The Battle for Hearts and Minds: Using Soft Power to Undermine Terrorist Networks edited by Alexander T. J. Lennon. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press (http://www-mitpress.mit.edu), Five Cambridge Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142-1493, 2003, 392 pages, $25.00 (softcover).
Battle for Hearts and Minds is a wide-ranging and readable collection of articles previously published in the Washington Quarterly. Focusing on nonmilitary responses to terror, Lennon arranges the articles into five broad sections: the role and limits of military power; questions of state failure and nation building; strategies of postconflict reconstruction; the challenge of public diplomacy; and the future of foreign assistance. If these categories sound familiar, they are—they span the topics in the news today, especially as the rehabilitation of Iraq continues.
The articles differ from typical media coverage in two ways. First, they were all written before Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and are therefore often outdated in their facts and outlook. Far from being a failing, this is the collection’s most interesting point—we can compare these pre-OIF predictions to the reality of the current world situation. For instance, as Karin von Hippel notes in her contribution, “The inability to cope with each of these four factors—refugees, the media, sanctions, and defiance by errant rules—produced the ‘Do Something’ effect and entrapped the U.S. government into choosing the most extreme option of force” (p. 113). She writes here about Somalia and Haiti, but we can now see how this applies to the war in Iraq.
The second difference is the depth of treatment. In the news media (and indeed in most public political discourse), the treatment of the topics of nation building, public diplomacy, and foreign assistance are fleeting and shallow. The ideas are presented but often with partisan bias and without concrete specifics or depth. Battle for Hearts and Minds digs deeply into each area, as experts parse and analyze the real options available to policy makers.
For instance, the terms nation building and failed state are tossed lazily around in public debate, without much effort to define what they entail. Here they are carefully dissected, beginning with Robert Rotberg’s analysis of what precisely defines a “failed state.” Without a common understanding on this point, strategies to deal with such states cannot be planned. Other articles seek to demonstrate empirically the link between failed or failing states and terrorist networks. This link is not so straightforward as one might think. Ray Takeyh points out that it is not so much a failed state that provides a home for terror, but “a weak state that cannot impede a group’s freedom of action but has the veneer of state sovereignty that prevents other, strong states from taking effective countermeasures” (p. 95).
The book’s strongest point is its detailed treatment of a wide range of topics and policy options that are less familiar to the lay reader. Articles propose detailed Peace Corps reform, debate the role of conflict diamonds, imagine an international peacekeeping force (either inside or outside of UN control), ponder the future of the Voice of America network, list the countries that would be included in the Millennium Challenge Account, illuminate the debate over private military corporations, and document the bonds that are forming between some US states and various foreign governments. These proposals and recommendations are specific and often unique to narrowly defined problems. But they are the real policy options that our elected leaders must consider—the nuts and bolts of how we proceed as a nation to undermine the forces of terror.
For the general reader, however, this level of detail may be entirely too extensive. Unless one is already versed in the language and methods of expert debate on these subjects, the fine detail of corporate governance or the disposition of rebel forces in Sierra Leone is a bit much to absorb. Indeed, at $25.00 for a paper copy, the book is geared for the same policy wonks that filled its pages in the first place. However, the topics it details are some of the most important ones that we face today. For readers who want to go deeper than the typical analysis and find pathways and options to explore, Battle for Hearts and Minds is an admirable guide.
1st Lt Tim Spaulding, USAF Sheppard AFB, Texas
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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