The Obama administration is pursuing a new approach to public diplomacy that stands to weaken U.S. ties abroad - and delivers its most profound blow to the transatlantic relationship. In March, the administration proposed a 14 percent cut to the Fulbright fellowship program, taking its budget from $237 to $204 million. Fulbright is the U.S. government's flagship international exchange program that sends Americans abroad and brings foreign researchers and practitioners to the United States. Cuts to Fulbright come alongside the expansion of shorter programs that offer less substantive immersion for foreigners, neglect Americans, and shift the diplomatic lens away from Europe during a period that requires greater - not less - transatlantic cooperation.
Advocates of the Fulbright program celebrate its ideals of cross-cultural understanding and its potential as a soft power tool: the fact that it sends veritable cultural diplomats abroad at relatively little expense as missionaries of liberal humanism. As Senator J. William Fulbright, the program's founder, said in 1945, "a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion...increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and fellowship." Yet this same humanistic rhetoric that proliferated in the post-World War II era also typified post-World War I internationalism, from the League of Nations through to Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy of the 1930s. Its resurrection in the post-1945 period led not just to Fulbright, but to an array of programs born of the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act. These included the State Department's International Visitors Programs, citizen exchange programs, and artistic and cultural exchanges - all forms of what became known as "public diplomacy," designed to meet diplomatic objectives through people and goodwill instead of the brute power of the state.
Fulbright's real innovation - which stands to be lost in budget cuts and shifts to new programs - lies in its structure. Many Fulbright awards are funded and administered by the United States in partnership with other nations. While Fulbright operates two-way exchange programs with 155 countries, in 50 countries Fulbright Commissions administer the program. Their budgets come from both the U.S. Department of State and the governments in-country, as well as private charitable donations. Fulbright thus represents the world's largest multilateral investment in public diplomacy.
Twenty-four of the 50 extant Fulbright Commissions are in Europe. With European countries as the biggest co-investors in the program, Fulbright is a cornerstone of transatlantic public diplomacy. But as European students increasingly opt to study around Europe instead of the United States through programs like Erasmus, a shrinking Fulbright program could deliver an untimely blow to transatlantic relations.
The programs taking Fulbright's place lack this multilateral dimension. As the administration cut the Fulbright budget, it increased overall funding for educational and cultural exchange programs by 1.6 percent. New funding includes $20 million allocated to a Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), announced in 2010 as the president's key international exchange; $10 million for the Young South-East Asian Leaders Initiative; and $2.5 million for the Fulbright University Vietnam. These new initiatives aim to offer responsive programming better poised to create rapid-response "on demand" programs. That is, to provide immersion for people in regions of strategic importance to the United States that can be changed as priorities shift.
Responsive leadership development with an eye to the changing demographics shaping the next generation is laudable. But these programs are shorter, offering six weeks of immersion instead of the Fulbright's typical academic year. They favor immersion inside the Washington, DC beltway, offering little exposure to the rest of the United States. These new programs also offer one-way exchanges, funded solely by the U.S. government and bring African and South-East Asian youth to the United States without sending Americans the other way. To introduce such programs at the expense of longer-term programs such as Fulbright, without investing in equal exposure abroad for Americans, represents a disappointing concession to the anti-intellectualism that pervades some corners of U.S. politics.
Truly meaningful international exchange must offer deep and comprehensive exposure, involve equal investment or participation on both sides, and provide long-term learning opportunities. If Fulbright continues to shrink, so too might rigorous, substantive ties between the next generation of U.S. and European leaders - a less than ideal move at a moment that requires active transatlantic engagement more than ever.