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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Kasich’s Odd Idea for a New Propaganda Agency

Kasich's promotion of "Judeo-Christian Western values" is likely to land with a thud with the target audiences that he wants to reach.
john kasich

John Kasich delivered a foreign policy speech yesterday at the National Press Club, and he’s also proposed creating a new agency tasked with promoting “Judeo-Christian Western values.” This is how Kasich describes the purpose of the agency:

“U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting have lost their focus on the case for Western values and ideals and effectively countering our opponents’ propaganda and disinformation,” Kasich said. “I will consolidate them into a new agency that has a clear mandate to promote the core, Judeo-Christian Western values that we and our friends and allies share: the values of human rights, the values of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association.”

I’m skeptical that the U.S. needs or would benefit from creating a new umbrella agency assigned to promoting political propaganda, which is what Kasich is suggesting. The last time that the U.S. made a concerted, high-profile effort at public diplomacy during the Bush years, it was an embarrassing shambles. Karen Hughes was famously sent to foreign countries in a hapless, tone-deaf effort to change perceptions of U.S. foreign policy, which reflected the previous administration’s inability to grasp that resentment against U.S. policies was not simply a product of poor communication on our part. The broader “freedom agenda” suffered from a similar inability to understand that being identified with our government and its policies undermined the cause of promoting liberalization and democratization abroad. Maybe Kasich’s attempt wouldn’t repeat those mistakes, but it seems that his idea has several flaws of its own.

The curious thing about Kasich’s proposal is that he is saying that the U.S. should tout liberal political values but insists on describing them as “Judeo-Christian” or as expressions of “our Jewish and Christian tradition.” While this presentation of these values may make sense to Kasich, it is likely to land with a thud with the target audiences that he wants to reach in Russia, China, and the Near East. More to the point, the more involved the U.S. government is in pushing these values, it probably becomes more difficult for foreign dissidents to advocate for them without being perceived by people in their own countries as agents of the U.S. or as antagonistic to the predominant cultural and religious traditions in their countries. If the U.S. does need to revive its efforts at public diplomacy, this seems like the wrong way to go about it and the wrong way to present it to the rest of the world.

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