October 17

"Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

--Investor Warren Buffett


“For bloggers, the deadline is always now.”

--Commentator Andrew Sullivan


PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

The Next U.S. President's Communication with Foreign Audiences - Amy Zalman, About.com Guide to Terrorism Issues: “Public diplomacy--U.S. government communication with foreign audiences--has been an issue in the U.S. war on terrorism from its beginnings. … If the specific link between public diplomacy and counterterrorism doesn't seem immediately clear, it may help to understand what the global demographic looks like through the lens of the terror war. Through that lens, the world is divided into three demographics: people who are 'with us,' people who are 'against us,' and people who are undecided. In some versions of this continuum, those who are 'with us' are consonant with 'Muslim moderates,' while those who are against are radicalized extremists. Communications are aimed at swaying the 'in-betweens' or ‘undecideds’ to the proper side.”

Brand China's Trial - Jayshree Bajoria, Daily Analysis, Council on Foreign Relations: “As China has risen on the world stage, it has developed what some experts call a brand of authoritarian capitalism, and is now competing with U.S. and European liberal democratic models. … . At a CFR meeting in June, James K. Glassman, U.S. undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, said the China model is attractive in places like Africa, and countries like Vietnam, ‘because it allows people in power to stay in power by making people happy on the economic side, and yet keeping a lid on the freedom side.’"

Korea Lacks in Strong Identity in Brand Positioning - Thomas Cromwell, Korea Times: “[T]he goal should be to get every Korean embassy to serve as a marketing outpost for Brand Korea, and for every Korean person, institution and company to become an ambassador for Brand Korea. Public diplomacy is an important tool for governments in today's connected world, and a good brand for Korea will supply much of the substance needed to shape effective public diplomacy efforts. But branding Korea should not be thought of as a one-time effort. Brand Korea will need continuous management, continuous monitoring and research, continuous adjusting of messaging.”

RELATED ITEMS

Private Military Contractors Writing the News? The Pentagon's Propaganda at Its Worst - Liliana Segura, AlterNet: Months after the Pentagon pundits flap, the Department of Defense continues to hand down contracts for propaganda in Iraq and beyond.

The Coming Military Spending Surge - Matthew Yglesias, American Prospect: Though the United States faces some real national security challenges, insufficient military spending is not the source of any of those challenges.

The NATO Alliance: Dangerous Anachronism – Doug Bandow, Antiwar.com: Leave NATO to the Europeans and pull America's forces out of Europe.

Financial Architecture: The EU wants to construct a new world order for the global economy - Irwin M. Stelzer, Weekly Standard: Gordon Brown, free trader, and Nicolas Sarkozy, arch-protectionist, along with their EU partners, believe that now is the time to put the former hegemon in its place.

Dispatches From America: How to manage an imperial decline - Aziz Huq, Asia Times: In the coming years, a new president will have to deal with a growing disparity between the historically hegemonic role of this country on the world stage and its diminishing capacity. Diminishing US economic and military influence only underscores the wilting of America's "soft power."

Barack Obama for President - Editorial, Washington Post: Mr. Obama, as anyone who reads his books can tell, has a sophisticated understanding of the world and America's place in it. We hope he would navigate between the amoral realism of some in his party and the counterproductive cocksureness of the current administration, especially in its first term.

A Fateful Election - Timothy Garton Ash, New York Review of Books: Many Americans still suffer from a touching delusion that this is their election. How curious. Don't they understand? This is our election. The world's election. Our future depends on it, and we live it as intensely as Americans do. All we lack is the vote.

A Fateful Election - Ronald Dworkin, New York Review of Books: Obama alone among prominent politicians has the experience that counts most in a threatening and densely interdependent world: the crucial experience of empathy. He has lived, and been poor, in both domestic and foreign worlds that few national politicians can even imagine. McCain embodies the national illusion of self-sufficient go-it-alone power.

A Fateful Election - Thomas Powers, New York Review of Books: The biggest legacy of the Bush years is not debt. It is the idea that the United States must, and can, control the political landscape of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

The Man Who Stayed - Michael Gerson, Washington Post: The war in Iraq proved it is possible -- with adequate will and resources -- to fight an insurgency by securing the population, gaining trust and intelligence, and turning local leaders against the radicals. But in Pakistan, America must encourage a counterinsurgency campaign at arm's length, through an unreliable partner who considers us unreliable as well.

Five years too late, Iraq faces the future: It was supposed to happen at the end of the war. But at last Baghdad is controlling its own destiny - Richard Beeston, Times (London): In the coming weeks, the Americans will move into a mortar- proof new embassy compound and hand Mr al-Maliki the keys to Saddam's Palace, a turning point in postwar Iraq. The move is likely to indicate the end of the green zone and the first serious attempt at recognising Iraqi sovereignty.

How We Lost the War We Won: A Journey Into Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan - Nir Rosen, Rolling Stone: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan "are all theaters in the same overall struggle," the president declared, linking his administration's three greatest foreign-policy disasters in one broad vision. In the end, Bush said, we must have "faith in the power of freedom." But the Taliban have their own faith, and so far, they are winning.

Pakistan does some US dirty work - Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times: Increasingly frequent raids by US special forces into Pakistan from Afghanistan and the use of Predator drones to target militants has angered many in Pakistan, and even caused dissent within the ranks of the armed forces.

Three Rivals - Editorial, New York Times: Ukrainians must be allowed to sort out their own problems. Russia’s meddling in the name of a specious sphere of influence is unacceptable. Countering it with American pressures to join NATO will only stoke internal divisions, so long as Ukrainians are far from agreed about the alliance.

Election by sound bite: Obsessed by "lipstick on a pig," economic "free fall" and other "great stories," America has failed to see the real challenges it faces - Joan Didion, Salon: “The prospect for any given figure had been evaluated, now as before, by his or her ‘story.’ She has ‘a wonderful story’ we had heard about Condoleezza Rice during her 2005 confirmation hearings. … Now as then, the ‘story’ worked to ‘humanize’ the figure under discussion, which is to say to downplay his or her potential for trouble. Condoleezza Rice's ‘story,’ for example, had come down to her ‘doing an excellent job as provost of Stanford’ (this had kept getting mentioned, as if everyone at Fox News had come straight off the provost beat) and being ‘an accomplished concert pianist.’"

Oliver Stone’s Vision Thing: Bush, the Family - Manohla Dargis, New York Times: “In ‘W.’ [director] Oliver Stone doesn’t need to haul out the dead or excavate the depths to keep us hooked: he just needs to show Condoleezza Rice (Thandie Newton) tightly smiling while Bush rants.”

Why I Blog – Andrew Sullivan, Atlantic: The blogosphere has added a whole new idiom to the act of writing and has introduced an entirely new generation to nonfiction. It has enabled writers to write out loud in ways never seen or understood before. And yet it has exposed a hunger and need for traditional writing that, in the age of television’s dominance, had seemed on the wane.

FAITS DIVERS

Putin tries satellite navigation device on his dog - Associated Press, Los Angeles Times: Russia's satellite navigation system isn't fully operational yet, but it seems to work on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's dog. Putin listened today as his deputy, Sergei Ivanov, briefed him on the progress of the Global Navigation Satellite System. Then footage broadcast on Russian TV showed them try a collar containing satellite-guided positioning equipment on the prime minister's black Labrador Koni.