Tag Archives: Scott M. Thomas

The News Media and the Middle East: An Indictment

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explosion 9/11The secularism of the foreign policy establishment of the United States and the religious influences coming out of the capitals of the Muslim Middle East can play adversarial roles in these state-to-state relations. That was the realistic picture painted by four posts on this blog in January, beginning with this one. Secularism vs. religion, of course, is not the only dynamic that makes these international relations difficult, if not conflicted. States asserting their identities, national interests, and political ideologies also contribute. But the secular / religious picture can seem gloomy indeed. Yet there is a hope.

During the past fifteen years, governments and their diplomatic teams, think tanks, NGOs, and high-level religious leaders have been pooling all sorts of resources to develop credible ways ahead for defusing tensions and peaceably negotiating the rough secular / religious intersection of U.S. – Middle East relations. In fact, there is now a large and steadily growing number of these successful initiatives, big and small. And yet even as I wrote that sentence I could hear readers thinking: What?! Are you nuts, Strohmer? That can’t possibly be true, given all the violence and war.

No, I’m not nuts, nor do I have my head buried in the sand. Of course violence and war is tragically a current fact of life in the Middle East, for any number of significant reasons, which national leaders are fully aware of and which any informed citizen can easily put names to. I don’t want to rehearse those reasons here. Instead, I want us think about a reason for the hopeless picture we have of the Middle East but that no one talks about, because we don’t know about it. It is as subtle as it is influential, and its neglect by us in public debate (in America if not elsewhere) is inexcusable.

I’ll get right to the point: I’m talking about the fact that many if not most Americans take their cues about U.S. – Mideast relations from the news, and the news is organized around the principle: if it bleeds, it leads. Of course, television journalists may say: “We are only mirroring what’s going on in the Middle East”; or, “These things need to be covered”; or, “We are only giving the public what they want.” Well, maybe this is what the public wants, but it is not the only thing the public needs. There are many other things going on in the Middle East other than atrocities, death, and war that ought to be covered, which the public needs to know. But they are not covered. As a result, the remarkable and diverse diplomatic initiatives of governments, think tanks, NGOs, and high-level religious leaders working to defuse adversarial relations and prevent violence and war seem non-existent. Even when an historic exception emerges on the world stage, such as the intensive years’-long struggle to negotiate the nuclear agreement with Iran, the pessimistic energy in America about the Middle East militates against its success.

Television news and Web reporting on the Middle East, with its perennial emphases on mayhem, bloodshed, atrocities, violent clashes, and war is a huge problem. If that is all we know about what’s going on, our understanding has been deceived and we are being made de facto contributors to the violence. We need to take a deep breath, push Pause, and think about this phenomenon.

It has now been over fifty years since Marshall McLuhan, a prescient philosopher of communications theory, introduced into public debate the now famous principle that “the medium is the message.” If so, then the only message in the American media about the Middle East during the past fifteen years is that it is a very violent place. During the past fifteen years, when it concerns the Middle East all of the dominant televison networks in the U.S. – CBS, ABC, NBS, CNN, and others – are constantly reporting on the latest atrocities and mayhem, and they cover these with a barrage of live images from the region.

Even if you don’t watch the national evening news programs, or CNN during the day, you will still get regularly hit with stories and images of Mideast violence on your local TV stations, who get their news feeds from the major networks; where else? (Of course reporting in magazines and newspapers also fans the flames.)

CNN HQWhen the only movie you watch about the Middle East is that of violent conflict, and when you have watched remakes of it for fifteen years, it affects your attitude, even your beliefs. If you are chatting with other parents after a PTA meeting and the topic turns to the Middle East what do you say? If you are working in a factory and talking during a lunch break with fellow workers and the conversation turns to the Middle East, what do you say? If you are a chiropractor working on a patient’s back and she brings up the Middle East, what do you say? If you are a lawyer or a sales clerk or a bricklayer, what do you say?

If television and Web news has determined our view of the Middle East, are we going to talk about the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO), which was  formed to advance understanding of religiously motived conflict? Are we going to be able to say that Jerry White, a distinguished Christian thinker and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, served as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of CSO?

Are we going to talk about the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (ORGA), and say that it is currently run by the religiously savvy Shaun Casey, who advises the Secretary of State on policy matters as they relate to religion? Are we going to talk about how the ORGA complements the work of the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom?

Are we going to talk about the State Department’s Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group, which launched the Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives to partner with faith communities around the world to help solve global challenges. Are we going to talk about the Secretary of State’s engagement with Muslim communities in the Middle East on issues of mutual interest in support of shared goals? Are we going to talk about the National Strategy on Religious Leader and Faith Community Engagement, in which U.S. foreign policy people work with religious actors and institutions to promote sustainable development and more effective humanitarian assistance, protect religious freedom, and prevent and resolve violent conflict?

If television and Web news is our picture the Middle East, are we going to share with our friends, neighbors, and co-workers about even just one pioneering book that makes a wise case for peaceable ways ahead at the rough intersection of the religious and the secular in U.S. – Middle East relations? Probably not, because we haven’t read one.

I’m thinking here of: Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson, eds.); The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations (Scott M. Thomas); Ambassadors of Hope: How Christians Can Respond to the World’s Toughest Problems (Robert A. Seiple); Faith-based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (Douglas Johnston, ed.); Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East (Marc Gopin); The Sacred and the Sovereign: Religion and International Politics (John D. Carlson and Erik C. Owens, eds); Religion and Foreign Affairs: Essential Readings (Dennis R. Hoover and Douglas M. Johnston, eds); Religion and Security: The New Nexus in International Relations (Robert A. Seiple and Dennis R. Hoover, eds). I could list others.

If television and Web news has determined our view of the Middle East, are we going to be able to talk to people about how Track Two diplomats (e.g., initiatives by NGOs, high-level religious leaders, private individuals) labor intensively with Track One diplomats (traditional state-to-state diplomacy) to defuse adversarial relations and to prevent and end conflicts and wars? Are we able to talk about the “relational diplomacy” of the Washington DC-based, Christian-run Institute for Global Engagement? Time-tested and much respected in the foreign policy communities of the U.S. and the Middle East, IGE’s relational diplomacy is grounded in a commitment to first study, listen to, and understand the local context before seeking to create partnerships and practical agreements between governmental and religious communities that promote social and political stability.

Ambassadors of HopeWhat more shall I say? Time and space prevents me here from discussing the impressive, monthly Religion and Foreign Policy Conference Call series run by the Council on Foreign Relations, which gives religious and congregational leaders, scholars, and thinkers the opportunity to participate in nonpartisan, cross-denominational conversations on global issues; or the work of the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the areas of religion and politics, faith based initiatives, legal protections of religious expression, and relations between Christians and Muslims; not to mention the quiet work of many stellar individuals and their small, dedicated teams, who have impressive track records and are risking much personally.

Do we talk about any of these things when we are on the phone, or waiting for our car to be serviced, or down at the pub, or driving a cab, or commenting on a blog post, or standing in the unemployment line, or having dinner with friends, or talking to a neighbor at Krogers? Probably not. We don’t talk about this picture because it doesn’t exist for us if all we know and believe about the Middle East has been determined by television and Web news.

There’s been an education of sorts taking place across our land by our news media about the Middle East. But we need to be re-educated. Look, I get it. You’re busy. Your time is taken up with a career, or course work, or the kids, or the parents, or ministry obligations – fill in the blank. So you only have time to catch the news on televison or the Web when you’re eating dinner, or on the radio when driving to work or to classes. Maybe once in a great while you have time to peruse a magazine article on the Middle East, but it too focuses on some new atrocity or explosion. I get it. Besides, where do you even look to see this other, non-violent picture of what’s taking place, if the only thing everyone else you talk to about the Middle East talks about the mayhem and violence? But even a busy person could take the following simple practical step.

First, you won’t see it or learn it from television and Web news. Second, if you have made it this far in this article, you now do know of many credible, respected, time-tested initiatives and projects – named above – where you can start to learn about this other picture. So, third, here’s your homework assignment for the next two months. Pick just one or two of the above initiatives or books or organizations and make it a priority to find half an hour here and there educating yourself about it. Afterward, take the next two months to educate yourself about one or two others, or learn more about the first one or two. And then repeat the process until your picture of the Middle East starts to change for the better. To grab an old word here, it behooves you to turn your eyes in this direction, to see the more hopeful picture. Finally, find the scene(s) in this picture where you can make a personal appearance as a supporting actor. Even if that support only appears in your conversations with people when the topic of the Middle East comes up, or only in your prayers, you will be doing a good thing.

If it is true that what we eat now can turn so sour, it is equally true that what we see uncritically is what we say believingly. If we don’t know about any Middle East reality other than the violence, what else is there for us to believe and say? We are then passively contributing to the violence, however unwittingly that may be, by talking only about that. I don’t expect the news media to change policy, to, say, eliminate two-thirds of its reporting on Middle East violence and replace it with he more hopeful picture.

But if we as individuals and communities re-educate ourselves by learning at least a few basic things about the groundbreaking initiatives discussed in this article (there are many others), and then if we tell others about them, rather than talking about the violence all the time, we will be actively helping these efforts, which are already in place, to change the picture for the better, toward defusing adversarial relations and ending violent conflict. This is a worthy goal.

The projects, books, and organizations discussed above are creating wise ways ahead for peaceably negotiating the rough secular / religious intersection of U.S. – Middle East relations. In a future article we will look at the role that the historic wisdom tradition plays, diplomatically, in this emerging picture.

©2016 by Charles Strohmer

Top image by Cliff, and all images via Creative Commons.

A note from Charles: If you want more of the perspective that Waging Wisdom seeks to present, I want to invite you to follow this blog. Just click here and then find the “Follow” button in the right margin, enter your email address just above that button, and then click “Follow.” You will then receive a very short email notice when I publish a new post. And, hey, if you really like this stuff, tell some friends! Thank you.

Understanding the Religious–Secular Dilemma of U.S.–Middle East Relations, part 2 of 4

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crescent moonIn Part 1 of this article I discussed why it seemed somewhat odd that the fledgling new nation of the United States of America decided not include a “department of religion” in its foreign policy structure. On the other hand, as a sign of the intellectual times, it seemed normal. But what were those times? Let’s look at that in this post. It was the end of the eighteenth century, and America’s founding fathers, politically, had drawn heavily from Enlightenment rationalism’s so-called secular way of doing politics. And that has had serious implications for U.S. foreign policy ever since. See what you think. Let’s have some conversation about this.

Religion and the Secular:
The Foremost International Dilemma
of U.S.-Middle East Relations
by Charles Strohmer

The secularization of U.S. foreign policy has been aptly explored by Scott Thomas in The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations. An international relations scholar from the London School of Economics who teaches at the University of Bath, Thomas asks us to think about the conceptual map of secularism that has informed U.S. foreign policy making since its beginning.

The map dates back to Enlightenment reasoning, and on it Thomas finds four primary contours that have historically shaped Washington’s approach to international relations. These contours suggest why it is difficult, if not unthinkable, for any presidential administration to seek the proper place of religion in U.S. foreign affairs. Briefly summarized here, the four contours are:

1) Secularization theory, which “helped to explain religion away, rather than to explain its significance in social action,” for it was “argued that the numbers of people who declare themselves to be believers and who regularly attend religious services will steadily decline as a country modernizes.”[1]

2) The civil war between Catholics and Protestants in France (1550-1650) and the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) had engulfed all of Europe. The treaties that ended these catastrophic wars brought about what has been called the Westphalian era, in which the rise of “the liberal or secular state” was going to “save us from the cruel and violent consequences of religion. The modern state, the privatization of religion, and the secularization of politics arose to limit religion’s domestic influence, minimize the affect of religious disputes, and end the bloody and destructive role of religion in international affairs.”[2] In the Westphalian system, political governance is organized around states’ so-called secular interests; religious toleration domestically, and religious noninterference in the domestic affairs of other states, are also guiding principles.

3) All of the different Western schools of international relations that have arisen since the seventeenth century have downplayed the study of religion upon international relations. Instead, each school in its own way (e.g., political realism and political idealism), have focused on aspects such as military power, national interests, the balance of power, international law, and international institutions.[3]

4) The Westphalian model has followed the dictates of the modern scientific method, whose twin controls of naturalism and materialism admit into its theories only one reality, the physical world. Here, religion is seen, at best, as a mere epiphenomenon, rather than as a basic instinct of human nature.[4]

To sum up…, Western political theory has explicitly followed secular contours. In so doing it has shaped and validated approaches to the study and practice of international relations and foreign policy in ways that have marginalized the legitimate interests and concerns of religious actors, religious belief, and religious institutions. After settling in, this political way of thinking has had more than 200 years to become second nature to specialists in U.S. foreign policy.

choicesSimilar to Thomas, Edward Luttwak, an international relations historian, attributes Washington’s basic foreign policy problem with religion to what he calls its secularizing reductivism. And he adds this, which helps explain why political analysts, journalists, and others were caught short on the religious implications of 9/11. Today, “Enlightenment prejudice … has remained amply manifest in the contemporary professional analysis of foreign affairs.” And with the sway of modern secularism, both politicians and journalists have often ignored “the role of religion, religious institutions, and religious motivation in explaining politics and conflict.” Instead, they have focused far too much on geographic, economic, social, political, or other non-religious primary causes. For Luttwak, this indicates “a learned repugnance to contend intellectually with all that is religion or belongs to it.”[5]

As I was thinking and writing about this one day back in 2007, I conducted a simple experiment. I pushed my chair back from my writing desk and took a break. I walked to my book shelves, where at the time I had fifty-two titles covering U.S. and Western international relations history, theory, and practice. Twelve of those titles were then in use in American university classrooms. (I ignored the other titles for this experiment.) I wanted to know how much attention the classroom texts (the twelve I knew about) gave to issues of religion in foreign policy. So I made some notes. Of the approximately 3,600 pages that comprise these twelve titles, only 76 pages addressed religious concerns, with many of the references limited to a short paragraph or less. And 61 of those pages appeared in one book![6]

Drawing from her personal experience as a foreign policy student, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright confirms the systemic, academic disinterest in religion in university IR classrooms. In The Mighty and the Almighty, Albright reveals that her education in world affairs gave her quite a distaste for anything to do with religion in international relations. To some of her Georgetown students, she opened a window on her academic training:

My speciality was foreign policy, about which such icons as Hans Morganthau, George Kennan, and Dean Acheson theorized in almost exclusively secular terms. In their view, individuals and groups could be identified by the nations to which they belonged. Countries had governments. Governments acted to protect their nations’ interests, at least to the point where wars did not break out and the world did not blow up. Foreign policy was commonly compared to a game of chess: cerebral, with both sides knowing the rules. This was a contest governed by logic; its players spoke in the manner of lawyers, not preachers…. Religion was not a respecter of national borders; it was above and beyond reason; it evoked the deepest passions; and, historically, it was the cause of much bloodshed. Diplomats in my era were taught not to invite trouble, and no subject seemed more inherently treacherous than religion. This was the understanding that guided me while I was serving as President Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations and as secretary of state. My colleagues felt the same. [7]

Like many in her field, Albright moved off this position after 9/11. Now when teaching in university classrooms she explains to students that learning about world affairs “cannot be done without taking religious tenets and motivations fully into account.”[8]

U.S foreign policy, of course, is not a one-way street. The formal role that religion plays in foreign policy toward America by Muslim majority countries in the Middle East is the other horn of the dilemma in U.S. – Mideast relations. Part 3 of this article delves into this much misunderstood area.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Scott M. Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillian, 2005), pp. 50, 52.

[2] Ibid., p. 22; see also pp. 54-55.

[3] Ibid., pp. 55-58.

[4] Ibid., pp. 59-63.

[5] Johnston and Sampson, Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft; Luttwak, “The Missing Dimension,” pp. 8-10.

[6] The twelve titles: The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919-1939; The Anarchical Society; Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations; Paths to Power; Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy; Neorealism and Its Critics; Anarchy, State, and Utopia; Understanding International Conflicts; Power and Independence; Politics Among Nations; American Diplomacy; Promised Land, Crusader State (the title with the 61 pages). For complete title information, see this Bibliography on the Web.

[7] Madeleine Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs (HarperCollins, 2006), p. 8.

[8] Ibid., p. 11.

©2016 by Charles Strohmer

Images: Crescent moon by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center; two paths by William Ward (permissions via Creatve Commons).