When the U.S. Learned to be Mr. Nice Guy

Containing Anti-Gringo Sentiment in Revolutionary Mexico Gave Birth to Public Diplomacy

Why do they hate America? What can we do to make them like us? There has been much talk about the promise and limits of U.S. public diplomacy in the Islamic world ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and an assumption that our efforts need to be adapted from the Cold War. But many of these discussions ignore that the robust, global system of public diplomacy funded by the State Department from the 1920s until the 1990s pre-dates the Cold War. The U.S. formulated its system of public diplomacy in …