Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XXX, Public Diplomacy

59. Memorandum From the Director of the United States Information Agency (Reinhardt) to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski)¹

Washington, June 1, 1977

As you and the President consider the future organization of “public diplomacy”—and as the Administration begins to prepare its FY 1979 budget proposals—I would like to raise for consideration the possibility that American public diplomacy is under-capitalized.

I do not, for the moment, have specific proposals to make. I hope the zero-base budgeting process may surface at least a few by August. On preliminary inspection, however, I am struck by the following kinds of phenomena:

—VOA must be the only serious radio in the United States which is still dependent on the vacuum tube. Solid-state technology is nowhere in evidence and the Voice must literally go to junk sales to find replacement tubes, since they are no longer being manufactured. This, of course, is quite apart from the question of signal strength, where we are clearly under-capitalized.

—I find it distressing—even given the strength of our private sector—that the richest country in the world has public funds to sponsor only 5,000 exchange and leader grantees annually. (This is, by the way, the two-way total.) The Soviets are miles ahead of us, even in some of our own “backyard” countries of Latin America. The program is clearly under-capitalized.

—Politically and culturally, one of our strongest tools in the USSR and Eastern Europe is the splashy exhibit. We can barely afford one per year in the USSR, appear less frequently in other bloc countries and only rarely in the free world. We have the world’s most vital culture, but are not taking strategic advantage of it.

As we move to reorganize public diplomacy, and as you and the President consider resource allocation questions, these are issues I hope the Administration will have in mind. For a comparatively modest additional sum—say $50–100 million annually—we could be having a qualitatively different effect in the world. I do not see a need necessarily to broaden the spectrum of our efforts, but we could usefully intensify those programs which are agreed to be most successful.

I am sending a similar memorandum to Secretary of State Vance.²

1. Source: Carter Library, White House Central Files, Subject File, Finance, Executive, Box FI–19, FI 4/FG–266 1/20/77–1/20/81. No classification marking. For Brzezinski’s response, see Document 62.
2. Not found.