Clinton to Congress: We are Losing the Information War

Helle Dale / March 08, 2011

News flash: “We are in an information war, and we’re losing that war.”

This source for this conclusion was not one of the at least 15 reports on U.S. public diplomacy that have appeared over the last decade; it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 2. For years, the State Department has been in denial, and Clinton’s admission of failure is therefore particularly welcome. Maybe we can now have an adult conversation about what needs to be done to reverse the decline in America’s standing overseas.

In the course of hearings on the Obama Administration’s lavish $47 billion 2012 budget request for diplomacy and development, Clinton was questioned by Senator Richard Lugar (R–IN) about the role of U.S. international broadcasting as a part of the information war. Now, the State Department is responsible for public diplomacy (more…)