diplomacy and foreign policy making reduces the
role of American citizens to mere spectators. USIA's model of
democracy and the free market is promoted as the superpower version
of economic globalization, packaged and ready for shipping to
clients throughout the world. In this version, foreign capital
flows freely while the movement of people, particularly the world's
poor, is strictly monitored and controlled. Such a commercial
package speaks first and foremost for government "partners," the
Fortune 500 corporations, which are the primary beneficiaries
as well as the bankrollers of the American political process.
This is a packaged story of America that is incomplete and undemocratic.
Where do workers and communities fit into the story? How do private
citizens play a part in building dialogue across cultures?
There is strong evidence that the USIA is an ineffective, obsolete
agency that should be dismantled. The USIA has no legitimate post-cold
war function and primarily serves the interests of U.S. trade
and economic sectors by touting to foreign elite audiences the
superiority of U.S. commercial values and the soundness of U.S.
economic policies. Likewise, by overplaying foreign economic concerns,
USIA neglects its second mandate, citing Smith-Mundt restraints
that prohibit the American public from having access to USIA materials.
USIA's operation, like a mini-Commerce Department, makes for duplication
of government services in a post-big-government era of downsizing
and budget cuts. Finally, private hucksterism for U.S. business
interests under the rhetoric of "public" diplomacy makes a mockery
of agency mandates for mutual understanding between the people
of the U.S. and the people of other countries.
Progressive arguments in favor of abolishing USIA include some
unusual company. The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank,
supports the elimination of USIA but for other reasons: "Since
the end of the cold war, there is less and less appropriate government
action to take. The United States no longer needs to combat communism
by, for example, supporting trade unionism, cranking out propaganda,
or giving out scholarships to foreign students. In contrast, as
a growing number of economies open up to trade and investment,
there is more and more commercial and financial (i.e. nongovernmental)
action to take. Given the enormous impact of Hollywood, Motown,
Levi's, hundreds of thousands of travelers, and the news media,
it is hard to believe that U.S. government information and cultural
programs could make anything but the most marginal impressions
on the minds of foreigners. Moreover, it makes little sense to
send American culture abroad for free when foreign populations
are clearly willing to pay for it. There is no longer a need to
`win their hearts and minds.'"
I favor a political democracy and foreign policy driven by informed
citizen activists. USIA's function, like the mini-Commerce Department
it has become, is to sell one version of America, essentially
corporate, to the influential dominant markets of the world. But
America's legacy has never been and will never be just for the
selling. Countless American citizens, working with their counterparts
abroad, are using their united vision to promote a global civic
society which promotes a one-world community -- not a one-world
market -- where diverse cultures can work together in efforts
to combat poverty, oppression, pollution, and collective violence.
In contrast to USIA's boardroom-style globalization model, many
of these citizen activists favor more freedom of movement for
people and greater regulation of capital. A classical economic
philosophy and its almost messianic devotion to unlimited growth
do not drive this global grassroots system. Instead, it takes
into account people's values, their cultural and natural environments,
and local economies where traditional nonmarket values like reciprocity,
mutual aid, and self-reliance build community bonds.
Roadblocks on the Path to a New Foreign Policy
One of the major roadblocks
on the path to citizen-based diplomacy is that big business and
big money rule the American system of democracy. We don't need
an independent counsel or special prosecutor to point this out
to us. Instead of one-person, one-vote, we have a system of one-dollar,
one-vote. The two dominant parties, Republican and Democrat, are
what Ralph Nader likes to call a "duopoly." This two-party monopoly
is represented by the same large corporations that form business
coalitions like USA*NAFTA, USA*ENGAGE, or ALOT. Neither party
has the moral courage to take on the private system of financing
our politics because each is beholden to corporate money and special
interests in a never-ending cycle of cash and influence.
Many myths perpetuate that confuse the American people about who
is really running campaigns. During the 1996 campaign, conservatives
charged that the Clinton Administration was controlled by organized
labor, failing to mention that the lion's share of money for both
Republicans and Democrats is business. A November 1997 report
by the Center for Responsive Politics indicated that in 1996 "business
outspent labor by a factor of 11 to one and ideological groups
by 19 to one," and "nearly two-thirds of the business money went
to Republicans," which has fed a growing dependence among Democrats
on organized labor. Despite the dominance of business interests
in campaign finance, another pro-business coalition, run out of
the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, is gearing up for
the 1998 elections to fight the AFL-CIO. Calling itself, "The
Coalition: Americans Working for Real Change," it raised $5 million
in the 1996 election to combat organized labor's advertising campaign.
Now the Coalition wants to permanently fight any attempts to establish
a labor-oriented Congress. Congress remains "pro-business but
by the narrowest of margins … A handful of new anti-business members
or weaknesses among pro-business members could stop progress toward
a smaller federal government, lower and simpler taxes, tort reform,
free trade, and workplace regulatory reform dead in its tracks."
The Coalition's client list includes the National Restaurant Association,
the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Federation
of Independent Businesses, many of whose individual members give
generous soft money contributions to mostly the Republican party
and who actively oppose any attempts to pass campaign finance
reform legislation which would limit their access to government.
Another problem is that the people, traditionally represented
by their government, find themselves facing a new power -- global
corporations -- which hold no allegiance to any one individual,
community, or place. A revealing study by the Institute for Policy
Studies, using World Bank and UN data from 1995, indicated that
51 of the 100 largest economies in the world were corporations.
Only 49 were countries. They included Mitsubishi (22nd), General
Motors (26), Ford Motor (31), Exxon (39), Wal-Mart (42) and AT&T
(48). These top 200 corporations' combined sales surpassed the
combined economies of 182 countries. Wal-Mart alone had sales
in 1995 that were greater than the GNP of 161 countries. In 1997,
Wal-Mart even overtook General Motors as the largest corporate
employer in the United States with 675,000 employees worldwide.
As USA Today reported, "Unseating GM reflects broad U.S.
employment trends. Those include the rise of the service industry,
the decline of manufacturing, the erosion of unionized workers,
the rise of temporary workers and increased worldwide competition
that hits manufacturers harder than retailers."
What this means is that we are growing up in a society today where
big government is being downsized while the power of global corporations
is concentrating and coalescing across national boundaries (thus
their name "transnational corporations" or TNCs). Despite this
trend, our media (particularly conservative talk radio) continue
to emphasize stories that point to the U.S. government as the
most dominant and controlling institution in society. Even President
Clinton acknowledged in his 1996 State of the Union address to
great bipartisan applause that "the era of big government is over."
But these same media, our top elected official, and our two dominant
political parties rarely criticize the growing power of large
corporations because they are bankrolled by them.
Democracies thrive only when power is deconcentrated from the
hands of a few to many. Thomas Jefferson warned that "banking
institutions and moneyed incorporations" if given free reign to
dominate the people could destroy democracy. The 20th-century
social philosopher John Dewey could have been talking about the
late 20th century when he said: "Power today resides in control
of the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation
and communication. Whoever owns them rules the life of a country."
Politics becomes then "the shadow cast on society by big business,"
so long as the country is ruled by "business for private profit
through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced
by command of the press, press agents, and other means of publicity
and propaganda."
Against a backdrop of growing corporate power it is understandable
that many Americans feel powerless to change political institutions.
They see their own government merging the public with the private
sector in service of the private sector's interests. We grow up
corporate-minded, leading the sponsored life, but are ignorant
about many of our civic rights.
One of these central rights Americans have is to be informed and
engaged by our media. It is well known and readily understood
that our major broadcast media are advertising-supported and profit-driven.
What is little known and less understood is that the American
people own the airwaves. Since 1934 our federal government has
freely given radio and television broadcasters the right to use
the public airwaves for private gain as long as they promote the
public's interest. And what is the public interest? Broadly defined,
that media inform and engage the public in order to increase citizen
participation in the democratic process. An uninformed citizenry
cannot make sound decisions about power relations and resource
allocation, which are so central to political decision-making.
It is then critically important that our major media inform the
citizenry and promote political participation in the democratic
process. The problem lies with ownership and concentration.
In 1983, when Ben Bagdikian first published The Media Monopoly,
his now classic critique of the America media environment, he
reported that 50 corporations controlled most of the American
media in newspapers, television and radio, book publishing and
movie studios. His criticism of the harmful effects of corporate-owned
and advertising-driven news earned him a reputation as an "alarmist."
His 1992 edition reported that 50 had shrunk to 20. Bagdikian's
5th edition was published on April 1, 1997, but there's no April
Fools joke here: What were 50 corporations fourteen years ago
is down to 10 media conglomerates that dominate the U.S. system.
What Bagdikian calls a "horror" is almost unconscionable to anyone
concerned with the democratic process.
A 1997 Common Cause study, "Channeling Influence: The Broadcast
Lobby and the $70-billion Free Ride," provides a picture of the
power these major media wield in the halls of Congress. Each programmer
now holds a license to use a portion of the public airwaves to
broadcast radio and television. Emerging digital technology will
increase the economic value of that spectrum system and allow
broadcasters access to multi-use programming. Traditional television
sets will be replaced with digital "genies" which offer a higher
quality picture and sound along with computer data, paging and
cellular service. Broadcasters have lobbied hard to use the new
digital spectrum for free. The Federal Communications Commission,
the U.S. government arm which oversees the broadcast industry,
estimates that the new digital TV licenses if auctioned off to
broadcasters would generate at least $70 billion for the federal
treasury. Unfortunately the FCC is the FAA of telecommunications
policy and is not likely to put undue pressure on broadcasters
to pay. FCC officials tend to be industry supporters instead of
public defenders of the airwaves.
On January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson gave his Fourteen
Points Speech for world peace which outlined "a general association
of nations," the precursor to the United Nations. In this age
of globalization of finance capital, the acquiescence of governments
to corporate power and control, and the continued domination of
transnational structures like the IMF, World Bank, GATT, and NAFTA,
it is time, some 80 years later, to form a united, autonomous
association of citizen movements which can resist the marketization
of human lives and their environment. The following, my more modest
7-Point Plan for a citizen-based diplomacy, is influenced by the
efforts of citizen groups working with progressive politicians
to launch a "Fairness Agenda for America" in response to the corporate-defined
Republican "Contract with America."
7-Point Plan for a Citizen-Based Diplomacy
1. Restore the Body Politic. A citizen-based diplomacy
places civic-mindedness and civic activism at the center of our
body politic by emphasizing the role and function of grassroots
democratic activists who work for human rights, human security,
and environmental and cultural preservation. The current body
politic emphasizes economic theories, glorifies the free market,
and reduces the role of citizens to occasional endorsers of winner-take-all
options. A new body politic takes into account the interests and
concerns of citizens affected by global policymaking. Public opinion
polls consistently show support for demilitarization and a shift
in foreign policy from arms sales and exports to economic and
social justice. A new body politic demands that its government
resist efforts by military contractors and lobbyists to look for
new markets for their wares, and pressures government to convert
a military-dependent economy that benefits a few large conglomerates
to a self-sustaining energy-efficient economy that benefits all.
2. Fight "Trade über Alles" Foreign Policy. Foreign
policy is no longer the exclusive domain of economic and military
elites. Just ask Jody Williams, U.S. coordinator of the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines, a coalition of over 1,000 organizations
in 60 countries which worked with receptive governments to redefine
international norm and international law. Williams attributes
the campaign's success to working outside the bounds of major
institutions like the United Nations where the anti-land-mine
campaign had stalled, and building networks with citizen groups
and smaller pro-ban countries. The Nobel Committee readily admitted
that its decision to award the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize to Jody
Williams and the ICBL was designed to pressure superpowers like
the United States, Russia, and China to sign an international
treaty banning the use of anti-personnel land mines. That plan
seemed to partially work. President Boris Yeltsin immediately
announced that Russia would become a signatory to the international
treaty. When President Clinton did not call to congratulate the
American Nobel laureate, Williams understood why: "The message
we've been sending this administration for the past few years
is that they are on the wrong side of humanity. He knows what
our message is. I would say the same thing to him on the telephone
as I've said to him on TV." Jody Williams never got a call from
President Clinton, but the parents of septuplets in Iowa did.
Mass-based local movements, citizen deliberation and debate put
pressure on government and corporate elites to open the political
process. That pressure can reshape foreign policy to cut current
cold-war levels of military spending, convert military research
and development initiatives to domestic social needs, stop arms-bazaar
NATO expansion, shift from a unilateral military presence abroad
to a multilateral response, and place human rights instead of
expanding markets at the forefront of foreign policy.
3. Redefine Foreign Assistance. Despite the end of the
cold war, foreign assistance continues to mean assisting countries
in death and destruction in the form of weapons and ammunition.
The United States is the world's remaining superpower, not only
in economic and military strength, but also in arms trafficking.
As long as foreign assistance remains defined by arms transfers,
less developed countries that are in transition to democracy will
remain vulnerable to military forces working with repressive governments
that systematically violate human rights. Real foreign assistance
would provide technology and resources to help grassroots organizations
document human rights abuses on video and the Internet, report
abuses in a timely fashion to news services, facilitate internal
and international communication, and link their efforts to worldwide
social movements.
4. Emphasize People and Progress, not Markets and Growth.
A citizen-based diplomacy challenges the secular economic god,
"growth," its outmoded measure, GNP, and the myth of "free trade,"
which continue to dominate global economic policy despite irrefutable
evidence that global human activity is destroying natural resources
and creating inequalities both here and abroad. Redefining progress
from growth to quality of life reveals that two-thirds of the
world's people are still marginalized in the new global economy
and the gap is widening between rich and poor in developed and
less developed countries. Citizens must hold governments and corporations
accountable for the inequities of the marketplace instead of hearing
only of its virtues.
5. Redignify Work and Labor. Economic globalization tends
to define work and labor in employer terms: "flexible labor markets"
where workers accept unconscionably low wages and dismal working
conditions, or how work affects only the bottom line. A citizen-based
diplomacy places work and labor at the center of the global economy
debate, addresses economic anxiety in families and the workplace,
and puts pressure on governments and their corporate patrons to
promote an adequate living wage, safe working conditions, and
a progressive tax structure based on individual or institutional
ability to pay.
Take the example of the global citizen campaign against the Nike
corporation. This highly profitable multinational corporation
literally "walked out" on the American shoe industry. Nike does
not have a single shoe factory within the United States, abandoning
higher-wage American workers and their families for low-wage undemocratic
countries like China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Despite its feel-good
"Just Do It" corporate motto and well-publicized support for women
in sports, Nike exploits women and children in labor camp conditions
where pregnant women are routinely fired and women lose fingers
in rushed assembly lines. So far Nike has been able to protect
its good corporate citizen image through spending over $978 million
in worldwide advertising in 1996 and flaunting its multimillion-dollar
advertising contracts with popular sports figures like Michael
Jordan and Tiger Woods. But efforts by progressive members of
Congress to engage Nike CEO Phil Knight in improving his labor
practices overseas and expanding his manufacturing to U.S. communities
may apply some extra public pressure for Nike and like-minded
corporate citizens to "just do the right thing."
6. Broaden Definition of Democracy Through "Clean" Elections
A civic-based democracy supports reform movements to reduce the
amount of private money in politics in the short-term and public
financing of elections in the long-term to eliminate the need
for elected "public servants" to be professional fund-raisers.
Citizens are concerned that candidates spend most of their time
chasing after big money and that well-qualified but under-funded
candidates don't have a real chance of being elected. A clean
money campaign reform approach is the most sweeping option available
for citizens to reclaim their democracy from the reigns of private
industry. It would, among other things, provide voluntary public
financing for qualified candidates, ban the use of soft money
(unregulated large money donations), provide free and discounted
TV time for candidates who agree to spending limits (even President
Clinton called for that in his 1998 State of the Union address),
shorten the campaign season, and require full electronic disclosure.
Such a system has already passed by ballot initiative in Maine
and in the Vermont state legislature and similar measures are
underway in dozens of U.S. states. The public financing option
places citizens at the center of democratic debate and would likely
lead to real democracy measures like civilian monitoring of military
and intelligence budgets, an independent judiciary, and broader
avenues for citizen redress and involvement in political and economic
decision making process.
7. Support Media Reform. The national commercial television
networks have been, to put it mildly, less than vigilant in exposing
how corporate money is corrupting American politics. The print
media have done a better job in tracking fat cat contributions
to both dominant parties, but the "Big Five" broadcasters (ABC,
CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN) have not been beating their drums in support
of campaign finance reform. Why? Because they have a direct conflict
of interest in the story. The national networks profit handsomely
from the corrupt political process that drives campaigns. Most
of the big money given to candidates running for national office
ends up being spent on television ads and media consultants. In
the 1996 elections, the top 75 media markets collected $400 million
dollars to run political ads. It would be against these media
moguls' interests to support reforming a system that affects their
bottom line. The corporate owners of the Big Five (Disney, Westinghouse,
GE, Murdoch's News Corporation, Inc., and Time-Warner) are themselves
major campaign contributors to the current political system, funneling
millions into the soft money accounts of the Republican and Democratic
parties. The returns on their investment are millions in tax breaks,
direct subsidies, and other governmental "thank yous."
My home state of New Hampshire, which hosts the first-in-the-nation
presidential primary, celebrates a retail approach to politics
where candidates win support at family dinners and coffee klatches.
But even homespun New Hampshire is not immune to the broadcast
gag rule on campaign finance reform. When magazine magnate Steve
Forbes ran for president in 1996, he made a formidable showing
in New Hampshire. Forbes' top sales agent was the only network
affiliate in the state, ABC's WMUR-9 in Manchester, New Hampshire,
which received over $600,000 from Forbes in the months prior to
the February primary and reported Forbes' comings and goings like
personal infomercials. Altogether the presidential candidates
purchased $2.2 million in political advertising for one broadcast
station that controls the New Hampshire market, an amount which
exposes the myth surrounding the intimacy of the New Hampshire
primary. Television is the main messenger of politics these days
and it's not telling the whole story.
A civilian-based diplomacy supports noncommercial, nonprofit,
and publicly subsidized media to counteract the corporate-controlled,
for-profit, private media that dominate political discourse. It
works to place media control, ownership, and lobbying at the center
of public policy debate. Democracy cannot function or survive
without a sufficient medium by which citizens remain informed
and engaged in public policy debates.
Your Turn: Getting Involved
Citizens living in a democracy
traditionally have relied on their government for social change
programs and social safety net protections against the inherent
inequities of the market economy. This is no longer the case.
In the United States both the Democratic and Republican parties
have become sycophants to their wealthy corporate patrons, equally
supportive of repressive solutions to social ills, and increasingly
unresponsive to the economic needs of the working and middle class
American. An illustration of this is the windfall of profit that
came out of the 1997 budget and tax deal. The Common Cause report,
"Return on Investment," details the hidden story behind the celebrated
budget and tax deal of 1997: corporate welfare-style giveaways,
tax breaks and subsidies doled out to the special interests and
insider lobbyists that have contributed millions of dollars to
the Democrat and Republican parties. The public's role is little
more than bystander as it watches its government respond to big
money and spiral out of democratic reach. This makes the public
particularly susceptible to antigovernment propaganda on the right
and no seemingly credible alternative from the left but fears
of more big government programs.
What all of us have witnessed over the last two decades is a growing
concentration of power and wealth in fewer hands. Non-commercialized
space for public gathering is shrinking, while public participation
in politics is being handed over to private wealth. This private
wealth is in turn dominating our public welfare, our public lands,
our public airwaves, our pension trusts, all of which are legally
owned by the people, but not controlled by them. This is not democracy.
This is a plutocracy, where debate is defined by narrow margins
that leave certain longheld assumptions about foreign policy and
democracy unchallenged. If we the people remain spectators or
a "bewildered herd" we can expect a continuation of corporate-state
collusion.
A third way is to struggle for economic and social justice in
citizen initiatives. It is my hope that progressive organizations
will move beyond single-issue priorities, turf wars, or internal
struggles to build one strong and united progressive movement
that casts a wide social safety net to stop our political and
economic decline and realize a global civic society that values
genuine democracy.
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