Would the United States be “better off today if the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) were still around”? Was the nation “robbed of the ability to properly engage in information warfare today”? These questions were addressed by Public Diplomacy Council member Matt Armstrong in a November 12, 2015, essay, “No, We Do Not Need to Revive the U.S. Information Agency,” on the War on the Rocks website. “However, laments about USIA are really a coded way of saying that we lack a strategy, an organizing principle, and empowered individuals to execute information warfare today,” he concluded. This is a clarifying essay that deserves wide reading in its entirety. Here are a few of his points:
- Modern invocations of the USIA are based on a romantic notion of a simpler time. Like any nostalgic remembrance, these visions ignore the messy details of reality.
- While there are strong similarities between the present and early years of the Cold War, today is not yesterday.
