Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 3 - 2004 (mainly Iraq)
Today, It's a Question of Whose Story Wins by Joseph S. Nye Jr 
COMMENTARY Today, It's a Question of Whose Story Wins Government reform could help sell our values to the world. By Joseph S. Nye Jr. LA Times, July 21, 2004 Internecine warfare between federal government departments, combined with weak oversight by the National Security Council, has hampered the fight against terrorism. Whether it's George W. Bush or John F. Kerry who wins the November election, the president's top priority should be to reform the way the White House conducts foreign policy. On Thursday, the independent, bipartisan Sept. 11 commission is expected to recommend that the post of "director of national intelligence" be created to manage the multiple espionage agencies, but I don't believe this reform goes far enough to solve the problems we face. The Sept. 11 attacks revealed a dramatic transformation that took place in the last decades of the 20th century. It seems that drastically reduced costs of computing and communication led to a revolution in information technology that, as it turned out, made the coordination of global terror attacks possible. Today, nongovernmental groups enjoy capacities once reserved for governments. Anyone can have instantaneous global communications for the price of entry into an Internet cafe, and once-secretive satellite photographs are commercially available on the Web. Information is power, and information is now more widely dispersed than at any time in history. Some of the organizations that benefit are good, such as Oxfam and Human Rights Watch, but others, such as Al Qaeda, are malevolent. With their networks extending to more than 50 countries, transnational terrorists today are more agile and more lethal than ever before. Terrorists killed more Americans on 9/11 than Japan did at Pearl Harbor in 1941. President Bush was correct to refocus American foreign policy on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, but his strategy has not adequately taken into account the changes in world politics. Traditionally, victory went to the country whose armies won. But in a global Information Age, victory also depends upon whose story wins. In addition to hard military power, we need skill at winning hearts and minds with soft power - the ability to attract others with our values and culture. The Clinton administration mistakenly agreed to congressional demands to abolish the U.S. Information Agency, and two successive undersecretaries of State have failed to effectively use the USIA functions that were transferred to their department. The entire budget for public diplomacy through cultural exchanges and broadcasting is only $1 billion - about the same as what France or Britain spends. Power in today's world is like a three-tiered chess game. On the top tier - military relations among states - the United States is the world's only superpower. But on the middle tier - economic relations - Europe, Japan, China and others balance American power. On the bottom tier - transnational relations that cross boundaries outside the control of governments, including the activities of terrorists - power is chaotically distributed. We are still organized to focus on the top tier even though the greatest new threats come from the bottom one. We have to learn how to better coordinate all three levels. The Clinton administration developed a National Economic Council that increased coherence on the economic tier, but it was not adequately coordinated with the National Security Council's political military tasks. The Bush administration has not solved the problem, and neither administration organized in a way that related soft power to military and economic power. The intelligence community reflects the same divisions. The NSC should be reformed to include five powerful deputies working under the national security advisor. One would head a division on political-military affairs, focusing on the coordination of the State and Defense departments. The second would handle economic issues, essentially taking over the functions of the National Economic Council. The third deputy would manage soft-power issues related to public diplomacy, broadcasting, cultural exchanges and foreign aid. The fourth would be responsible for oversight of intelligence and homeland security issues, and their relation to foreign policy. A fifth deputy would be responsible for policy planning rather than operations, tying together the work of the other four. They would meet with the national security advisor before and after his or her daily meeting with the president. Ultimately, responsibility for the implementation of foreign policy strategy must rest with the president, but a reorganized National Security Council could make him far more effective. Until we update our Cold War institutions, we will have difficulty coping with the threats of the new Information Age. * -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joseph S. Nye Jr., a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and author of "Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics" (PublicAffairs Press, 2004), was assistant secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration. |