e, imperial activities of Western European countries as far back as the seventeenth century could have constituted public diplomacy. But modern public diplomacy, in which one country disseminates information with the intention not of colonization, but of influencing foreign public opinion, reached its zenith during the Cold War.
Following World War II, the United States and European countries began using shortwave radio programs to broadcast their national values and attitudes throughout the world. Many countries' governments created tools during the Cold War to broadcast their national values. For example, the United States Information Agency (USIA) was established in 1953 to build ways to spread American values behind the Iron Curtain (USIA; Leonard 48-56). Radio programs such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe (targeting Eastern Europe), Radio Liberty (targeting the then-U.S.S.R.), and Radio Free Asia broadcast American themes and values around the world. The British government also set up the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service to disseminate its country's goals, and the USSR created Radio Moscow (Elliott A17).
Of all of these, the BBC World Service was th
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