I’ve always urged those hoping to cultivate relationships with media contacts – a highly skeptical demographic – to “take the time to build trust.”
>Offer help when you need nothing in return.
>Forward some interesting information or instructive documentation they might find useful.
>Offer entrée to an interview that doesn’t necessarily directly benefit you or your client.
>Build some good will, so that when you need there to be an open mind you’re more likely to find it.

Winning hearts and minds should commence long before that open mind is needed. This is good advice for individuals. It’s good advice for nations as well.

For example, during the past decade we’ve heard a lot about winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Shock and awe” sufficed to topple the Taliban and remove Saddam Hussein from power, but the war in both countries devolved into a protracted and bloody battle against insurgents, against whom we were ill prepared.

Only belatedly did our military fashion an effective counterinsurgency strategy, a combined political, diplomatic, developmental, humanitarian, and cultural push designed to win the support and good will of the local populations. This exercise of “soft power,” exquisitely more difficult in the midst of continuing violence, is crucial to the “surge” strategy most closely identified with General David Petraeus, but the principles underlying his strategy are not at all new.

Recently, I served as a moderator for one of the sessions at the Aspen Institute Conference on Cultural Diplomacy in Washington, DC. Along with The Phillips Collection and the NYU John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress, the Aspen Institute convened a luminous group steeped in arts, culture, government, and diplomacy to discuss the ways in which cultural diplomacy can advance understanding among nations. Aspen’s role is neither to dictate policy, nor even to lobby or advocate. It is, as its Director of Public Programs in the Arts, Dana Gioia, said, “to convene.” And so we did.

Several of the sessions recalled the dawn of the Cold War when the United States launched a multi-pronged effort to woo hearts and minds away from communism. Part of that effort encouraged educational exchanges that exposed individuals to American arts and culture. The thinking went that while an evening with Dave Brubeck or Louis Armstrong might not be wholly transformative, perhaps even the strictest Soviet bureaucrat might at least wonder if there was some redeeming value to a country that gave the world Blue Rondo a la Turk or Potato Head Blues.

As most Soviet sponsored Communist governments eventually crumbled, and the Cold War drew to a close, the culture wars erupted on editorial pages across this country. At the same time, a sagging economy had many in Congress eager to spend the yet-to-be-counted “peace dividend” on something other than cultural engagement with the enemy. The new world order called for less investment in hearts and minds and more acquiescence to those who found any kind of government support of the arts wasteful or distasteful.

The most visible signal of the country’s shifting diplomatic focus was the elimination of the United States Information Agency (USIA), an independent agency within the executive branch which, from 1953 to 1999 oversaw educational, cultural, and diplomatic programs and exchanges in nearly 200 locations in 140 countries.

There are two views – at least – on USIA. Congressman Jim Moran told the Aspen conference that eliminating it was a “horrible, horrible mistake.” Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who oversaw the dismantling of USIA and the absorption of some of its programs into the Department of State, told the audience that USIA was a “product of the Cold War” whose programs carried a whiff of propaganda that damaged their credibility, no matter how worthy.

Any PR professional understands the quandary of pitching as news a story with a decided point of view, the telling of which will be beneficial to the client. That doesn’t always make it any less newsworthy – just harder to sell to those skeptical journalists. Those are the times when those open minds are most needed.

To be sure, the United States still engages in considerable – and successful – international cultural and educational exchange programs. The most stellar example may be the Fullbright international educational exchanges, going strong since 1946. The State Department has a number of other initiatives under its Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, while the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities also engage in cultural exchanges, but on a comparatively miniscule scale. Given the current state of – and rate of – cultural exchange in which the US engages, the prevailing wish at the Aspen conference was for an increase in cultural diplomacy.

Dr. Azar Nafisi, author of the inspiring Reading Lolita in Tehran, told the audience that people can understand a country only by engaging with its culture, especially its literature. “Literature is about the truth,” she said. “Truth is about taking risks.”

The world is getting smaller every day. Real threats and dangers abound. It is naïve to think that cultural diplomacy alone will eliminate those threats. But we have to start somewhere to build trust and lay the groundwork for better relationships and understanding among people. Individual human beings are more alike than they are different. Taking risks to extend ourselves culturally is more likely to lead to the “shock of recognition.”

A different kind of “shock and awe,” perhaps?

Felicia Knight is President of Knight Vision International, LLC: www.KnightVisionInternational.com