Shared Knowledge Is Power

Ah, the good ol' days. Mother Russia and its Red Menace of communism crawled throughout its socialist republics and beyond, packaging neatly into a collection of nation-states perfect for the United States to confront with all the conventional military power it could muster. The Cold War-it all seems so easy now. The United States government galvanized strategic communication efforts to concentrate on its one great power rival, marshalling America's melting-pot public behind a national security strategy to spread freedom and dignity and democracy around the world. And it worked. It worked so well that eventually the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, changing everything, fragmenting the balance of power, launching a collapse of governments, the fractures of others and the heralded rise of our nation's hegemony. Then, as history would have it, everything changed again on September 11, 2001. And after a series of miscalculations and mistaken ventures, the United States now finds itself struggling to sell its ware. Fingers point not at the failed policy of a neo-conservative ideology that touts muscular democracy, but rather at the supposed failure of strategic communication to spread America's good word.