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AUG 19, 2009
Global Spin Doctors
Foreign Policy in Focus
We endure, ignore, or fall prey to as many as 20,000 ads a day. That's one ad every three seconds of our waking hours. We wear ads on our shirts, forward commercials via email, sing jingles with our friends, and even brand corporate icons on our bodies. We've developed vaccines to address this particular virus. There's Naomi Klein's No Logo and the cheeky magazine Adbusters. There's Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's radio program Counterspin andthe ad-stripping features of TiVo. But the virus continues to mutate and spread.
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AUG 18, 2009
Rescue, but Not Outrage
Commentary Magazine
Early this morning (Hong Kong time), I was interviewed on CNN International (here’s the video) about the consequences of recent rescues of American citizens sentenced to long prison terms in some of the world’s worst countries—specifically, former president Bill Clinton’s mission to North Korea on August 5 to bring out journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and Senator Jim Webb’s trip to Burma over the weekend to extract John William Yettaw.
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AUG 18, 2009
‘It Is Pointless to Talk to Al-Qaida’
Spiegel Online International
Harvard professor Joseph Nye talks to SPIEGEL about America's role in the world, the change of strategy under US President Barack Obama and how his concept of soft power can be used to solve tough conflicts...." Every American president has three options. He can use force -- in other words, hard power -- to assert his interests, he can invest money or he can lead by attraction. The latter I call soft power, the appeal of American cultural values. I have never argued that the so-called hard-power instruments of a superpower -- the military, the intelligence services or economic sanctions -- can be replaced. It is all about the right mix of hard and soft power."
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AUG 18, 2009
What Egyptians want from Washington
Al Jazeera English
Egypt is set to use its president's visit to Washington to trumpet its position as a key US ally and major regional player. Hosni Mubarak and Barack Obama, the US president, are expected to discuss a number of regional issues including the pivotal Palestinian-Israeli peace process, Iran's nuclear programme, stabilising Iraq, and fighting armed Islamist groups throughout the Middle East.But many ordinary Egyptians, who once cared about their country's foreign policy, may no longer be interested in such talks.
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AUG 17, 2009
Practicing Pink Diplomacy
Gayrights.change.org
Pink Diplomacy. Noun. The practice of using a state's international heft to fight for equal rights for LGBT people around the globe. Example: The UK's Foreign Ministry office is is championing a controversial drive to fund equal-rights activists in homophobic regimes, known as 'pink diplomacy.' And if we do say so ourselves, it's a pretty cool new term to make its way into the geopolitical dictionary.
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