The Power of Ideas That Won the Cold War is Still Needed.

• Author: Datta, Christopher

Twenty years ago, the United States Information Agency (USIA) was consolidated into the United States Department of State. On this 20th anniversary of that event, it is time to reexamine the wisdom of that decision. In my opinion, it was a mistake.

To win the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan did something for which he is never credited: he dramatically increased the budget of the United States Information Agency, the public diplomacy arm of our struggle against communism.

The Cold War was won not by our military strength but by the power of ideas, and USIA was the lead Cold Warrior in the Soviet/U.S. clash of ideologies. The Soviet Union collapsed because its people lost faith in communism. We won because we had better ideas, and because our values of free expression and personal liberty, among others, converted world opinion. USIA was the little federal agency that played a major role in making that happen.

When the Cold War ended, some said that the United States no longer needed USIA to defend our values and to counter Russian disinformation, and the agency was abolished. Many of its functions were absorbed into the State Department.

ISIS and Russia, new enemy and old

Today we face ISIS, a new enemy, and Russia, a revitalized old one. Our problem is that we treat the conflict with ISIS as a military struggle instead of an ideological one, while the Russians are humiliating us, not with their military might, but through hacking and social media. As we see in Afghanistan, the Taliban has risen from its ashes and is again a threat to the government in Kabul, and the continuing bloody attacks in Europe and elsewhere by ISIS show the resilience of the appeal of its ideology. Regarding Russia, never has a country so humiliated us at so little cost by leveraging tools that should be our strength, not theirs. In the effort to win the social media struggle, we are coming in last.

Recent events in Syria have taken a dramatic turn, to the benefit of Russia, Iran, Assad and, last but not least, ISIS. It appears that thousands of ISIS fighters are escaping or being released from their former prisons in Kurdish controlled areas. Russia and ISIS have become stronger, and today they present a bigger menace than ever to America, Europe and to the region. We will not defeat them until we have discredited their ideological allure.

Winning this war of ideologies ought to be a cakewalk. We have freedom of expression, freedom of worship, education...