F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

Cultural Diplomacy’s
Finest Hour
Practicing Public Diplomacy:
A Cold War Odyssey
Yale Richmond, Berghahn Books,
2008, $29.95, hardback, 175 pages.
REVIEWED BY GERALD LOFTUS
Yale Richmond’s latest book,
Practicing Public Diplomacy: A Cold
War Odyssey — part of the ongoing
“Diplomats and Diplomacy” series
jointly published by the Association
for Diplomatic Studies and Training
and Diplomatic and Consular Officers,
Retired — is a lively and
important study in memoir form.
Richmond skillfully provides both
the background and “flash forward”
context to his career in Eastern
Europe during the decades following
World War II. There he took part in
early cultural exchange efforts with
the Soviet bloc, which he updates
throughout his lifelong study of the
region.
Readers will see parallels with
today’s transformational diplomacy in
Richmond’s years as a civilian
“Resident Officer” in American-occupied
Germany, from which he segued
into the Foreign Service. As ROs,
precursors to today’s Provincial Reconstruction
Teams, he and his military
colleagues administered, with
imagination and initiative, the post-
Nazi “Reorientation Program.” Richmond
recalls asking himself, “How
would Germans react to me as a
BOOKS
Richmond’s account
affirms PD officers’ key
role in opening Iron
Curtain countries to
Western influence, a
vital step on the way to
winning the Cold War.
Jew?” His answer shows the strength
of character and magnanimity toward
his “hosts” that he displayed throughout
his seven years in Germany.
The heart of this memoir is the
time Richmond spends in Warsaw,
Vienna and Moscow as a cultural and
press officer. (His “out-of-area”
assignment in Laos provides a rare
look at Indochina between the
French and American wars there.)
Warsaw, the “best post of my career,”
gives Richmond free rein to build cultural
programs, including the first
Polish-U.S. Fulbright academic exchanges
— precedent-setting given
Cold War tensions.
The author generously credits his
success there to a colleague’s counsel:
“If you can show officials that you
really like Poland, you can do almost
everything you want here.” And so he
did for the next three years.
Serving diplomats might envy
Richmond’s freedom of action during
the heyday of showcasing American
culture, before security and media
placement priorities trumped libraries,
and “strategic communication”
and “information operations” came to
vie with civilian public diplomacy.
Entry-level officers, in particular,
should see his story as confirmation of
the importance of the “basics”: learning
languages (in his case, at least
four), and developing regional and
functional expertise. And for PD officers,
the book will affirm their profession’s
key role in opening Iron Curtain
countries to Western influence, a vital
step on the way to winning the Cold
War.
The chapter “Shafted by Shakespeare”
should be excerpted for AFSA’s
dissent collection. Richmond’s finest
hour, as a professional defending longterm
American interests, was his runin
with Nixon political appointee Frank
Shakespeare. The new head of the
U.S. Information Agency visited Moscow
in 1969, bent on regime change.
After years of carefully implementing
the bilateral cultural agreement,
Richmond was floored when Shakespeare
blurted out, to American staff in
a (presumably) bugged room, that
USIA’s mission was to overthrow the
Soviet government.
Richmond’s response took some
boldness: “Mr. Shakespeare, that has
never been the policy of the State
Department ... our aim is to live with
these people in peace.” Though
Shakespeare subsequently blocked
Richmond’s promotion, the McCarthy
era was over. The Nixon administration’s
embrace of détente vindicated
Richmond, and he became a
respected Washington expert in the
burgeoning exchange program with
the Soviet Union.
JULY-AUGUST 2008/FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 75