ABSTRACT
The nature and magnitude of the public diplomacy challenge can be illustrated by two prominent cases in which foreign public opinion has limited the success of American policies: the "burdensharing" problems between the US and NATO and US-Japanese security relations. For years the United States has hoped that the NATO Allies would make larger contributions to the shared deterrence and defense effort in Europe. According to a number of knowledgeable observers, public diplomacy has had a postwar history of conceptual confusion, organizational turmoil, and ambivalence about purposes as the nation has sought to rationalize and to find a place for the instrument of foreign policy. The problem of dealing with the images is compounded by incessant high-intensity propaganda efforts on the part of the Soviets and their "fraternal" regimes. Propaganda and dirty tricks are not the full length and breadth of the Soviet public diplomacy challenge, however.
