On Fulbright Program And American Cultural Diplomacy During The Cold War

After the outbreak of the Cold War, the two camps, one led by the United States and another by the Soviet Union, began to carry out the“Psychological War”and“Propaganda War”. In the struggle, the United States employed a variety of means of cultural diplomacy in order to win in the ideological field. The purposes were to let the people around the world understand the United States and generate the good feelings about the the States in order to make the world have an overall identity of the American values and lifestyles. Fulbright Program, whose original aim was to promote the understanding of America, became an American important tool in the“Psychological War”and“Propaganda War”. With the development of the Cold War, the United States tried to use cultural educational method to make the world understand America, strengthen the relationship with the Allies, output the American ideologies to the Soviet-led socialist countries, and develop the“pro-American”consciousness. Fulbright Program was such an important means of the United States during the Cold War.This dissertation, by employing the theories of historical, political, international and cultural studies and other related theories and by analysing declassified documents of the United States, draws the following conclusions: during the Cold War, Fulbright Program played an important role in making the world understand the American people and culture, improving the exchangers’technical knowledge and academic status, propagating the American values, democracy and ideologies, strengthening the alliance with the Allies, and carrying out the psychological warfare with the Soviet-led Eastern European countries. Meanwhile, Fulbright Program also attracted a lot of elites from other countries for the America and provided a global talent highland for the improvement of the strength of the United States. However, that the United States tried to use the diplomatic means to propagate and promote its own cultural values and ideologies made other countries concerned gradually realize the nature of American cultural and educational exchanges. Therefore, to a certain extent, it made American cultural exchanges lose its credibility in the world.Nowadays, the issue of cultural diplomacy has been receiving more and more attentions from the political leaders and scholars of all the nations. As a typical concentration of the American cultural diplomacy, the course of the development of Fulbright Program during the Cold War specifically exhibited the track of the American cultural diplomacy. And, it could also give an example for us to recognize the nature of the American cultural diplomacy. The purpose of this dissertation is to recognize the whole picture of the American cultural diplomacy and to provide an inspiration and reference for China’s rising foreign cultural exchanges by analyzing the roles that Fulbright Program played in American cultural diplomacy and by studying the strategies of the overall national interests that the American cultural diplomacy achieved during the Cold War. On one hand, we should study the successful development of the American cultural diplomacy so that we can do better in China’s foreign exchanges, and on the other hand, we must learn from the lessons of the American cultural diplomacy in order that we can do better in the foreign exchanges with other countries and win the trust of other countries and build a harmonious international environment for China’s developement. Thus, we can contribute a lot for the development of the whole world.