"Unfinished Business" of U.S. Diplomacy & the Cultural Cold War

Abstract

American intervention abroad took on varied forms of creative representation during the Cold War. In the period from the 1950s through to the fall of the Soviet Union, a host of new and inventive platforms emerged promoting free expression in things like exhibitions, world fairs, literary works, and radio broadcasting. These are some of the focal points historians have studied in detail. They were wielded by the United States government as a tactic to shape the hearts and minds of international spectators. This historiographical essay addresses the set of arguments that historians have posited explaining how various elements of popular culture were employed as a psychological weapon. Furthermore, this paper argues that examples of psychological warfare in Europe like radio broadcasting and film in Asia created distinct interregional networks where the U.S. proliferated its Americanization agenda through corporate military partnerships. In many ways, historians of the Cultural Cold War make a case for these regional networks being the backbone of intelligence efforts in the U.S. and highlight how consumerism was intertwined with new archetypes of both business culture and military fanaticism. “Cultural Transfer” is a term that Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht defines along a spectrum of meanings, mostly as a way of depicting the diplomatic, cultural transmission of U.S. policy and products. Other historians like Christina Klein and Sangjoon Lee provide specific examples of American consumerism and modernity being deployed in art and technology throughout Asia. This overlap is underemphasized.

Keywords: Cold War, Cultural Criticism, Cultural History, Diplomatic History, History of Science, Media Studies