U.S. policymakers view their country as the “exceptional” and “indispensable” global policeman but shut their eyes to how other nations see the world, thus blinding America to emerging problems and possible solutions, as ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller explains.
By Graham E. Fuller
All countries do it – promoting their own societies in ideal terms in order to influence others. The U.S. devotes a huge amount of time and money to selling its self-image and a view of the world as seen through American eyes – and perhaps denigrating others as well.
Such “crafted” image-making is hardly exclusive to the U.S. government. The New York Times, for example, supposedly our gold-standard on objective reporting, is heavily slanted when it comes to reporting nearly anything on China or Russia – among other issues.
United States President Barack Obama (third from left) and Vladimir V. Putin (second from right), President of the Russian Federation, share a toast at a luncheon hosted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in honor of world leaders attending the general debate of the General Assembly. Also pictured: Andrzej Duda (left), President of the Republic of Poland.
If you recognize the nature of what you’re reading, that’s fine. But if you think you’re getting the full skinny on the world, then it can be dangerous and self-deceiving. As we say in the free market, let the buyer beware.
China and Russia, among others, certainly produce their own state propaganda, often far less skillfully than the U.S., and it more often comes in state-controlled media. The real danger, of course, comes when you start believing your own spin as representing reality around you.
But there can actually be some virtue in reading “propaganda.” (Let’s use a better description for it – promotion of one’s own view of the world – in the effort to bring others over to your view.) The value of reading such material can actually be great – particularly for those interested in international affairs. Certainly when I was at CIA we read a lot of what could be called “foreign propaganda.”
Indeed there was an entire branch of CIA which monitored and published on a daily…