Don’t say the wheels of government always spin slowly. When there is an agenda at work, they can move with considerable speed, and in the deconstruction of American overseas broadcasting, things are moving fast.

As the Cold War was ending in the late 1980s and early '90s, Western nations, confident of a lasting peace, began to neglect the tools that had sustained them in the ideological war against communism. In the US, institutions of public diplomacy and strategic communications were disbanded...

The Czech Republic is preparing to mark the 60th birthday of the launch of Radio Free Europe broadcasts in Czech across the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia. The broadcasts were a key factor in telling people under communism not only what was really happening in their own country but also keeping them up to date about events in the West.