Joe Nye and Benjamin Barber...

Before I go to bed, here:):)...

I wanted to share some important ideas from two of the better international policy thinkers I have read...Joseph Nye and Benjamin Barber...

Joe's most recent books include Power in the Global Information Age (2004), Soft Power: The Means to Success in the World of Politics (2004) -- which is the basis for his most powerful and constructive criticisms of the war in Iraq, and The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (2002/2003) -- which outlines his criticism of the failure of the Bush Administration to engage multilateral partnerships on international issues...a book that Henry Kissinger endorses as an important read...

The first link is a speech that Joe gave at the Carnegie Council Books for Breakfast series...and the question and answer period that followed his speech...

Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics...

The second is the HTML version of a 1998 Foreign Affairs article that he co-wrote with Robert Keohane, political scientist at Harvard University, titled similarly to his most recent book, "Power and Interdependence in the Information Age...

Power and Interdependence in the Information Age...

The third link is a list of books and article written by Joe on his homepage at Harvard University, where he is the Dean of the Kennedy School of Government...

Joe Nye's profile at Harvard University...

Benjamin Barber's ideas around Jihad vs. McWorld, and its implications for a deeper, stronger, more decentralized, and more participatory democracy are very powerful ideas that both compliment and offer a more equitable vision of democracy than do Joe's I believe...and are very worthy of anyone interested in the future of democracy, I think...

The first link is for the original 1992 Atlantic Monthly article that first outlined Benjamin's very thoughtful ideas about the two forces he believed presented the biggest challenges to democracy, Jihad -- or the propensity toward religious fundamentalism -- and McWorld -- or globalizing capitalism that operated/s, Benjamin believes (and I agree) too often at the expense of local and global democracy...the article is only available, in toto on-line, to subscribers...though it should give a taste of Benjamin's ideas...and the article can be accessed at any university and most public libraries, for the cost of copies, I believe...my copy is in a comparative politics collection of articles titled Comparative Politics 1995/95, as another possibility...

Jihad vs. McWorld...the Atlantic Monthly...

The second link is to a very nice article that he wrote, recently, for the Nation magazine called Beyond Jihad vs. McWorld...

Beyond Jihad vs. McWorld...

Benjamin also has his own website, as well, with more recent books and articles...

Benjamin Barber...

Since these are two of the more profound thinkers in international policy, I believe (Amartya Sen is a brilliant international policy thinker, as well, I believe, even as an economist), I thought I might pass along the jist of some of their ideas...

Enjoy:):):)...

Ben