Customer Reviews

The Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror: Essays on U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East

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The Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror is a number of articles that criticize America's foreign policy and offer what looks like a treatise by Robert Satloff, Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former ambassador to Morocco, on how this policy should be changed.
Even though Satloff's criticism falls right on target, his recommendations on what America should do to win the hearts and minds in the Arab and Muslim worlds do not seem any different than the existing policies. As always, the problem with Americans analyzing their country's foreign policy is their weakness in understanding the nations that this policy targets in the first place.
The book is full of contradictions. Satloff suggests that America should not treat Arabs and Muslims as a uniform nation lest pan-Arabism and pan-Islamisms inflame further anti-Americanism. Throughout his book, however, he treats the Arab world -- for the most part -- as being a single bloc and offers the many similar recommendations to all of the 22 Arab states.
Satloff also endorses a tone of an expert on the minds and hearts of Arabs. It is hard to tell, however, what stands behind such claims. True that he lived in Morocco. Yet, American ambassadors around the world usually commute in armored motorcades and rarely get in touch with the average citizens of the nations where they serve. More often than not such ambassadors - who after their service become outspoken experts on the countries where they served - mostly get to meet these countries' ruling elite and upscale people who rarely reflect what is on the mind of an average Arab Joe. Without understanding what is on these people's minds, "battling" for their hearts and minds - as Satloff suggests - seem like a losing battle.
In terms of style, the book has some redundant pieces and it would have been much better had Satloff decided to merge all og his article ideas into one coherent work.

As Alberto Fernández, from the State Department, stated subtitled Essays on U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East, Satloff's brief book gathers previously published articles from 2001-04 plus some new pieces into a useful compendium of the author's thoughtful analyses of the public diplomacy challenges America faces. Full of practical suggestions, this is no dusty tome but a useful and rousing call to action. Satloff's plea that we nurture a wide range of like-minded allies in this ideological struggle is a suggestion ignored at our peril: "the strategy to defeat Islamism must be rooted in promoting the sort of political, social and economic change within existing regimes that denies Islamists opportunities for growth, not in creating a reign of political chaos from which Islamists ... stand to benefit most."

Satloff outlines a wide range of helpful initiatives, some which already exist (like English language teaching) but are in need of enhanced funding while others (such as promoting alternative media) are great ideas in search of innovative public diplomacy personnel and new budgets to make them happen. In his final essay, Satloff deftly identifies the structural barriers, most of which have their genesis inside the Beltway, that have hampered the development of an aggressive, consistent, and powerful strategy of ideological engagement with the Muslim world: "a lack of clarity, a lack of priorities, and a lack of urgency."

He was right on target with his criticism as of the book's publication, but this practitioner believes that considerable progress in the right direction began in August 2005 with the appointment of Karen Hughes as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. Under her dynamic leadership, the battle of ideas has purposefully been joined.