Suchergebnisse

By the early 1950s, Western rearmament had emerged as a central U.S. foreign policy goal. However, many West European governments were reluctant to bear the costs of rearmament at a time when economic reconstruction and social welfare were still urgently needed. Perhaps nowhere was this resistance as entrenched as in the Netherlands, where concern over defense expenditure was most pronounced among Dutch housewives, a traditionally prominent part of Dutch society. For U.S. diplomats in The Hague, the Dutch housewife therefore became the greatest obstacle they needed to overcome in generating Dutch support for rearmament. When U.S. officials encouraged Dutch women to take a more prominent stand on international affairs, these efforts posed a challenge to local cultural conventions. Yet with few usable cultural tropes on which to draw amid continued economic austerity, the U.S. effort to reach Dutch women fell short. An analysis of this failed effort underscores the limits of U.S. cultural influence in other Western societies during the early Cold War.

By the early 1950s, Western rearmament had emerged as a central U.S. foreign policy goal. However, many West European governments were reluctant to bear the costs of rearmament at a time when economic reconstruction and social welfare were still urgently needed. Perhaps nowhere was this resistance as entrenched as in the Netherlands, where concern over defense expenditure was most pronounced among Dutch housewives, a traditionally prominent part of Dutch society. For U.S. diplomats in The Hague, the Dutch housewife therefore became the greatest obstacle they needed to overcome in generating Dutch support for rearmament. When U.S. officials encouraged Dutch women to take a more prominent stand on international affairs, these efforts posed a challenge to local cultural conventions. Yet with few usable cultural tropes on which to draw amid continued economic austerity, the U.S. effort to reach Dutch women fell short. An analysis of this failed effort underscores the limits of U.S. cultural influence in other Western societies during the early Cold War. Adapted from the source document.

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.