Cultural Diplomacy

Cultural Diplomacy: An Overview

• Cultural diplomacy involves the exchange of ideas, information, art, language, and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples to foster mutual understanding.

• Its purpose is to build broad support for economic and political goals and to develop an understanding of a foreign nation's ideals and institutions.

• Culture is a set of values and practices that create meaning for society, including high and popular culture, and is a type of soft power that arises from a country's culture, political ideals, and policies.

• Cultural diplomacy is a component of public diplomacy and is intimately linked to it, as public diplomacy helps to amplify and advertise a society and culture to the world at large.

• Cultural diplomacy is meant to be a two-way exchange that fosters mutual understanding and thereby wins influence within the target nation.

• The goal of cultural diplomacy is to influence a foreign audience and use that influence, built up over the long term, to win support for policies.

• It seeks to harness the elements of culture to induce foreigners to understand a nation's culture, history, values, and institutions.

• Cultural diplomacy can help a nation better understand the foreign nation it is engaged with and it fosters mutual understanding.

• Cultural diplomacy has the potential to demonstrate national power, create an environment conducive to support, and assist in the collection and interpretation of information, affecting a nation's security.

• Its tools include all aspects of a nation's culture, such as art, music, dance, literature, film, and exhibitions, and seek to bring understanding of a nation's culture to foreign audiences.

• The arts, such as dance and exhibitions, have been used as tools for showing power, promoting national pride, and maintaining international relations.

• Cultural diplomacy can reach youth, non-elites, and other audiences outside of the traditional embassy circuit, planting the seeds of ideals, ideas, political arguments, spiritual perceptions, and a general view point of the world that may or may not flourish in a foreign nation.Cultural Diplomacy During the Cold War

• The American National Exhibition in Moscow showcased American products and culture to Soviet citizens, and was attended by high-profile figures such as Nixon and Khrushchev.

• Exchanges, such as the Fulbright Program, create networks of influential people abroad that will appreciate their host country more and gain influence at a young age.

• Popular entertainment, such as jazz and rock music, can carry important messages about society and politics.

• Jazz played a critical role in establishing political ties, with musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie acting as cultural ambassadors.

• The Beatles symbolized Western culture and introduced new ideas that helped collapse communism in the Soviet Union.

• Place branding is the totality of the thoughts, feelings, associations, and expectations that come to mind when a prospect is exposed to an entity's name, logo, or symbol.

• Museum diplomacy involves building/supporting museums, gifting art/antiquities, and traveling exhibitions.

• Cultural diplomacy presents unique challenges in that most ideas that a foreign population observes are not in the government's control.

• Governments must exercise control over the flows of information and communication technologies to be culturally relevant in the age of globalization.

• Certain cultural activities can undermine national policy objectives, and the success of cultural diplomacy is difficult to measure.

• The American Foreign Service Association and the Cultural Diplomacy Council are institutions dedicated to cultural diplomacy.

• Historiography and memory are important in cultural diplomacy, as they determine how a country's culture is remembered.