can do for you will be they make you flip to let you have baby better part of the man going to need you in his hand you know you gotta have a. little it will be all right and and now my friend will say long we hope you're singing zip code so we've told you everything we know it's up to you to make the zip code coat. you know you're gonna have a double go. go home and everything will be all right. you know, you gotta a hard on the boy. oh, you will go learning and everything will be all everything will be everything

yeah, well. good afternoon, everyone. my name is dr. jim ginter. i am the supervisory archivist for the dwight d eisenhower presidential library. and welcome to. before we start, i just wanted to take a moment to mention that as it happens, as we gather today for this program, that it

is also the. 50th anniversary of the death of president eisenhower. and so i just thought before we get started, take a moment and just take a moment of remembrance for president eisenhower in his work on behalf of our country. thank you. i want to welcome you all to the eisenhower presidential library luncheon learn program for march 28th, 2020, for this year, a programing team has been waging peace. and in this series we're looking at some of the ways that president eisenhower sought global peace. this month, we're looking at radio free europe and radio liberty. president eisenhower believed

that, quote, radio free europe and the crusade for freedom are vital to success in the battle for men's minds. with that in mind today, we are pleased to welcome dr. mark pomar ma, who will speak to the subject broadcasting for freedom. dr. poumpouras, currently a senior fellow at the clements center for national security at the university of texas, is taught international media at moody school of journalism at the university of texas and international politics at the lbj school of public affairs. before i handed over to dr. poma, i just will note that there are pads and pencils available on the tables for those here in the audience to jot down questions that you might have productive from her later. and for those of you in the live stream, you'll be able to put your questions into the chat at the end of the program, which

will address the. and with that, please welcome dr. mark pomar. or thank you very much for your kind introduction. and i am very honored and pleased to be with you. i wish i were there in person. i hope sometime in the next couple of months to actually visit the eisenhower presidential library and archive by working. i recently completed a report on radio free europe, radio liberty and the voice of america. and now i'm embarking on a new book looking at certain aspects of it. and the eisenhower library and archives is a very important part. so i look forward to visiting the library and meeting many of you, all of you in person. i would like to sort of cast the talk in the sense that it's an incredibly relevant to today's environment that we find ourselves in. president eisenhower in the

1940s and late forties and early fifties, was instrumental in setting up the u.s. to be successful. and in the cold war. and we are now back in many ways, and we can explore this in the question and answer period. we're back to another cold war. and as i will show in the course of our discussion, many of the features that we are that were prevalent in the late forties and early fifties are now back with a very aggressive russia with a dangerous china with a dangerous iran and so forth. so the less of the eisenhower years, i think, are especially, especially relevant today. and i think that the topic that you have chosen is perhaps ideal for discussing the challenges that we face today. as many of you know, general eisenhower, president eisenhower

was a critical figure in many aspects in terms of peace, including, obviously, his military powers. but i would like to focus on the theme today on radio. but broadly speaking, information reaching audiences in unfriendly countries, enemy countries in some cases, and president eisenhower knew better than really anyone else that if you were going to wage a cold war and make sure that it is a peaceful cold war, not a hot cold war, but a cold, cold war. it's very important to balance your nato alliance, which he believed in very strongly. your military, defense and containment, which you felt was very strong with a program designed or programs, perhaps plural, designed to reach populations in the case of the

cold war in primary early in the ussr, primarily in the soviet union and eastern europe, but also in what we then called the third world africa, asia, latin america. and he was an early proponent, as dr. guenther pointed out, of radio free europe radio liberty and in a sense he understood that. and let me just briefly describe radio for your radio liberty, because they are amazingly interesting projects that the u.s. was in the forefront of creating. they are just just to back down historically a little bit of a background after the end of hostilities, end of world war two in western europe, you had hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, idps, as they were called back then. people who had fled communist regimes in eastern europe,

poland, baltic states, czech republic, hungary and so forth, or from the soviet union itself during world war two. they were living in camps in the american zone in germany, and they were very eager to lend their knowledge and expertise to the u.s. in terms of opposing fighting, resisting a communist aggression and advisors to president eisenhower. cd jackson in particular in his archived at the library, one that i would love to look at in greater detail, was really among the architects of creating what was then called home services. in other words, creating a radio station and a research operation in munich, which was where the radio were established. and that was where most of the displaced person camps were located. and to operate as if they were

in the country to which they were broadcasting. so that let's just take an example. the polish service you would have former polish politicians, professors, journalists, writers, thinkers living in these camps who would put together a program in the polish language that would be broadcast to poland as if it were broadcasting from within poland in warsaw. the same would be true for hungary. the same would be true for the czech republic. back then, czechoslovakia. q the same would be true for russia, which was very important to the creation of a russia service. and i will add parenthetically that in the early 1980s, i was head of the russian service of radio liberty. so i actually worked in munich in the building that president eisenhower played such an important role in creating. also ukraine. we now have this vicious war against ukraine. the ukrainians service was created. radio liberty to serve as a free and independent ukrainian radio

station. broadcasting to the ukrainian part of the soviet union. these were fundamental whole tools that were supported on many different levels. historically, if you are interested in the radios, i certainly would give a plug from my own book, which is called cold war radio. university of nebraska press, 2022 just came out about a year and a half ago. there are also other books, obviously, on on the radios. if you look at youtube, fb, you will see a familiar some of you actually my my age, my generation. and you may recall in the 1950s there would be advertisements, commercials on television that would say crusade for freedom, which is what president eisenhower headed initially saying donate your dollars to the crusade for freedom and the liberty bell would be shown. and i remember them.

i mean, speaking personally, i remember them. they were used to come on right before the lone ranger at 530, and that was for for a five, six year old kid who still remembers seeing them in 1955 and 56 on youtube, you can see some personalities like ronald reagan speaking on behalf of the radio. so this was a campaign that really was headed by president eisenhower. he supported during his eight years as president and initially, he the most of the funding came from the cia, which is a very interesting part of the story. some of it was contributed by by america and american corporations. but and we can come back to the question and answer, if you would like to know more detail about about the radios the very they are functioning today. i want to emphasize that the radio free europe radio liberty is alive and well in prague today, and it was successful during the end of the cold war. we were honored, vetted,

considered heroes. as a matter of fact, the reason why radio free europe radio liberty is in prague today is because of love. hubble, the first democratically elected president of the czech republic in the early nineties, gave a building in downtown prague as a gift to the american people. a gift to the american people to house radio free europe in eastern europe and central europe in prague for the work that we had done as americans in supporting democracy and freedom in eastern and all the countries of then under communist rule. so that the radios are now functioning. they are the go to source for what is happening in ukraine today. what is happening in russia, they cover it better than anybody else. and so i think the legacy that was started under president eisenhower back in the very late

1940s, early 1950s, is alive and well. and he would be extremely proud of the work that they have done. and the success that they have had. and the work that they're continuing to do today. but i would also like to expand a little bit more on what president eisenhower did in terms of peace through information, if you want to call it that, peace through contact. and i think what is oftentimes perhaps well not known as well as it should is that president eisenhower was the force, the person who helped create a very interesting the agency of the united states government called us cia, u.s. information agency, which was housed in washington and its mandate was to be the spokesman, the conduit through which the rest of the world

would know about american values, american culture, american values, american policies. so very ambitious effort. it was very much president eisenhower's creation was created in 1953. soon after he was elected president, the first director of u.s. cia was sworn in at the white house by the president himself. the first director attended meetings with the president and as part of the national security council and under u.s. cia was the voice of america. and many, many other elements of information, if you wish, information policy. i also happen to have been an employee of usaa for a five years in the mid 1980s as the director of the russian service of the voice of america, which was then part of usaa. so i had direct contact with and involvement in the work of the u.s. cia. so let me just run through some

of the programs that usaa was responsible for and why they played such an important role in. well, throughout the entire cold war, i may add, i think very short sighted. the u.s. closed the agency in the 1990s. can considering it to be well considering it a piece dividend that we had won the cold war and that we no longer needed. i think it was personally speaking, i think it was extremely short sighted. i think we needed as much, if not more today, than we needed it. in the 1970s and eighties. and i think one of the challenges that is facing the us going forward in the 2020s and beyond and is how do we have an effective means of communication with the rest of the world in a very globalized world that we live in? but let me just take you through some of the main kind of points

of of usaa, and you will sort of see how that fits in and how that echoes a lot of what radio free europe, radio liberty did as a separate non governmental grantee of the us government, if you wish, kind of an arm's length from u.s. policy. the biggest part of usaa was the voice of america and i would say that and i would encourage you pathway you can go on the internet, you can look up voice of america, you can watch their tv programs, listen to their radio programs. i think it's one of the gems of america that we have it and one that i wish more america is new. and, you know, we talk about bbc. bbc is and i respect bbc very much, but we are no worse. and voa in many ways it's better. and i think we should be aware that we have a and if you're washington, if you go to washington at any time, please visit the voice of america building on independence avenue, 330. independence avenue is an

amazing place where we broadcast in roughly 40 languages around the world, hundreds of millions of people watching or listening to voice of america broadcasts about the very about our politics, about our life, about our culture. and it is a set up by law, signed by president ford in the 1970s, the voice of america reflects all and i express that all points of view in the united states. it is not the radio station of any given administration, and that it it covers whatever issues are. there are fairly and honestly and and as a former employee of voa, i think voa takes it very seriously. and again, in my book, if you look at my book on cold war radio, you will see many examples of how the voice of america handles difficult issues, whether they were the

iran-contra affair or whether they were other problems in the reagan or bush or carter or whatever administration doesn't really matter which administration you're looking at. you're looking at a source of information. and i think that the voice of america and i may add that president eisenhower was the first president to speak on the voice of america to the entire world. and this is something that he felt very deeply about. he was very supportive of. he knew and understood as a former general that if you're going to be involved and the cold war was frankly a war of information, it was more a war of values and principles and ideas. luckily, it was not a hot war where we were actually fighting the soviet union, but we were fighting the soviet union by battling for for ideas and values and how best to win than to communicate those to people

living in in countries under communist rule. so voice of america, fundamental part of the u.s.a., another very important part and one i wish more people knew about. and that is what we in the field, russia field, always called the crucial eisenhower khrushchev agreement on educational and cultural affairs. and just to give you a taste of that, until 1957, there was really no contact between the united states and the soviet union other than embassy employees in each country. there was no and eisenhower understood it probably better than anyone else, that as the soviet as stalin passed away in 53 after khrushchev's famous 1956 speech denouncing stalin, this was the right time to

engage soviets in exchanges and the united states proposed to very important, apolitical, if you wish, areas for engagement. one was educate and the other was culture. and if we take culture first, the agreement was the soviet union would send its artists opera, ballet, theater to the united states for concert tours. we, the united states would do equally, sending artists, musicians, writers to the soviet union and it was a very important first step because up until then, there had been no contact. again, if you think back to the 1950s and many of you probably remember the 1950s fairly well, i hope you will remember that the bolshoi opera came to the united states, the ballet came

to new york. these were major cultural events. equally, america started participating in music competition, missions and concerts in moscow. the first and this is a great story of the first theater group that the united states sent to the soviet union was the opera porgy and bess by george gershwin. and what was amazing about it was the american opera, a genre that russians associated with europe, not necessarily with the united states, american written american song, and primarily by not for american star cast, which of course, totally blew away soviet viewers because they had been fed propaganda that our afro-americans blacks in the united states had no rights, had no education, had no opportunities. and here was the metropolitan opera with a virtually all black

cast singing porgy and bess. great success and remembered to this day as one of these, you know, monumental first steps that continued. and i think on a small scale, it was very, very important, not just for showcasing cultural achievements, which is important, but i think for beginning that person to person contact. and as i look through some of president eisenhower, his writings and speeches, i've come across people to people contact him greatly believed that that at the end of the day you had to have power for ordinary americans. ordinary russians is somehow talk to each other. and so there were two other components. there was a cultural exchange, very important. there began a rather small 1958 with academic exchange so that professors of history, professors of political science

who knew russian, who dealt with soviet union could spend some time in the soviet union. and an equal number of soviet scholars could come to the united states to do the same. it was a real honest person to person exchange. it was initially housed at columbia university. president eisenhower's old home and then later went on to indiana university and finally became the international research and exchanges board functions to this day, as a very large educator, national exchange organization, i had the privilege of being its president for about nine years. in the early 2000, but it is that effort that began in 1958 that then grew from scholarly exchanges, and then it started involving student exchanges and teacher exchanges, and pretty soon, by the 1960s, we had a

real system by which people study in wanting to study the soviet union. and that was a deeply important national priority, i may add that there was something called the national of foreign language act, that designated the study of russian as a national security priority and gave grants for the study. i was lucky to be a recipient of some of that funding, which allowed me to get a graduate degree from columbia and other programs i participated in. that was all started, begun in 19, late 1950s, in the eisenhower years, and perhaps another element that may not get enough attention is something that was a real something that eisenhower like very much. and he wanted to showcase how americans live.

and usaa took up what i would say was a rather ambitious program called american exhibits. and the soviets went along because they were able to do an exhibit of the soviet union. the united states as well. but the american exhibits would be showcasing how an american family lives, how an american family functions. what are the latest technologies? and you may and you will remember this because it's very, very famous. the first one was the great kitchen debate of vice president nixon at that time went to the soviet union to open the first exhibit in 1959 that believe in moscow extremely popular, that showcased a typical american home of 1959. and it sparked that moment in diplomatic relations called the kitchen debate, where khrushchev tried to debate that the

communists system, the soviet system was superior, and nixon debated that the capitalist american system was better. it captured the mood of the times. and then i eisenhower made a very bold gesture, something that previous other presidents would not have done. he invited khrushchev to come to the united states. and again, you may recall in 1959 of khrushchev comes to the united states quite a sensation, goes to disneyland, has new york visit. it's it was a big event. and what eisenhower really wanted more than anything was to give the ability for people on both sides to these get a sense and a glimpse of what the other side was going to bring down the tension, bring down the, you know, people you don't know and people you've never seen are far scarier and far more imposing than people that you kind of

see. and i can just give you one one example of what i what i mean, in 1981, this was, you know, the height of the cold war. if you wish, 1981, i received a fulbright and the fulbright program in the soviet union was very much started by the by the eisenhower administration. and i came to moscow one week before the inauguration of president reagan. you could imagine dark was was not only cold and dark in leningrad at that time, but the political climate in the united states and the soviet union was dark and gloomy, and yet our program functioned and our program continued. and i was able to do very useful research that then resulted in publications and allowed me to to learn about the soviet union. that, again, allowed me to become the head of the russian services of voa and rl.

and i think what that legacy showed was that having real nation ships mattered. and this is something that goes right back to what president eisenhower stated many times in his speeches, in his writings and his views, what i think the legacy of president eisenhower is, as we look back on it, is the creation of something that political scientists often refer to as a cold war regime. and that's something that's missing today. it's very, very important. the cold war regime is the ability of kind of written and unwritten rules, if you wish, by which to antagonists quick resist in a peaceful environment. and what that means is that you can oppose and we did whether it was in west berlin, whether it was in vietnam, whether it was

in north korea, south korea, we opposed militarily soviet expansion and containment. at the same time, at the same time, we sought out areas where we could deal with productively with the soviet union, whether they were in the field of culture, education, values, arguments, president, whatever the case is, you could do both if you wish. at the same time you could. and that prevented the relationship from deuterium rating and god forbid, a cold war starting up or not a cold war, but a hot war starting up. what we are missing today and what we're missing very much today as we face a very dangerous, i would argue, as dangerous as a dangerous a world today, as we faced at the end of world war two, when the soviet

union imposed upon the united states a cold war. you know, i spent quite a bit of time reading declassified documents, u.s. documents from the 1940s, 47 in particular, 48. and you can see in those documents how american diplomats, our ambassador to the soviet union, was then general bodell smith, who was incidentally eisenhower's chief of staff during the war. how they kept saying, well, soviet union, with our allies, we fought together. we fought nazi germany together. why are they turning against us? why are they imposing communist rule in eastern europe against all the agreements of yalta signed in yalta just two years earlier and in a sense, you could see in there that that sense of being allies just started disappearing by the late 19. by late 1947. and then that hiatus of 47 to 57, 58, when we really had no

relationship, we again have, i would argue, a cold war thrust upon the united states for a years, whether it was under the clinton and bush administration. clinton restoration, bush junior administration, obama administration. there was a desire to kind of bring russia in to the world, whether it was through the wto, the world trade organization or other, or just g-7 for a while, but for various reasons. i takes us off on a different topic about putin and putinism. the cold war has come to us, whether will be wanted or not. we are engaged in a cold war. similarly, we have china, which we tried to integrate into the into the greater world community. they took advantage of it. they did very well. and now they are opposing us and teaming up with with russia. we have a very dangerous iran. we have an unpredictable, dangerous north korea. we have allies that are very,

very shaky, whether it's turkey or india. in a sense, we are back in a very dangerous world. and i think the challenge will be to be the kind of leadership that eisenhower had gave america and let america in the 1950s. we sort of need that ability to, again, build alliances, strength and nato beast wrong militarily, but use it, if at all sparingly, wisely, and preferably not at all, and develop other means by which to communicate that would then lessen the regime's power over its people. so let me stop at this point, and i would love to answer any question you have, get into any area of discussion, whatever may interest you. thank you. thank you. dr. perlman, we have some time for questions. so if there is.

not i'm sorry, this. oh, what did you think about sputnik? you're is the question. what did i think about sputnik? yes. well, let me start by saying i was probably in second or third grade when that when sputnik went up. and i remember we spent a lot of time in school talking about it. i think might just see it above or above us if it flew by. no, i think sputnik was a call also to the united states that we needed to strengthen science, education, invest in education, invest in universities. i think it spurred not just a military, which is which was very important, but i think it spurred and it started in the reagan administration, continued very much in the sixties and seventies. and the whole idea of putting a

man on the moon, the first one kind of comes out of that competition. there was a competition. and i think this is i didn't mention one other element of of the cold war regime, if you wish, and that is cultural sports, competition. you may recall how important the olympics were during the cold war because each side to show that its system produce the best athletes, its system produced the best, whatever you can fill in the blank, best musicians, best artists best scholars. how many nobel prizes? everything was based on a competition basis. so sputnik spurred a tremendous investment by the united states government in programs science oriented primarily, but not just science that propelled the united states. and probably this is my own view. i have no no data backing it up. but my my gut sense is that

things like sputnik made us the leader in space several years later because it spurred that competition. had we not had that competition, things may not have gone as quickly and as fast. just. for the longest time. what this america was not allowed to transmit in the united states wasn't a specific reason why they didn't allow that. yes, you're absolutely right. and that was called the smith act of 1948, 49. i don't remember the exact date of the smith act, but the idea was that, you know, in general, if i could just step back for a second and and this is interesting. by the 1930s, by actually late

twenties, but certainly by the early 1930s, every country in the world had an external broadcaster, a bbc, as the most. but there was radio moscow, there was radio vatican, there was radio france, international, there was radio canada. internationally, every country was broadcasting programing in different languages of the rest of the world. the united states did not. and when advisors president roosevelt at that time suggested it, the prime broadcasters, abc mutual radio show, they probably cbs protested that if the government got involved in broadcasting it would cut into their listenership, their audience. plus there was always the fear and we have that in the united states that somehow a government broadcaster can't be trusted, which i frankly think is not necessarily the case. but that's that's a different story. one, we can debate, if you wish.

so the voa voice of america did not start. it started only only after the attack on pearl harbor. and it was really the world war two that did create a voice of america, and it functioned very importantly. its its first words in german were we will bring you the news. we will tell you what happened, whether it's good for us or not and probably be away established itself very quickly as a very dependable we would talk about our losses, something that most countries would never broadcast, that we lost a battle or we had great difficulties wherever that may be. and coming out of world war two, there was a sense that, well, it was a it was part of world war two. we can we can close it down. and only the beginning of the cold war. how did that region operate for of power to the voice of america and give it a better budget and allow it to prosper at the same time. radio free europe, radio liberty

came into being and the compromise or those you wish the resolution in congress was okay you're going to have these broadcasters, but they're not going to broadcast domestically. they're not going to compete with domestic broadcasters. they're going to be strictly external. and while shortwave was the only way by which you could broadcast. it was not impartial, able to listen to them in the united states, but they were not geared for the for this area. and so they were hard to pick up, but lots of americans listened to them overseas whenever they found themselves. it was a way to touch base with home people who lived overseas, became regular listeners to voa in whatever language english probably more often the case, and that was their connection. once technology came along and the voa and rfe, rl was on the internet. there was no way in which you could in any way stop people in the united states from listening, watching. and so that just kind of died

because technology over came it simple, simple as that. and so it's available to any of you in any language you wish at any time. and my hope is that more people would would pay attention to it, because i think it does try to give an interesting serious thoughtful now in my time i may add back in the 1980s a lot of what voa broadcasting was jazz, pop music. but reviews of film, it was very culturally it was a lot a lot of stuff about what was happening in the united states that had very little if any, political import. like to go back to to sort of follow up what you were talking about. the question that i have is you mentioned the different sort of editorial approach, if you will,

of voice of america, the willingness to admit mistakes, the willingness to to report news when things did not go particularly well for us. i'm just wondering if there has been any any attempt to sort of measure the impact of that particular approach on the audiences in europe, particularly behind iron curtain and and also how they might have measured the veracity of what was being broadcast. obviously, it's had an impact, but. well, there are different ways of of answering that. one is the testimony, if you wish, of the democratic leaders in the 1980s who were elected in free poland and free czechoslovak and free hungary. and the testimony on is that even president yeltsin, boris yeltsin said, you know, or

gorbachev's said this was gorbachev came to our 50th, 40th, 40th anniversary of radio liberty in moscow and said, you know, without without radio liberty, there would have never been any change in the soviet union. so we have testimonials. now, granted, that's post facto after the events, very hard to measure during the dissident movement, which was very important in the soviet, which helped bring about the end of communist rule. i'm thinking in particular, figures like alexander social neets and andrei sakharov and others who are jewish refuseniks who were not allowed to to emigrate from the soviet union, they would have been known. they would have been the best marginal, if simply unknown, without without what they call foreign voices. and by foreign voices, they mean people away. bbc, rfe, rl, radio france, i mean, is more than than just just voa, but they were an important part of the dramatic that took place politically and

during the cold war in terms of today's broadcasts, yes, there's always pressure on the radios. we call them the radios, although they're mostly tv now. so it's probably a misnomer to call them radios. but that's just our lingo in the field. but they you have to stand your ground. you have law that protects you. so, for example, i'm just just to give you a very quick example, when the president or whatever administration gives a state of the union, voa broadcasts that state of the union in every language chinese, russian, ukrainian, whatever, they also broadcast all ways the opposite parties response. it doesn't matter know whatever hearings on the hill are covered regardless of no major story ever goes unmentioned there even kind of curious moments again

this is to jog your memory from 1984, i would say you may recall president reagan thinking that the mic was dead. he was testing it, made a statement. i'm sure he regret it later, which said, i have just canceled the soviet union. the bombers are about to to to go launch a fly over. remember that you must many of you will probably remember that was on every news show for god knows how long. so i was head of the russian service of the news editor calls me up you know what are we are we going to broadcast just in russian reagan's words? i mean, this is we know we're about to bomb you on the voice of america. and we decided and the director of voa concurred 100% that, of course, we had to cover it. there was no way we could not it now. we had to give context. we had to explain that it was an unfortunate joke, an unfortunate

slip of the tongue, if you wish, whatever you want to call it. but we had put it off was no wavering. well, you know, it may not look good for the white and so forth. so, yes, we would get maybe not on this case, but on other there are sometimes the embassies, but really the people who protested our broadcasts on the american side were generally the embassies in country that were trying to make some kind of diplomat deal and all of a sudden something over the voice of america broadcast. but perfectly valid but negative on story and they would say, well, you just upset and we would say, look, you know, we have a different mission. we have a mission of presenting the news. don't have a mission of doing diplomatic work. and i think those are issues that are that are sometimes tricky to negotiate but are very important. we have a from somebody in there online audience who ask, was

there an event or some impetus that inspired the break in communications between 47 and 50? or was or was it simply a desire to rekindle diplomatic relations, that sort of put the two sides back in communication with each other? well, i think the response was on the part of the eisenhower administration was, of course, to first and foremost to the speech that khrushchev made denouncing stalinism. that's that's one of the the key moments in 1956 when at a closed i mean, let's just put it in context. this was a meeting for communist officials. this was not for the world to know. the it's it's a great story. the was smuggled out by some polish journalists who were working for the mossad in israel. they smuggled out the secret speech denouncing stalin and stalin's crimes. got it. out of out of gave it to the

cia. the cia passed it on to the new york times, the washington post and other newspapers. they published it. the radios then broadcast it to the back to the soviet union. so there was this loop that developed. but i think that is probably one major reason. and then diplomat relations were such that there was a sense that you could have a tentative opening. in other words, the soviet with stalin gone with stalinism. and by the way, today stalinism is back strong, very much back strong. so so watch for that. that this was a diplomatic initiative that was worth taking. and i think that proved to be an important first step. and in creating what i mentioned earlier, that regime by which countries could function without going to war. and i think it we had another crisis, of course, with with cuba several years later, the

cuban missile crisis, which then reinforced that cultural educational exchanges weren't enough. you had to have a hotline put in, and also you have to have negotiations on nuclear testing that eventually led to nuclear disarmament talks. and so, i mean, that was a process that had to begin small and then grossed up by step as opportunities arose. i was a student in germany in 64, 65, and then periodic for the next 30 some years and the boy was very important they knew it because they tried to jam it. we could hardly hear it. even in west germany, the jamming was so, but it was not only the american push for openness, but the soviet ids were such block it and everybody

came to associate everything they where they'd lie. so the monster played obviously falsehoods and yet they persisted in it. so you had this push pull and that turned the popular notion of most of east central europe, at least very much pro american and against the soviets. so that's just. well, that's nuts. i would agree with you wholeheartedly if you lived in west berlin, you might know of a radio station called rios radio. in the american sector and a rios was the earlier version of radio free europe. it was for east germany, it was for berlin. it was a german language radio station that broadcasts news broadcasts. what we would expect to be known and was was the model for radio free europe, radio liberty.

i i'm old enough to have been in west berlin during the soviet times, so i remember what, what that demarcated city looked like, which was know there was your communist world on one side and your and your free world on the other. but i think you're absolutely right. we and this brings us to today's problem. the soviets were crude and simple and out of touch in terms of how they presented their materials as part of my job. and one gets paid for doing strange things. but i got paid for for watching a certain amount of soviet news back in those days. and it was predictable. well, you knew exactly what they were going to say. there was nothing very exciting. they didn't know how to appeal. that's not the case. no russian propaganda today, russian media is totally state run. now, after a brief period when they were relatively free and it is much slicker, it's much more

you know, they try to find ways in which to excite people, to get to them through various means, copy certain things from around the world. they're slicker, they're better, better funded. so we have a more dangerous, if you wish media to compete with today than we did back in the good old days. i would say and i say this very often in my various talks, it is harder today than it was for us in the 1980s, and it was harder for it's harder now because we had the advantage and this is a big advantage that coming in was dying. nobody really believed in the soviet ideal ology and soviet approach. people in the soviet union or eastern europe wanted to be part of the bigger world. when i spent my fulbright in leningrad in 81, all people

wanted to know from me was how life was in the west, how life was in america, what did my house look like? how did i shop? did i go? i mean, there was a tremendous interest and very genuine only curious about this amazing life in the west. sometimes i think they exaggerated many cases, you know, our life to some, some level of prosperity that that was just in protocol. now, that's not the case. i think now we have a an angrier, more xenophobic, more inwardly oriented, more nationalistic russia that is far more anti-western than the people in the soviet period that i recall the late soviet. so i think today's challenges are are very, very large. and i and i want to sort of leave you more with thinking that, you know, what what we were able to do in the cold war was good. today's generation has to really deal with that. plus, i think many other very

dangerous elements. that are if i can. one final question thing for you. you've mentioned in your presentation about the demise, you say about some of the outlets created during this time period to to promote culture, to promote to to have political exchanges, to promote communication. what, in your opinion, should we be doing now better, especially given some of what you said about how things have changed in the soviet union countries around the world, how media production has become slicker and more targeted, how might we improve the effort that we're making to communicate with those on the other side? well, we're doing what we can

with the tools that we have and would say as a regular watcher, viewer of voice of america and radio liberty on a pretty regular basis, if not every day and certainly every other day, i would say there coverage there, discussion of the war in ukraine and what is happening in russia, their coverage, even though they're outside, they're no longer can be in country. after years of having a bureau in russia, they, of course, are no longer to do that, given those, if you wish, limited resources, we're doing the best we can. that doesn't mean we can't do more and can do better. and i think what we're going to have to do going forward is to make strategy toward china, russia and other close societies a much higher priority in terms of funding, in terms of approach, in terms of institutes. russians you know, i make this point in a lot of my writing is

that the 1940s would amazes me about the late 1940s and early fifties is how big americans thought they didn't think small, they thought big. and this, mind you right after world war two and and they still saw creation of something, funding something, doing something difficult. i think we need to put national security as a priority and not just military and the military people will be the first to tell you as eisenhower very, very well, that the military does well only when other tools are used. and the other tools includes information and contact, where and how to begin is very difficult to say because it doesn't depend on us. it depends a lot on the other side. and we spent years waiting for that break in the 1950 758 to begin it, you contact. that was that was a ten year

wait i'm not hoping i'm hoping that's not the case now. but until the war in ukraine ends and hopefully successfully for ukraine, there is no opportunity. there's no possibility, as no american today should enter the russian federation. i say that because you will be taken hostage. i mean, that's that simple. and there are several people, unfortunately, american citizens simply taken hostage because they ended up for whatever reasons on the russian federation. so that would have been the case in 49 and 50 and 51. so we're back to that situation now. the other side has to indicate that it is willing to develop kind of context and i think whatever administration we are, i know that that has to be, but it has to be very carefully done. you don't want to give away, you know, you don't want to definitely you don't want to sell ukraine down the and you have to be very careful in how judiciously you use that it

could have to do. i'm just to give you one quick. it can have to do with the arctic. you know, we have a lot of climate issues with the arctic. we are among russia, is among the four countries that has access to the arctic, to apple, critical, if you wish. it's not tied to a war, but it's a very good area to talk about. protecting the arctic or dealing with it any kind of medical pandemics, diseases, those kinds of things. also functioned during the cold war. in other words, you sought out areas that were to the advantage of the u.s. as well as to the of the soviet union. so probably those would be my guess areas where you could at least begin to make tentative because the key is and this is what eisenhower understood. so well, the key is if you're going to be successful and peaceful, you've got to have a whole range of different tools working for you. that military alone is not the answer. it's very important, but it's not only answer and you have to have those tools and they have to work to the extent possible

in coordination. you also need to. think any other questions? let's see. the question was put about tick tock. dr. romer and its role in in this kind of cultural little called dialog or i'm no expert on on on tick tock. i would say, though the radios again i use that term radios, but you know, rfe, rl and voa do use social media wisely. from what i understand. but again, you got to ask someone much younger and more more, more hip than i am in terms of how to use that. but i know they're i'm aware that they do they have a very interesting us agency for global media that's the umbrella agency in washington that oversees all of our information programs, has

a division on technology that's called technology fund, i believe, but it's worth like they are working on using technologies, vpns, for example, where you can't access the internet safely politically. you can use these roundabout ways by which you can. you can access they are they're working on a whole array of different tools that would. but at the end of the day, you've got a you've also got to capture get to the younger population did it through i don't know the voice of america broadcast all the beatles in the sixties because the beatles were banned in the soviet union. if you can believe that we broadcast jazz, which you would think was so apolitical that was also banned in the soviet union. they developed a whole tremendous audience for for the radios on strictly musical

reasons. no, not even political. so and then once they listened, they would stay on for the news and they would stay on and become a regular listener. so we need to reach a younger population that may cynical, that may be i'm not necessarily the person to do it, but but i'm sure there are people in washington and elsewhere who would know how best to do that. yeah, all right. well, dr. plummer, thank you for your time and your presentation today.