2009 Essays

Russia Hires Proxy Flacks in D.C.: How Foreign Policy Is Getting Outsourced to Lobbyists

Mitchell, Lincoln A.

The news that the governments (to use the word broadly) of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have hired a California-based public relations firm, the Saylor Company, presumably to improve their image in Washington, is nothing very new. Many countries hire public relations firms to handle their image and government relations in Washington. Perhaps the most famous case of this was Hill and Knowlton, the firm hired by the government of Kuwait to drum up American support for the first Iraq war.