Bill Berkeley and Nahid Simadoust. “The Hostage-Takers’ Second Act.” Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 2004, pp. 42-50. Columbia University scholar Berkeley and Time magazine reporter Simadoust interview former young radicals who took over the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and discuss how some have evolved into journalists and political reformers with influence today in Iran’s public sphere.
Mariah Blake. “Targeting Tehran,” Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 2004, pp. 51-54. CJR assistant editor Blake looks at how expatriate Iranian dissidents are using 26 satellite television and 12 radio stations to broadcast to influence public opinion in Iran. Programs include entertainment and span a range of political and social issues.
Thomas Carothers. “Democracy’s Sobering State,” Current History, December 2004. The Director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy and Rule of Law Project finds the state of democracy in the world is becoming more complex and demanding due to a confluence of factors: (1) persistence and rejuvenation of authoritarian forces, (2) economic performance problems in pluralistic systems, (3) economic success in authoritarian systems, and (4) US war on terrorism policies — counterterrorism cooperation with authoritarian governments, tolerance of democratic backsliding, weakened American credibility, and diminished status as a role model.
Defense Science Board Summer Study, 2004. Transition to and From Hostilities, December 2004. This 199-page report of a DSB Summer Study co-chaired by Craig Fields and Philip Odeen examines planning, management, and capability challenges in future stabilization and reconstruction efforts. The report recommends employing capabilities not traditional to U.S. armed forces including a revolution in US strategic communication, substantially increased knowledge of cultures and languages, and making stabilization and reconstruction a core competency of the Departments of State and Defense. The DSB’s Task Force report on Strategic Communication, published in September 2004, was a part of this larger DSB Summer Study.
John Lewis Gaddis. “Grand Strategy in the Second Term,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005, pp. 2-15. Yale historian Gaddis calls for mid-course corrections in US grand strategy centered on gaining multi-lateral support for pre-emptive use of US military power. Gaddis urges “better manners,” correcting failures in “language” (explaining the purposes of US power rather than flaunting power with a mixture of “arrogance and vagueness”), and making its case in terms of a compelling vision.
Paul Heyer. Harold Innis, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003), 132 pages. Professor Heyer’s intellectual biography examines Innis’s (1894-1952) evolution as a thinker from respected early works on political economy to his extraordinary influence on current media studies and communications history. Chapters on “The ‘History of Communications’ Project,” “Time, Space, and the Oral Tradition,” “Monopolies of Knowledge and the Critique of Culture,” and “An Enduring Legacy” are especially rewarding.
The Heritage Foundation. “Utilizing Public Diplomacy for Security and Prosperity,” Mandate for Leadership, 2004. The Foundation’s latest Mandate calls for the US to establish “a public diplomacy doctrine,” operating guidelines and principles, independent reporting and budget authority, and new authorities to include “a Public Diplomacy Coordinator for the National Security Council, a strengthened Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy in the Department of State,” and changes in “the outdated Smith-Mundt Act of 1948.”
Russell D. Howard and Reid L. Sawyer, eds. Terrorism and Counterterrorism, (McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2004), 544 pages. Howard and Sawyer, professors in West Point’s Department of Social Sciences, have compiled 33 essays by a range of authors in this updated edition of their 2002 publication. Contributions by Martha Crenshaw, Louise E. Richardson, David Ronfeldt, John Arquilla, Madeleine Gruen, David Rothkopf, and others explore political and religious roots of terrorist activities; network theory, propaganda, and uses of the Internet; and a range of terrorism and counterterrorism strategies.
Mahmood Mamdani. “Whither Political Islam: Understanding the Modern Jihad,“ Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005, pp. 148-155. Columbia University professor Mamdani reviews Gilles Kepel’s The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (2004) and Olivier Roy’s Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (2004). Mamdani finds the “singular merit” of both is that they take debate on Islam beyond “culture talk” and religious origins to a more nuanced understanding of political and strategic issues. Their “common failing,” he argues, is lack of inquiry into encounters between non-Muslims and Muslims, the importance of the Afghan jihad, and the Western influences that shaped it.
Jared Manasek. “Letter From Belgrade: The Paradox of Pink,” Columbia Journalism Review, January/February, 2005, pp. 36-42. Manasek examines today’s Serbian media environment. He focuses on B92 and its evolution from a student led revolutionary force to operations that now include radio, TV, online, music promotion, and book publishing. And on TV Pink, a media empire with roots in Milosovic’s information ministry. TV Pink has evolved into a powerful commercial broadcasting organization that offers sensationalist news, American movies and Serbian pop music. B92, largely weaned from dependence on foreign aid, faces commercial challenges to its public service approach to broadcasting.
James Norton, “The Defense Science Board Report,” Flakmagazine, December 2, 2004. Jim Lobe, “US Has Zero Credibility Among Muslims — Pentagon Panel,”LewRockwell.com, December 6, 2004. Harlan Ullman, “We’re Losing the War of Ideas,” Baltimore Sun, December 21, 2004. Three of many blogs and opinion columns that looked in depth at the DSB’s report on Strategic Communication.
Olivier Roy. Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, (Columbia University Press, 2004), 349 pages. Professor Roy examines the “the way in which the relationship of Muslims to Islam is reshaped by globalization, westernization and the impact of living as a minority.” Roy analyzes peaceful and violent transnational movements beyond traditional borders and contends Islamic fundamentalism “is not a single-note reaction against westernization but a product and an agent of the complex forces of globalization.” He concludes with a discussion of dialogue, values, and the concept of the “clash of civilizations.”
William A. Rugh, ed. Engaging the Arab & Islamic Worlds through Public Diplomacy: A Report and Action Recommendations, (Public Diplomacy Council, 2004). 174 pages. Eleven scholars and public diplomacy practitioners look at public opinion in the Arab and Muslim worlds and tools of public diplomacy. Contributors include William A. Rugh, Shipley Telhami, Kenton W. Keith, Barry Fulton, James L. Bullock, Alan L. Heil, Jr., Norman J. Pattiz, Marc Lynch, Barry Ballow, Cresencio Arcos, and Howard Cincotta.
Richard Virden. “World Perspective Essay, December 2004,” Benedictine Center for Lifelong Learning, College of St. Benedict/Saint John’s University. Retired diplomat Dick Virden reflects on a Foreign Service career, much of it in public diplomacy — on pro-American perspectives encountered during assignments in Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Thailand, and on growing anti-Americanism in Brazil prompted by the US war in Iraq, which he experienced during his last assignment as Deputy Chief of Mission in Brasilia.
Sheldon Wolin. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, (Princeton University Press, 2004), 761 pages. This significantly expanded version of Wolin’s classic 1960 study of political theory includes new material on John Dewey’s “idea of a public;” postmodern concepts of power including the generation, storage, control, and instantaneous transmission of information; the rise of interconnected networks; and ways these concepts decades later challenge the role of the state and political concepts in Wolin’s first edition.
Gordon S. Wood. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, (The Penguin Press, 2004), 299 pages. Those interested in the growing literature on Franklin and in his public diplomacy achievements will find Brown University historian Wood’s Pulitzer Prize winning book a masterful reappraisal. Wood’s selective psychological study includes lengthy assessments of Franklin’s views on the British Empire and influence as a diplomat in France. He reveals a Franklin quite different from the images and myths of the American folk hero developed in two centuries of historical interpretation.