libya

The United States has the wherewithal to promote similar national resolves in the Middle East and North Africa through public diplomacy and education. Instead of giving a hand, however, the Obama Administration is celebrating violent protests and civil wars as a “spring” while promising handouts that will unfailingly find their way into the usual corrupt pockets.

Deputy Minister Fransman and I have used the chief instruments of Public Diplomacy such as lectures, electronic media, publications etc. to put across and make known South Africa's engagements and thoughts on the Libyan crisis....I believe ours tonight is to make some reflections on and around the developments in relation to the crisis in Libya.

Some analysts see the strings of visits as a battle for influence in the region, a rivalry between those countries to exert soft power in the post-war country. "Strategically speaking, France is competing with Turkey. Both countries consider this region as a natural influence zone," Dorothee Shmid, a researcher at the Paris-based think-tank IFRI told Xinhua.

The Libyan rebels chuckle when they find a child-size T-shirt featuring a cartoon of Osama bin Laden amid the surveillance files, tapes and photos in one of the buildings abandoned by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's internal security forces..

That ran counter to early efforts by the Pentagon to dispel the notion that Africom's establishment was intended as an American power grab on the continent. American diplomats and military commanders painted Africom's mission as one to advise and assist African militaries and work to build partnerships.

In order to prevent further deterioration of the United States’ relationships in the Middle East, it should conduct more public diplomacy in Egypt in order to maintain a civil relationship in the long term...Egyptian public opinion of the U.S. must change before the revolution ends, and the likelihood of a radical coming to power increases.

September 3, 2011

Either Europeans will develop the security and defense identity they have advertised for so long, so Europe can have its own credible voice in a world not only run by soft power, or given the expense and difficulties of defeating even Libya, they will simply stop trying. The jury is out, but the verdict is important.

September 1, 2011

Those who follow attitudes toward the West on the Arab street need to make room these days for nuance. As the daily televised drama of revolt in Libya and Syria makes plain, the desperate internal struggles, unleashed during the Arab Spring, still command center stage.

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