Exchange programmes have been a part of US foreign relations since the nineteenth century, but it was only during and after World War II that they were applied by the US government on a large scale to influence foreign publics in support of strategic objectives. This book looks at the background, organisation, and goals of the Department of State’s most prestigious activity in this field, the Foreign Leader Program. The Program (still running as the International Visitor Leadership Program) enabled US Embassies to select and invite talented, influential ‘opinion leaders’ to visit the United States, meet their professional counterparts, and gain a broad understanding of American attitudes and opinions from around the country. By tracking the operation of the Program in three key transatlantic allies of the United States a full picture is given of who was selected and why, and how the target groups changed over time in line with a developing US-European relationship. The book therefore takes a unique in-depth look at the importance of exchanges for the extension of US ‘informal empire’ and the maintenance of the transatlantic alliance during the Cold War.

The Author: Giles Scott-Smith is senior researcher with the Roosevelt Study Center and lecturer in International Relations at the Roosevelt Academy, both in Middelburg, the Netherlands. He has published widely on the nature of transatlantic relations during the Cold War, with special emphasis on the importance of ideology, the strategies of US public diplomacy, and the role of intellectual networks and non-governmental groups.

Leseprobe

Contents: Networks of Empire. The Foreign Leader Program in Global Perspective – History and Apparatus: The History of US Government Exchanges - Implementing the Leader Program – The Netherlands in the 1950s: The PvdA and the Transatlantic Anti-Communist Alliance - The Trade Unions, Socio-Economic Policy and the American Model - Spreading the Word: Culture and the Media – The Netherlands in the 1960s: Coping with Irritations: The Early 1960s - Steering Bilateral Relations in the Vietnam Era – France and Britain: The Foreign Leader Program in France 1950-70 - The Foreign Leader Program in Britain 1950-70.