The Foreign Service Journal, June 2022

50 JUNE 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL important episodes during the war. VOA misreported the mas- sacre of 20,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest, for instance, as a Nazi atrocity rather than a crime committed by the forces of Stalin. In other battles, Director Elmer Davis argued for the integra- tion of Japanese Americans into the war effort and for a more honest representation of the battlefield, including images of American dead. In due course, the War Department conceded and deployed Japanese Americans in the European theater. On the latter issue, understanding the need to damp down the expectations of the victory-hungry audience at home, the War Department allowed more of the horror of war to be visible in the work of combat photographers such as Robert Capa. OWI worked hard to ease the passage of American troops into Allied and, eventually, former-enemy territory, and helped to avoid major tensions with locals. Its outposts were often celebrated for their contributions. The OWI library in Cape Town, South Africa, for example, was remembered for many years as a major influence in the modernization of that country’s libraries and a voice for political reform. Perhaps most important was OWI’s central role in popu- larizing a global vision for the war effort. Yet even here there was a catch. All propaganda comes at the price of unintended consequences. The agency’s output emphasized the need for a collective effort, not just to win the war but to rebuild the world afterward. OWI helped lay the foundation for creation of the United Nations structure and ensured the domestic American enthusiasm for this project that had been missing in 1919. OWI built up expectations of the postwar system, overstating the degree to which the machinery would align with U.S. interests, exaggerating the capacity of some allies and the willingness of others to help. The bump of reality was damaging at home. When the valiant Chinese ally depicted by OWI crumbled under the pressure of a communist insurgency, the United States did not ask who misrepresented China between 1942 and 1945 but rather who lost China in 1949. An Essential Capability OWI was disbanded immediately after the Japanese sur- render in August 1945, its domestic elements wound down and its foreign elements transferred to the State Department. The Harry Truman administration had accepted a report early that summer that argued that information work was an essential component of foreign policy. It seems that an innate discom- fort with the idea of a government presence in communication at home in general and the OWI’s track record of controversy hastened the process. Seen in retrospect, the experience of OWI shows that communication is inherently difficult to manage. OWI had extreme difficulty reconciling the government’s need to com- municate policy and ideology with the interest of journalists at VOA in delivering objective coverage or, in some cases, advancing personal political agendas. The military were reluctant partners throughout. OWI got a lot wrong. Its exag- gerations set the United States up for a disruptive postwar reality check. Over-reliance on left-of-center journalists in its early years made OWI a favorite target of anti–New Deal Republicans. The controversies continued into the postwar period, though by the 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy took aim at VOA, real cases of disloyalty were a thing of the past. VOA had a rough passage into its postwar incarnation as an official international radio station with a core mission to report objec- tive news. Its enemies included the Associated Press, which hated the idea of the government providing the same commod- ity for free—news—for which AP charged. Eighty years on from the launch of OWI, it is important to look honestly at the agency’s record. Then, as now, the bottom line is that engagement of foreign publics matters, and that part of the effort in foreign policy must include explaining the approach to the domestic audience. It needs effort, creativity, leadership and a structure to reconcile the internal tensions between policy and reporting. Then, as now, we need inter- national partnerships to overcome our shared problems; and partnerships require someone to articulate a compelling vision of a shared destination. Today, like 80 years ago, is no time to neglect public diplo- macy. It seems absurd that budgets for public diplomacy are so hard fought, and that positions like the under secretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs kept vacant. A neglect of the military would provoke an outcry. It is time for a similar concern over the neglect of what Dwight Eisenhower called the psychological factor in foreign affairs. n Part of the effort in foreign policy must include explaining the approach to the domestic audience.