Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Reasserting America in the 1970s – Hallvard Notaker, Giles Scott-Smith, David J. Snyder
2. Historical setting: the age of fear, uncertainty and doubt – Thomas W. Zeiler
Part I: A new public diplomacy for a new America
3. The Devil at the crossroads: USIA and American public diplomacy in the 1970s – Nicholas J. Cull
4. The Sister City network in the 1970s: American municipal internationalism and public diplomacy in a decade of change – Brian
C. Etheridge
5. The exposure of CIA sponsorship of Radio Free Europe: the ‘Crusade for Freedom’, American exceptionalism and the foreign-domestic nexus of public diplomacy – Kenneth Osgood
6. USIA responds to the women’s movement, 1960–75 – Laura A. Belmonte
7. ‘The low key mulatto coverage’: race, civil rights and American public diplomacy, 1965–76 – Michael L. Krenn
8. Paintbrush politics: the collapse of American arts diplomacy, 1968–72 – Claire Bower
9. Selling space capsules, Moon rocks and America: spaceflight in U.S. public diplomacy, 1961–79 – Teasel Muir-Harmony
Part II: The world responds to a reassertive America
10. America’s public diplomacy in France and Italy during the years of Eurocommunism – Alessandro Brogi
11. Selling America between Sharpeville and Soweto: the USIA in South Africa, 1960–76 – John C. Stoner
12. Selling the American West on the frontier of the Cold War: the US Army’s German-American Volksfest in West Berlin, 1965–81 – Benjamin P. Greene
13. Unquiet Americans: the Church Committee, the CIA and the intelligence dimension of US public diplomacy in the 1970s – Paul M. McGarr
14. Time to heal the wounds: America’s bicentennial and U.S.-Swedish normalisation in 1976 – M. Todd Bennett
15. ‘Something to boast about’: Western enthusiasm for Carter’s human rights diplomacy – Barbara Keys
16. To arms for the Western Alliance: the Committee on the Present Danger, defense spending and the perception of American power abroad, 1973–80 – John M. Rosenberg
17. Afterword: selling America in the shadow of Vietnam – Robert J. McMahon
Index

About the Author

Hallvard Notaker is Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, Norway

Giles Scott-Smith holds the Ernst van der Beugel Chair in the Diplomatic History of Transatlantic Relations since WWII at Leiden University, the Netherlands

David J. Snyder is Senior Instructor of History and Faculty Principal of the Carolina International House at the University of South Carolina, USA

Reviews

'The 1970s, we now know, was no mere period of economic and cultural drift, but also a crucial era for recalibrating the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world. ReassertingAmerica in the 1970s offers considerable insight into this key shift. Particularly welcome is the attention to international perspectives on U.S. initiatives in cultural diplomacy.'

Thomas Borstelmann, E.N. and Katherine Thompson Professor of Modern World History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA


'This is a superb collection of essays on a nodal decade of the twentieth century. The editors have assembled a group of top-notch historians of the Cold War to discuss how the United States and its public diplomacy responded to the alleged crisis of U.S. power and hegemony, and to the perceived decline of America's cultural and political appeal.'

Mario Del Pero, Professor of International History, Paris Institute of Political Studies, France


'Substantive in content, perceptive in analysis, and exquisitely curated, the essays comprising Reasserting America explain how the country's public diplomats struggled to sell the United States to a skeptical world in the aftermath of Vietnam and Civil Rights. This volume offers novel perspectives on U.S. foreign policy in an era of turbulence and unease, when America's global repute swerved between ignominy and redemption. Juxtaposing American purposes and global responses, Reasserting America makes original and significant contributions to historical scholarship on the United States and the World.'

Daniel Sargent, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley, USA

‘Hallvard Notaker, Giles Scott-Smith, and David J. Snyder have brought together a superb collection of essays authored by first-rate historians. In particular, Reasserting America in the 1970s succeeds at showing how US public diplomats marketed the United States to a skeptical world in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Watergate, and attempted to manage discourse through public and private cooperation, and how diplomats and foreign audiences interpreted the messages. The volume not only is an indispensable addition to the study of diplomatic history but is also timely, as it fits in nicely with the recent historiographical thrust that recognizes the 1970s as a pivotal decade in American history.’
Brian R. Robertson, Texas A & M University, Central Texas, H-Diplo (March, 2017)
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