Cultural Diplomacy: the Answer for World Peace?

This week former Cultural Diplomacy Officer John Brown spoke to our class about his experiences in Russia and the importance of culture and diplomacy. Because Russia places a high importance on their national culture, Mr.Brown recognized that the US must reflect a similar pride in our culture in order for Russians to identify with and respect us. Could cultural diplomacy be the key to ending terrorism and creating world peace? "Absolutely not," Brown says. However, a very key factor to relationships between different states and cultures is cultural awareness -exposing yourself to other artifacts of high culture and accepting/appreciating those of other cultures. What this does is build understanding, which leads to more genuine and trustworthy relationships between states.

So why are Americans so reluctant to rely on culture as diplomacy? Brown noted the struggle to get the money he wanted in his budget to hold events and culturally related expos in Russia. The US embassy was looked upon strangely for holding so few events while other countries were doing exactly the opposite. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that Americans have a hard time describing their OWN culture; because they only note their culture when introduced to a completely different one, there is no cultural literacy, no awareness of how different cultures around the world really are. I think we have a tendency to assume that everyone else is just like 'us' deep down, but this is far from true. The US should implement cultural literacy in schools. While the majority of culture is values and subconsious beliefs, if we can understand how we do things in comparison to other countries, we will find cultural diplomacy to be more important. Books such as Weaver's America's Mid Life Crisis, the Future of a Troubled Superpower would really help American's to understand the importance of culture by gaining a better understanding of their own.