U.S. public diplomacy and sports stars: mobilizing African-American athletes as goodwill ambassadors from the cold war to an uncertain future

Abstract

The United States has diverse options in the projection of public diplomacy ranging across the spectrum from risk-averse to risk-oriented strategies. A significant test highlights the use of the deep pool of the U.S. star athletes generally and African-American athletes more specifically. During the Cold War era, a conformist style was privileged in the U.S. State Department goodwill ‘ambassador’ program. Yet, paralleling the overall trajectory of celebrity diplomats, significant gaps can be located in this risk-averse culture. With this unevenness in mind, the article look back to see what lessons or parallels can be taken from earlier initiatives. At a moment marked by the populism of the Trump administration and the environment of intensified racial polarization, it is unlikely that any new connection between African-American athletes and a new public diplomacy strategy will fit into a recalibrated conformist model. Even if it is a sharper break from past experiences, however, the constant is that this category of individuals—especially the high-profile African-American sports stars—remains a huge asset if the U.S. State Department has the desire and ability to tap into this talent pool under different political conditions in the future.

Full text

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
U.S. public diplomacy and sports stars: mobilizing African-
American athletes as goodwill ambassadors from the cold war
to an uncertain future
Andrew F. Cooper
1,2
Revised: 9 July 2018 / Published online: 11 December 2018
Springer Nature Limited 2018
Abstract The United States has diverse options in the
projection of public diplomacy ranging across the spectrum
from risk-averse to risk-oriented strategies. A significant
test highlights the use of the deep pool of the U.S. star
athletes generally and African-American athletes more
specifically. During the Cold War era, a conformist style
was privileged in the U.S. State Department goodwill
‘ambassador’ program. Yet, paralleling the overall trajec-
tory of celebrity diplomats, significant gaps can be located
in this risk-averse culture. With this unevenness in mind,
the article look back to see what lessons or parallels can be
taken from earlier initiatives. At a moment marked by the
populism of the Trump administration and the environment
of intensified racial polarization, it is unlikely that any new
connection between African-American athletes and a new
public diplomacy strategy will fit into a recalibrated con-
formist model. Even if it is a sharper break from past
experiences, however, the constant is that this category of
individuals—especially the high-profile African-American
sports stars—remains a huge asset if the U.S. State
Department has the desire and ability to tap into this talent
pool under different political conditions in the future.
Keywords U.S. public diplomacy African-American
athletes Goodwill ambassadors Cold war Trump
administration
Introduction
The projection of public diplomacy (pd) has long exhibited
a choice between what can be labeled risk-averse and risk-
oriented strategies. This is especially true of a country like
the United States (U.S.), where the array of potential
options is highly diverse. The U.S. has rich assets in terms
of human capital at the societal level, which can be
deployed in the mobilization of pd initiatives. Yet the
means by which these assets are used or contested vary
enormously, depending on the U.S. Department of State’s
appetite for risk in recruiting and mobilizing pd ambas-
sadors over time with respect to the context of different
presidential administrations. Indeed, while the recent
debate has centered for the most part on understanding the
output of pd work (Brown 2017), with attention focused on
the tensions between the culture of bureaucracies that are
‘‘infamously risk-averse’’ and the encouragement of ‘‘risk-
taking and an open, non-defensive way of analyzing its
results,’’ there is a need to evaluate the input in terms of the
range of choice over time as well.
A significant test between a risk-averse or risk-oriented
approach focuses on the use of the deep pool of the U.S.
star athletes generally and African-American athletes more
specifically. Although the motivations and means of tap-
ping into this cluster of non-state actors vary enormously,
the attractions of an overall strategy along these lines have
some sustained appeal. The U.S. Olympic athletes take the
spotlight every 4 years, and their counterparts in both
individual and team sports stand out in their capacity as
global icons. Moreover, the success of African-American
athletes have often provided special stories of resilience. If
public diplomacy is intended at its core to reinforce the
American narrative as the ‘‘incubator of people’s dreams,’’
highlighting American values (Aspen 2014), the role of
&Andrew F. Cooper
acooper@uwaterloo.ca
1
Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of
Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
2
Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, ON, Canada
Place Brand Public Dipl (2019) 15:165–172
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-018-00114-2
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.