Big+Picture+Foreign+Policy

=Big Picture Foreign Policy=


 * Pinker, Steven. (2012) __The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined__.**


 * Chester Crocker (2003 Sep/Dec) "Engaging Failing States" __Foreign Affairs__**

Power is the ability to alter the behavior of others to get what you want. There are basically three ways to do that: coercion (sticks), payments (carrots), and attraction (soft power)...understand the difference between power resources and behavior. In fact, its quite possible to quantify sources of soft power. **One can, for example, measure and compare the cultural, communications, and diplomatic resources that might produce soft power for a country**. Public opinion polls can quantify changes in a countrys attractiveness over time...But it is a mistake to rely on hard or soft power alone. **The ability to combine them effectively might be termed smart power** .... **military prowess and competence can sometimes create soft power. A well-run military can be a source of admiration.** The impressive job of the U.S. military in providing humanitarian relief after the Indian Ocean tsunami and the South Asian earthquake in 2005 helped restore the attractiveness of the United States. Military-to-military cooperation and training programs, for example, can establish transnational networks that enhance a countrys soft power. Of course, misuse of military resources can also undercut soft power...But the current terrorist threat is not Samuel Huntingtons clash of civilizations. It is a civil war within Islam between a majority of moderates and a small minority who want to coerce others into an extremist and oversimplified version of their religion. The United States cannot win unless the moderates win. We cannot win unless the number of people the extremists are recruiting is lower than the number we are killing and deterring. Rumsfeld himself asked in a 2003 memo: Are we capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrasas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us? That equation will be very hard to balance without a strategy to win hearts and minds. Soft power is more relevant than ever.
 * Nye, J. (2006, February 23). Think Again: Soft Power. //Foreign Policy//. Retrieved from @http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2006/02/22/think_again_soft_power**

From **Hough unpublished**: Historian Ernest May contends that people in their fifties draw their primary “lessons of the past” from the decisive events that occurred when they were coming of age.[1]

Lord Ismay of Great Britain summarized the complexity of postwar policy with a pithy observation on the purpose of NATO, which he said, is “to keep the Americans in [Europe], the Russians out, and the Germans down.” Ismay’s third point should have been “and [keep] the Germans, the English, and the French down,” but an English lord could not say this. Ismay may not have even fully understood one of the mainsprings of American policy. He should have added a fourth purpose, “to unite Europe in order to unite the European-Americans.”

****[1]****** Earnest R. May, __“Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy__ (New York: Oxford University Pess, 1973). **