The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind by Martin Sixsmith

Abstract

intelligence or propaganda library and to set an agenda for multiple future research projects examining the U.S. role in anti-Communist resistance across Eastern Europe and the Baltics, as well as the CIA’s covert collaborations with Francisco Franco’s Spain and the Vatican. Issues of particular interest include excerpts from U.S.-Soviet negotiations in which the black propaganda stations are mentioned. The fact that Soviet leaders expressed concern about the stations suggests the CIA was achieving what it wanted. But the coincident U.S. abandonment of many of the stations suggests they were not successful enough to justify being retained. The exchanges suggest a kind of parallel process to arms control—information disarmament—by which the rougher edges were knocked off the propaganda war. Cummings ends with a rallying call to reconsider the value of broadcasting at a time when “some countries are slipping back into undemocratic governments.” In an era in which some leaders have sought to weaponize the mass media, this point is well made. Unfortunately, he goes on to dismiss social media as “basically impersonal with shorthand sentences and ‘selfie’ photographs that do not attempt to provoke the reader to action or contemplation.” If only this were the case. The last decade has surely shown that social media memes are well capable of provoking thoughts and actions around the world, too often to the detriment of international stability. Despite this cavil, Cummings’s book is a welcome addition to the literature of Cold War propaganda and a timely reminder that, whether through radio or the platforms of our digital age, engaging foreign audiences with news and argument in their own languages remains an important element of statecraft.