Amy,

Few scholars are contributing as significantly as you are to our understanding of the impact of organizational culture on national security policy and its implementation. There is more glamour -- and less tethered research -- in focusing on the policy and the personalities rather than the organizational structure and process as artappraiser says. Still, both the CIA and FBI took a congressional beating in response to 9/11. The creation of Homeland Security was no small slap at the turfs of both those institutions. Their silly sensitivity to organizational questions posed by you is perhaps, best understood in the context of their recently having had their rice bowls smashed. No excuse, but perhaps an explanation. I look forward to reading your new book to learn your views of that transformative legislation. Your earlier book, Flawed By Design, has stood the test of time. Thanks for your valuable work. Please continue.

Posted at November 8, 2007 8:00 AM in response to Spooky Encounters

Prof. Nasr,

Thank you for kicking off such an excellent discussion. Your essay posted here certainly tracks with the insights offered in "The Shia Revival." I know that earlier you had considered Amb. Khalilizad's efforts to pressure the Shi'a in the Iraqi government to compromise with the the Sunni opposition as a "dangerous" game. I wonder then if you favor the 80% solution advanced by State Department counselor Philip D. Zelikow as the smarter policy option for the U.S. under current circumstances. That option seems out of favor now -- and Zelikow is out -- but it would respond to your contention that "over time the Shia-Sunni conflict can be brought under control only if the distribution of power and resources reflects the demographic realities of the region."

Posted at December 20, 2006 10:27 AM in response to Should We Worry About the Saudi Threats?

Back to David Rieff.

Slaughter picks up one thread of Rieff's argument which is that the U.S. cannot act because we are soiled by actions in Iraq and lack moral authority. The more interesting thread -- given Rieff's earlier position on Bosnia -- is the following:

My own view is that the main culprit here is human rightsism, a worldview that is based, as John Gray has put it, "on the moral intuitions of the liberal academy ... a legalistic edifice from which politics has been excluded." Were politics present in their thinking, pro-Darfuri intervention activists would not use the reductionist dichotomy of victims and abusers that has been the staple myth of humanitarian intervention. The people being killed by the Janjaweed have political interests. So do the extended families of the Janjaweed themselves, who, lest we forget, are also Darfuris. To describe the former simply as victims deprives them of any agency. To describe the latter simply as killers precludes actually understanding the conflict as anything other than an eruption of human wickedness, rather like a volcano or an earthquake.

What is fascinting here is the evolution in Rieff's thinking from his Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West. At the time the "do something brigade" couldn't see the politics and wanted to respond to the Yugoslav civil war as if it were a no human fault natural disaster.

I am impressed with Rieff's argument particularly given the distance he has come. Yes, let us see the politics, the human agency, the ethnicity, religion, race, geography, history and all other complications. When the earlier suffering in the Sudan was given a hard look in the early 90's, the "New World Order" UN/US intervention went to Somalia instead. That one was supposed to be an easy case of distributing food.

Posted at June 2, 2006 1:29 PM in response to Rethinking Darfur

Kupchan's changed perspective is quite stunning. Perhaps he had been too bullish on the EU and is now too much of a bear. Reading his piece (thanks for the link) it would appear that twin drivers of economics and identity have European citizens reevaluating the extent to which further rapid political integration will serve their interests.

Since the constituent states are democratic, people's fears and hopes about their future prospects will naturally come into play politically. Three of Kupchan's four factors boil down to people voicing concerns and demanding to be heard in defense of their own individual and group welfare. The fourth factor is simply that there are no current leaders who can turn that popular national reaction around.

This plays as well in the current Doha round, where French farmers, supported by their government, are on the verge of collapsing the trade negotiations. All of this may say more about changing economic fortunes in a globalized world of $70 oil than it does about internal EU dynamics. The rebalancing Atlantic relationship seems small potatos given the global realignments underway. Perhaps Anthony Giddens is right when he calls it a "Runaway World." Neither the U.S. nor the EU have it on a leash any longer.

Posted at June 2, 2006 7:26 AM in response to Is the European Union in Crisis?

Ernie,

You are certainly right: they are getting public diplomacy wrong. There has been a serious shift in governmental organizational responsibility which you are missing. While we weren't looking public diplomacy essentially died in the State Department and was born again in DOD. [For evidence of the military committment see: http://www.seniorconference.usma.edu/] The shift in the gravity of the program from State to DOD itself has serious implications for how we are viewed abroad. It also speaks volumes about the Bush administration's concept of PD.

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's CFR speech -- to which you refer -- followed the Quadrennial Defense Review which concluded that "victory in the long war ultimately depends on strategic communication." It called for closing gaps in U.S. capabilities in what the Pentagon describes as "information operations," a specialty being reorganized in the Pentagon and at Centcom in Tampa. These “information operations” have reportedly given multi-million dollar contracts to private sector companies “to improve foreign public opinion about the United States” and construct websites to bring news and information to foreign countries.

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we, our country, our government, have not," Rumsfeld said. He argued that while the al Qaeda terrorist network and other "extremist" movements "have successfully . . . poisoned the Muslim public's view of the West, we in the government have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences."

To remedy this, Rumsfeld called for increased communications training for military public affairs officials by drawing on private-sector expertise. He also called for creating 24-hour media operations centers and "multifaceted media campaigns" using the Internet, blogs and satellite television that "will result in much less reliance on the traditional print press." A press he finds inimical to his purposes.

This language about the need to fight “terrorist tyranny” and “militant Islamic radicalism” is echoed in the National Security Strategy where we are told to prepare for a “long struggle, a work of generations, against a new totalitarian ideology grounded in the perversion of a proud religion.” Apparently, by default and given its resources the Defense Department will lead us into ideological battle to win the hearts and minds of the world. What this adds up to is the militarization of a political function.

This inverts the general understanding that countering terrorism involves the use of security forces within the context of a political strategy. By failing to anchor our use of force in a broader political process and instead directing our political advocacy (public diplomacy) from the defense department we open ourselves up to the delegitimization strategies of others and erode any influence we might have among democratic nations because we compound our loss of credibility or trust.

Surely if the concern of the United States government is now the 1.2 billion Muslims whose minds have been "poisoned by extremist views," the target populations for the strategic communication strategy are civilian and they are in Europe as well as in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. This is not a discreet battlefield, it is the world.

Moral authority in this world community is measured by shared standards of human rights, democracy and rule of law. To hoist the flag of freedom and ask that others follow our lead is to invite deliberation – serious discussion of the ideas and policies we choose to advance. Free men and women do not simply salute and fall in line. Free people ask by what authority, on what evidence, by what right do you ask me to hear and heed your policy prescription for our world’s ills.

Our response to those fair questions cannot be military sponsored blogs. Effective public diplomacy requires respectful dialog and vigorous engagement at the level of ideas, not images. A precondition for effective public diplomacy is the willingness to engage in global politics even when, or especially when our foreign public opinion map shows abnormally stormy weather. That willingness to engage in global politics should be the foundation for any
Democratic foreign policy. And, that foundation cannot be based in DOD.

Posted at June 1, 2006 11:10 AM in response to PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: GOOD NEWS AND BAD

DanK,

Thank you for your thoughtful articulation  of the illiberal undertones of Ikenberry's essay. He does seem to assume that humans will only flourish in a single universal civilization defined by liberal internationalism. This form of liberalism will tolerate "multi-culturalism" as permissable life-style choices made by autonomous individuals as long as the universal principles of our political tradition are authority. It assumes that such cultural differences are destined to disappear or become diluted in some liberal rational consensus. It is patronizing because it asserts a higher moral authority based on having cornerd the truth.

There is an other form of liberalism that does not assume away cultural diversity with progress. It recognizes that there will always be difference born of conflicting values and competing claims. John Gray calls them "rival freedoms" and argues for modus vivendi. Michael Walzer asks, "are we prepared to tolerate men and women for whom autonomy, free choice and the pursuit of individual happiness are not central values? Are we prepared to tolerate men and women who are differently connected to their own lives -- who have inherited rather than chosen their lives, for example, or who bear the yoke of divine command?

Maybe we need a litle more Isaiah Berlin and a little less Sen.

Thank you again for your excellent series of posts on Ikenberry's fine essay. There are genuine "liberal" differences here that are well worth exploring.
 

Posted at March 15, 2006 9:07 AM in response to Identity and Global Conflict

Ernie,

I wonder what either Appiah (whose book I have read) and Sen (whose book is not yet available) would have to say about the "the solitarist belittling of human identity" apparent in the Congressional, media and American public opinion reaction to Dubai Ports World. Reading David Ignatius in the WP this morning it would seem that John Ikenberry is right to worry that the "liberal international order is in trouble."  Your own concern about the imbalance of power in international cross cultural relationships looks a bit different in this case; or may, as the tale continues to unfold.

Ignatius is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/09/AR2006030902291.html 

Posted at March 10, 2006 11:14 AM in response to Identity and Global Conflict

Your exchange has been excellent and has caused me to think harder about the topic under discussion. Although I tend toward artappraiser's fundamental free speech position because I believe democracy requires robust debate, I understand the desire to hold public intellectuals to account for their political judgments. Like artappraiser, I do it by paying attention to those whose expert judgment is proven by events. I don't spend my time or money attending to the opinions of inaccurate forecasters beyond my continuing interest in the politics of their influence.

Philip Tetlock has found -- in rather amazing research -- that there is a perversly inverse relationship between good political judgment and the qualities the media most prize in pundits -- the single minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat.

The accuracy of an expert’s predictions actually has an inverse relationship to his or her self-confidence, renown, and, beyond a certain point, depth of knowledge. People who follow current events by reading the papers and newsmagazines regularly can guess what is likely to happen about as accurately as the specialists whom the papers quote. Our system of expertise is completely inside out: it rewards bad judgments over good ones.

His book is a tough but worthy read for anyone seriously interested in the topic.. The linked Menand review in the New Yorker is a good introduction.

My quibble with artappraiser  lies here:

Illiteracy is key here...those without access to the written word and thought processses involved tend to judge more by rhetorical and emotive ability-- example: doing what the priest/imam/ Maoist comintern leader tells them to.

One would think that is obvious and true. But, the research into public opinion formation actually shows the opposite to be the case.  People learn how to be political and it is those with the most education who become the most ideological. Their opinions are more easily swayed by those they trust and whose "cues" about how to think about an issue shape their judgment.

Posted at March 5, 2006 9:59 AM in response to Beyond Neo-Con Culture?

Ellen,

I've met the flea and he comes in red as well as blue.

Globalists were at the foreign policy table in the Clinton administration; nationalists were not.

Now, nationalists are at the policy table and globalists are not.

Somewhere along the line the two foreign policy camps Ernie describes did come into being in this country. Regrettably, neither is culturally competent.

Ernie seems to use culture in the sense of "institutional culture" with the split between those who are warriors and those who are diplomats. That is a divide to be sure; but the dangerous divide is between the rather elite community of people who believe they should be the foreign policy decisionmakers is some theoretical world of deliberative democracy and the "people" whose many and varied forms of cultural diversity and social conflict are generating the politics of this century.

There are real differences in worldview, religious belief, economic interest and social standing at play in global politics. There are nationalisms, religious and other kinds of identity and as Michael Walzer reminds us in his new book Politics and Passion, there is passion.

Any search for a "progressive" foreign policy will have to come to grips with the reality that "most men and women are attached to their political-cultural identities and loyal to the states that represent (or tolerate and protect) those identities. Most of them want to be ruled by people they can recognize as their own -- who are familiar with their customary ways and common beliefs." (Walzer 137) 

The warriors in the national security culture may err by breathing deeply of nationalist fumes and militarizing solutions to political problems. But, the globalists, drawn to UN-centric diplomacy + HR, humanitarian and environmental NGO activity, fail because their cosmopolitanism is not rooted consciously in an American identity. Their international politics model is banking on the erosion of state sovereignty -- particularly the American state that they believe stands in the way of their utopian dream of a global regime. How is that a winning platform in national democratic elections in a time when passions are inflamed?

Posted at February 26, 2006 11:12 AM in response to Beyond Neo-Con Culture?

You raise an interesting point about the use of media to create a political community. During the wave of pan-arabism in the fifties and sixties, Naser effectively used radio (a new medium then) to give voice to Arab nationalism. At the time it was a political project driven by authoritarian national leaders like Nasser who wanted an actual united Arab state.  Radio enhanced Nasser's legitimacy. Today, if I read Lynch correctly, the new media compounds the problem of legitimacy Arab regimes experience by placing them under scrutiny and giving voice to resistance and opposition. The new media may deconstruct what political community has existed and put public loyalties in play across the region by creating a new public sphere in which to contest ideas. But, it does not seem to have resurrected pan-arabism as a political project which requires institutions as well as identity. It would appear to be the Islamists who have understood the importance of social institutions (perhaps over identity) as the road to power.

Posted at January 29, 2006 10:50 AM in response to Voices of the New Arab Public