Kofi A. Anan. “The U.N. Isn’t a Threat to the Net,” The Washington Post, November 5, 2005. In an opinion column, the United Nations Secretary General argues the UN does not want to “‘take over,’ police or otherwise control the Internet,” but the U.S. should share Internet responsibilities with the world community. The 2005 World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia is intended to ensure the Internet’s global reach and bridge the digital divide.
Zeyno Baran, “Fighting the War of Ideas,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005, pp. 68-78. The Nixon Center’s Baran contends that nonviolent but radical Islamist groups, such as Sunni Islam’s Hizb ut-Tahrir, combine “fascist rhetoric, Leninist strategy, and Western sloganeering with Wahhabi theology” to prime recruits for more extreme organizations such as al Qaeda. Baran argues the ideological struggle must be engaged in two ways: through strategies and policies that challenge these groups and deprive them of opportunities to discredit the US and its ideals, and through suppression of these organizations “without sacrificing too many civil liberties.”
Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon. The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and the Strategy for Getting it Right, (Henry Holt & Company, 2005). Former NSC staffers Benjamin and Simon, authors of The Age of Sacred Terror (2002), argue that U.S. actions in Iraq and failure to understand the ideology that motivates jihadist attacks since 9/11 have confirmed militant narratives and undermined U.S. strategy. They propose an alternative strategy based on reduced militarization, sustained reforms in the Muslim world that go beyond rhetoric, and priorities for homeland security. Contains a brief critique of the Bush Administration’s approach to public diplomacy (pp. 218-221).
The Centre for International Governance Innovation. Worlds Apart? Exploring the Interface between Governance and Diplomacy, November 16, 2005. Canadian based CIGI is sponsoring three conferences — Canberra, Australia (March 2006), Wilton Park, UK (June 2006), and Waterloo, Canada (September 2006) — focused on examining linkages between global governance and diplomacy and on how the structures and processes of diplomacy are being redefined. Deliverables include papers, a published volume, and on-line dialogue during the project. Project partners are Brian Hocking, Innovation in Diplomacy Project, Loughborough University and Bill Maley, Director of Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, Australia National University.
Michael A. Cohen and Maria Figueroa Kupcu. “Privatizing Foreign Policy,” World Policy Journal, Fall 2005, pp. 34-52. Cohen and Kupcu, co-directors of the Privatization of Foreign Policy Project at the World Policy Institute, assess the growing influence of non-state actors (NSAs) in promoting democracy, humanitarian relief, disease prevention, environmental issues, economic liberalization, nation-building, counter-terrorism, and fighting wars. The authors contend that in the past NSAs operated largely within a state-centric system. Today, many still collaborate with states, but increasingly NSAs challenge state sovereignty and operate by rules that run counter to government interests. States “continue to lag in adjusting to the new NSA reality.”
Charlotte F. Cole, et al. “The Educational Impact of Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim: A Sesame Street Television Series to Promote Respect and Understanding Among Children Living in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza,” International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2003, 27 (5), pp. 409-422. A pre-and post-test study sponsored by Sesame Workshop and academic teams in the U.S., the West Bank, and Israel. The study’s results demonstrate the effectiveness of the Sesame Street television series in countering negative stereotypes and developing positive attitudes in describing others.
Timothy E. Cook. Governing the News: The News Media as a Political Institution, second edition, (University of Chicago Press, 2005. Louisiana State University professor of mass communication and political science Cook updates his study of the news media as political actors and integral elements in governance and policymaking. Includes his assessment of narrowcasting trends in mass media, web-based media, and increased alienation of publics from the press.
Daryl Copeland. “New Rabbits, Old Hats: International Policy and Canada’s Foreign Service in an Era of Diminished Resources,” International Journal, Summer, 2005. Veteran Canadian diplomat Copeland looks at how diplomacy must adapt “structures, doctrines, and techniques” to more powerful transnational forces and non-state actors. Writing about what he calls “new diplomacy,” Copeland examines partnerships with allies and stakeholders, mainstreaming public diplomacy, new diplomatic skill sets, the impact of downsizing, and other issues.
Kenneth Neil Cukier. “Who Will Control the Internet? Washington Battles the World,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005, pp. 7-13. Cukier, a writer for The Economist on technology issues, discusses contrasting views in the debate on whether Internet coordination should continue to be managed by a U.S. nonprofit (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN) or administered under a multi-lateral treaty. Examines central arguments in relevant policy, political, regulatory and technology issues sparked by a Department of Commerce announcement that the U.S. “plans to maintain control of the Internet indefinitely.”
Commentary (60th Anniversary Issue), “Defending and Advancing Freedom: A Symposium,” November 2005. Commentary’s editors invited 36 thinkers to write brief essays evaluating the Bush Administration’s policies on preemption and promoting democracy. Students and teachers of public diplomacy will find essays by Paul Berman, Francis Fukyama, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Stanley Hoffmann, Josef Joffe, and Joshua Muravchik of particular interest. All are available online.
Faisal Devji. Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity. Cornell University Press, 2005. Devji looks at al Qaeda’s violence in the context of global mobility, the media, and ethical discourse. In examining “new patterns of belief and practice” in modern jihad, Devji distinguishes his analysis from those who focus on Islam’s nature and history (Bernard Lewis) and on the political and geostrategic (Olivier Roy, John Esposito, Gilles Kepel). His chapter on “Media and Martyrdom” and analysis of the writings of Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri are especially useful. Devji was born in Tanzania, educated at the University of Chicago, and is a professor of history at New School University.
David Fabrycky. “U.S. Public Diplomacy and Religion in the Muslim World,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs, Fall 2005, pp. 25-30. Fabrycky, a Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Foreign Affairs Fellow and M.A. student at George Washington University, argues that expert reports on public diplomacy and government programs lack adequate strategic thinking and planning on engaging religion in the Muslim world. The article examines benefits and risks in doing so, and offers practical suggestions for U.S. public diplomacy in dealing with religious societies.
John Hope Franklin. Mirror to America, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). Historian John Hope Franklin’s autobiography portrays his life as a scholar, civil rights activist, and public intellectual. Includes a number of passages on his work as a delegate to UNESCO and activities as a member of the Board of Foreign Scholarships and the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.
Stephen Holmes. “The War of the Liberals.” The Nation, November 14, 2005. In this assessment of the thinking of Paul Berman, Holmes challenges Berman’s arguments in his recent book, Power and the Idealists, (2005), and earlier study Terror and Liberalism (2003). Holmes concludes that liberals who supported the use force in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo now find they have “lost their moral bearings” in their support for intervention in Iraq, and they fail to understand “the political instrumentalization of humanitarianism.”
Jytte Klausen. The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe, (Oxford University Press, 2005). Klausen, a professor of comparative politics at Brandeis University, writes to give voice to European Muslim leaders in six countries — “who these people are and what they want.” Based on 300 interviews, her book is not an opinion survey, but a “political anthropology” intended to understand a range of views, find areas of overlapping concern, and identify preferred solutions. European governments have been reluctant to formulate policies for the integration of Muslim minorities, she argues, and “Muslims interpret this neglect as yet another form of discrimination.” Most European Muslims, she concludes, are looking for ways to build institutions that will allow them “to practice religion in a way that is compatible with social integration.”
Moises Naim. Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy, (Doubleday, 2005). The editor of Foreign Policy looks beyond terrorism at another dark side of globalization. Naim explores a variety of transnational criminal enterprises and their impact on political order. Contains useful sections on traffickers, government responses, network transformation, sovereignty, technologies, communication, and international relations theories. Well written. Excellent bibliography.
Lawrence Pintak. Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam, and the War of Ideas, (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming in January 2006). Veteran CBS correspondent Pintak examines the U.S. media’s coverage of Islam and how Arab and Muslim media portray the United States. His well documented account looks at distortions and misrepresentations in media framing, trends in the global media environments, and implications for U.S. public diplomacy. Pintak is a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan.
Philip Seib. “Hegemonic No More: Western Media, the Rise of Al-Jazeera, and the Influence of Diverse Voices,” International Studies Review, Vol. 7, Issue 4, December 2005, pp. 601-615. Marquette University communications professor Seib states that the Iraq war marks the end of “the near monopoly in global news that American and other Western media have long enjoyed.” Al-Jazeera and other news sources with contrasting perspectives characterize a more diverse global news environment that reduces “the influence of U.S. news organizations, which have been relatively supportive of U.S. policy during recent conflicts.”
Andrew Sullivan. “The Abolition of Torture,” The New Republic, December 19, 2005, pp. 19-23. Sullivan’s TNR cover article (challenging Charles Krauthammer) argues that “the logic of torture is the logic of totalitarianism,” that torture is “antithetical to the most basic principles for which the United States stands,” and that it is a “pragmatic disaster” in winning support for America’s freedom and democracy agenda. Sullivan frames his case in moral, political, historical, and public diplomacy terms.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence. The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America: Transformation Through Integration and Innovation, October 2005. Objectives of the national intelligence strategy issued by Amb. John Negroponte emphasize using the intelligence community’s “collectors, analysts, and operators” to forge “relationships with new and incipient democracies that can help them strengthen the rule of law” and to give policymakers “an enhanced analytical framework for identifying both the threats to and opportunities for promoting democracy.”
Robert Westbrook. Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth, (Cornell University Press, 2005). University of Rochester history professor and Dewey biographer (John Dewey and American Democracy, 1991) Westbrook looks at today’s pragmatists and their debt to Dewey’s call for a participatory democratic culture. Useful for public diplomacy researchers interested in discourse norms, communicative action theory, democracy-building, Richard Rorty’s (Achieving our Country, 1998), and Michael Walzer’s “connected criticism.”
The Wilson Quarterly. “Correspondence — American Pictorial,” Autumn 2005, pp. 4-7. Letters from Richard Arndt (The First Resort of Kings, 2005) and Yale Richmond (Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 2002) respond to Martha Bayles’ article on cultural diplomacy (“Goodwill Hunting,” WQ, Summer, 2005). Joseph Nye (Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, 2004) takes issue with Frederick Kagen (“Power and Persuasion,” WQ, Summer, 2005). Mohamed Zayani (Editor, The Al Jazeera Phenomenon, 2005) comments on Marc Lynch’s article on satellite broadcasting in the Middle East (“Watching Al Jazeera,” WQ, Summer, 2005).
James Zogby. 2005 Arab Attitudes Toward US: Good News and Bad News, November 7, 2005. Zogby’s six nation survey finds Arab attitudes toward the United States in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Jordan “have somewhat improved in the past year.” “Having plummeted to a dangerous low point in mid-2004, favorable ratings of the US are now back to their still low, but better, 2002 level.” “The clear and sizable lesson emerging from this 2005 AAI/ZI Arab survey is that attitudes toward the US, though better, remain troubled and shaped by US policies that negatively impact the region. The promotion of democracy and reform, while appealing to some small groups, continue to be trumped by the war in Iraq and the more general perceptions of America’s poor treatment of Arabs and Muslims.”