ABSTRACT
Like the Committee on Public Information of World War I and the Office of War Information in World War II, the United States Information Agency (USIA) was established to persuade people in other nations that the U.S. national interests and national security policies should be supported. The USIA was established in 1953 and was terminated in 1999 when its functions were returned to the Department of State. Since 1999, public diplomacy and U.S. strategic communication have been loosely coordinated and subject to competing paradigms and definitions of terms. Some observers believe that a new agency like the USIA needs to be established because of the war on terror and confusion among agencies that have differing approaches to public diplomacy. Others believe that the present pattern of continual assessment and improvement across agencies is working.
