Thoughts on the So-Called 'War of Ideas'

"No matter how powerful our military is, we will not be powerful if we lose the war of ideas."

-
Senator Joe Biden, soon after 9/11; cited in Ira Teinowitz, "Congress
will support the war of ideas" (Advertising Age, 6/17/2002)

"We're in a war of ideas."

-
Donald Rumsfeld, cited in Bill Gertz, "Rumsfeld pushes 'new sense of
urgency'; 'War of ideas' needed to defeat the terrorists," (The
Washington Times, October 24, 2003)

War has long been a term used
by governments to mobilize their populations. In the twentieth century,
for example, "war of ideas" was in circulation when referring to
America's conflicts with Germany and Russia. Lately, this verbal
construct, used off and on by a number of pundits and politicians since
9/11, has enjoyed something of a resurgence -- thanks to statements
made by the current Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and
Public Affairs, James Glassman.

Glassman's emphasis on the "war
of ideas," for which he advocates the use of Internet social networking
to discredit "violent extemism," has received, on the whole, a positive
reception in the United States, with some exceptions; but should a "war
of ideas," on or off cyberspace, be part of how we Americans determine
our country's role in the world during the new millenium?

1. To
understand the deceptive nature of the term "war of ideas," it helps to
go back to Plato -- as Alfred North Whitehead famously said, Western
philosophy is but a "series of footnotes to Plato." In Plato's Gorgias
we gather from Socrates that persuasion is not dialogue, and indeed
that rhetoric and philosophy are in a state of tension if not
opposition. Following this train of thought, it becomes evident that
Glassman's "war," by definition a win-or-lose conflict rather than an
intellectual exchange, has nothing to do with ideas as such. It has to
do -- and wouldn't terrorists find much in common with the Under
Secretary's bellicose, unsubtle, hit-'em-hard approach? -- with
changing behavior to advance one's interests: in other words
propaganda, a weapon of war which, at its most rudimentary, appeals to
atavistic emotions, not the inquisitive intellect.

2. To suggest
-- as Glassman's "war of ideas" does -- that violent extremists are
capable of ideas is to give them intellectual credit that they seldom
deserve. To be sure, some of the terrorists' statements are taken
seriously in some societies, but that is because they inflame the
spirits rather than enlighten the mind, for often regrettable but
understandable reasons. And words, which in discourse are a vehicle for
thought, are at most of secondary importance to terrorists. What they
most believe in, as a means of getting their way, is the propaganda of
the deed (the more violent the better), a phrase traced back to a 19th
century Italian revolutionary. How ironic, then, that Mr. Glassman's
predecessor, Ms. Karen Hughes, referred to "diplomacy of deeds" as a
central part of her agenda, and that Dr. Condoleezza Rice, while
teaching at Stanford, stated that "I tell my students that
policy-making is 90 percent blocking and tackling and 10 percent
intellectual."

3. Meanwhile, what, exactly, are our American
"ideas" in the "war of ideas?" -- and, indeed, what are the ideas of
the US-politically acceptable Middle East moderate "locals" who can
fight the evil "them" for "us," to follow the contentions of Robert
Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy? To seek to define America through certain principles ("life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness") is all well and good, but to
reduce the United States to a fixed set of ideas it "fights for"
simplifies the complexity and changeability of the United States. In
fact, what perhaps most characterizes the U.S. is that it contains a
multitude of differing and evolving ideas, rather than permanent ideas
everyone agrees upon. The notion of an American "war of ideas" is,
therefore, an attack on ideas in the United States, as it implicity
limits their infinite variety. As Mr. Glassman himself wrote in 1997:
"Of course, not every new idea ... will be a good one. But the
trial-and-error process of learning is essential to the progress and
plenitude of American life. Whether in science, technology, business,
or popular culture, we cannot know in advance which experiments will
succeed. For a political class dedicated to technocratic planning, that
is a scary idea."

4. In the long term, a crude propaganda
campaign thinly disguised under the term "war of ideas" may in fact
discredit the U.S. far more than its "enemies" by confirming what
violent extremists claim -- that America is not truthful about what it
does, what many in the world are predisposed to believe, given the Bush
administration's hypocritical record in Iraq and elsewhere. As a noted
scholar, known for not mincing words, informed me by e-mail, Glassman's
war of ideas is simply "dumb." "Because," he explains, "the most
subversive thing we can do is be ourselves, guilelessly and
unapologetically. Wars of ideas are not our style." (He also notes, on
a less idealistic level, that "as any poker player knows, you don't win
the game by announcing that you are out to win the game." I would only
add to this observation that seasoned propagandists, approve of them or
not, know that the best propaganda is the least propagandistic:
subtlety, not bombs or a loudly-proclaimed "war on ideas," is the best
propaganda, especially in the long-term. Just ask the BBC.)

5.
One of the most important articles to appear, a few weeks after 9/11,
was by Douglas McGray in The Christian Science Monitor (September 26,
2001), under the headline -- "Don't Oversell an 'Idea War'" -- and with
the following wisdom: "Richard Nixon ... declared 'war' on drugs ...
Even earlier, President Johnson's administration declared 'war' on
poverty ... These wars are 'ideas wars,' in which leaders appropriate
the language of war to rally political support and signal big budget
commitment. ... Meanwhile, the real fight against terrorism, an ongoing
combination of thankless police and intelligence work -- more like like
fighting crime on a global scale than waging war -- could get
overshadowed."

6. Full disclosure: I was a public diplomacy
Foreign Service officer during the Cold War and its aftermath
(1981-2003), serving mostly in Eastern and Central Europe (Prague,
Krakow, Tallinn, Kiev, Belgrade, Moscow). The Agency that provided me
with a paycheck, the USIA (United States Information Information
Agency), claimed to be engaged in a "war of ideas" with the Soviet
Union (according to Washington headquarters, depending on the political
season). Neverthess, I felt that my role "in the field" was not,
directly (stupidly?) to confront Soviet-thug-thoughtlessness -- which
had nothing to do with Marx, after all a serious philosopher -- but
rather meet with persons, from all sides of the political fence and
sectors of society, who were concerned with ideas, including about the
human condition and America's relation with their country. My guide for
these cherished meetings was far more Plato's dialogues than any
official statements about the "war of ideas." And no one in DC
headquarters ever bothered to fire me, perhaps because ideas are never
considered that important in Washington to begin with.