Brookings Press Blog

Journey into America

Journey into Islam team featured on CNN.com

In 2006, Akbar Ahmed and a few students from American University embarked on a "voyage of discovery" that became the basis for Journey into Islam. Today Ahmed, the Islamic studies chairman at American University in Washington, and his group - a number of whom joined him on the first trip - are in the midst of the ir "Journey into America." CNN.com featured the new adventure today in "Muslim in America: a 'voyage of discovery'". CNN also offers a selection of photos, biographies, and video documenting the group's journey. You can also follow the group's blog, Journey into America.

- Learn more about Journey into Islam

- Read CNN.com's "Muslim in America: a 'voyage of discovery'" by Jessica Ravitz

- Follow the Journey into America blog

One Sunday, Two Reviews in NYTBR

The Search for al Qaeda and Restoring the Balance reviewed 1/18

The January 18th issue of the New York Times Book Review includes reviews of The Search for Al Qaeda and Restoring the Balance. From the review of The Search for Al Qaeda by Bruce Riedel and The Duel by Tariq Ali:

The pros and cons of continuing or escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be gleaned from two recent books, “The Search for Al Qaeda” by Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst and adviser to three presidents, and “The Duel” by Tariq Ali. One thing they agree on—and which was underscored by the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai—is that Pakistan is going to be at the forefront of foreign policy concerns for the Obama administration.

. . .

Riedel manages to distill the essence of Al Qaeda in just 150 pages. Among other things, he notes that the Islamic fundamentalists do not hate America’s values, only its policies.

. . .

Which man is right, which one wrong? Whatever the case, their books are a starting point for a much-needed debate.

From the review of Restoring the Balance by Richard Haass and Martin Indyk:

Beginning in July 2007, two of this country’s pre-eminent Middle East policy research institutions, both with close ties to the incoming administration, the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, took the rare step of joining forces and asking 15 of their scholars to focus on the crucial challenges facing the next president. The results are collected in “Restoring the Balance,” a thoughtful and nicely structured collection of seven essays that examine the Iranian challenge and its many parts.

. . .

The Middle East is rich in awkward realities. Still, whether or not this plan will succeed, much of it will probably be attempted. In that sense, “Restoring the Balance” is a very useful and readable introduction to the thinking beyond the coming shift.

- Read "War Room Debate", the review including The Search for al Qaeda, by Ray Bonner

- Learn more about The Search for al Qaeda

- Read "Mission to Tehran", the review of Restoring the Balance, by Ethan Bronner

- Learn more about Restoring the Balance

Martin Indyk on Charlie Rose and Today Shows

Restoring the Balance will also have DC and NYC book launches

Martin Indyk, coauthor of Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, will be appearing on the Charlie Rose show on Tuesday, December 2 and on NBC's Today Show Wednesday, December 3! On December 2 there will also be two major launch events for this new book: the Brookings Institution will host a launch event during the day in Washington, and the Council on Foreign Relations will host an event in New York later that evening.

Indyk was the Ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state for near east affairs during the Clinton Administration. He now directs the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. Restoring the Balance will be available in bookstores shortly.

- Learn more about Restoring the Balance

Brookings and the Presidential Transition

Three new titles highlight the challenges facing the incoming administration

As supporters of Barack Obama celebrate their candidate’s historic victory, political observers and potential appointees are already turning their attention to questions of transition and governing. Three new titles from the Brookings Institution Press bring timely and expert analysis to bear on the changing political landscape and the immediate challenges facing the incoming administration. Each has garnered considerable attention already and should continue to do so.

• Stephen Hess, the nation’s most experienced expert on presidential transitions, is author of What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect. His book already has been positively reviewed in Library Journal and featured in U.S. News and World Report. What Do We Do Now? will be launched and excerpted as part of an ambitious Brookings-wide initiative on the presidential transition. On Thursday, November 6, Hess will appear on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, Fox 5 DC morning news, and will also participate in a Washington Post on-line chat. The book will also be excerpted in tomorrow’s edition of Politico.

• Kurt Campbell and James Steinberg are the authors of Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Presidential Power. Drawing on decades of high-level government service and public policy experience, former presidential advisers Kurt Campbell and James Steinberg review past foreign policy episodes and identify the major pitfalls that a president-elect must try to avoid in the early days of an administration. Both authors are well known in policy circles — e.g Steinberg has been widely mentioned as a potential National Security Adviser. The book will be launched with fanfare on November 13 at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. The dust jacket includes endorsements from Brent Scowcroft, Richard Holbrooke, and Madeleine Albright.

• Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel and current director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, head up a stellar cast of authors on Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President. This is the first book to leverage fully the resources of these eminent foreign policy organizations. The goal is a new, nonpartisan strategy toward the tinderbox Middle East. The book will be rolled out in both New York and Washington with launch events on Tuesday, December 2, and it will receive a heavy publicity push from both institutions. It may ride the coattails of last week’s cover story in Newsweek, coauthored by Haass. Among the other authors are Steve Simon (coauthor of The Next Attack), Kenneth Pollack (A Path Out of the Desert), and Bruce Ridel (The Search for al Qaeda).

- Learn more about What Do We Do Now?.

- Learn more about Difficult Transitions.

- Learn more about Restoring the Balance.

The Search for al Qaeda Featured in Newsweek

John Barry interviews author Bruce Riedel

This latest issue of Newsweek features an interview with Bruce Riedel, author of The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future:

Bruce Riedel was in the White House Situation Room on 9/11. For 30 years he was one of the CIA's senior analysts of the Middle East, rising to be a special assistant to the President on the National Security Council staff. Now he has written an analysis of Al Qaeda—and a critique of America's strategy in combating it. He outlined his concerns to NEWSWEEK's John Barry.

NEWSWEEK: Why this book now?
Bruce Riedel: I starting writing this book two years when I retired from CIA, because I think Al Qaeda is still the No. 1 threat to America; but there is still much that is misunderstood or not understood about the nature of that threat.

- Read the Newsweek article by John Barry, "How to Fight Al Qaeda Now: An Ex-CIA analyst talks about the terrorists’ power—and their vulnerabilities".

- Learn more about The Search for al Qaeda.

To Serve the President

New book featured in The Washington Post

David Broder's column in this past Sunday's Washingotn Post, "Management 101 for Senators," featured Bradley Patterson's forthcoming book, To Serve the President: Continuity and Innovation in the White House Staff.

Bradley H. Patterson has made a specialty of examining the workings of the White House and probably knows as much as anyone about how to organize the Presidency. . . . One of the things Patterson teaches is that Geroge Bush has been a more creative manager than is generally recognized. - David S. Broder, The Washington Post

This is great pre-publication press for a book we are excited to include in a list of "Transition 09" titles, and is very much the spiritual successor to Patterson's 2000 release, The White House Staff.

- Learn more about To Serve the President.

- Read David Broder's "Management 101 for Senators" on washingtonpost.com.

- Learn more about The White House Staff.

Rx: Medicare Reform

The need exists. Does the cure?

Older and disabled Americans are sick—sick of skyrocketing health care costs. Medicare spending, for example, exceeded $400 billion last year. Whether they hang up their badges at 62 or 65 (see post below on Working Longer), the baby-boomers are beginning to retire. Soon they will experience worrisome symptoms, such as insufficient income and hefty medical bills. What should be done about this growing epidemic?

A bill reexamining Medicare is currently making its way through Congress. Though President Bush vetoed the bill on the basis that it would harm beneficiaries, his veto was overridden last week. The consensus stands: Medicare demands assistance and attention. But because the Medicare debate is politically charged, it is highly unlikely that any single remedy would be approved and implemented in full.

Brookings authors Henry Aaron and Jeanne Lambrew write out their prescriptions in their new book, Reforming Medicare. These healthcare policy experts identify and analyze the three leading options to approaching reform:

1. Updated social insurance
2. Premium choice
3. Consumer-directed health care.

In a mortar-and-pestle approach, Aaron and Lambrew describe incremental strategies that blend elements of each plan. The result? Sound hybrid policies for Congress to consider in the future.

Join us at the Brookings Institution on July 30^th, 10 AM to noon, for an illuminating and provocative discussion. Aaron and Lambrew will be joined by an advocate of each option to debate Medicare reform.

- See who will be representing each strategy at the event.

- Read more about Henry J. Aaron and Jeanne M. Lambrew’s book Reforming Medicare: Options, Tradeoffs, and Opportunities.

U.S. Foreign Policy Needs a New Playbook

Stale Cold War mentality fosters distrust toward the United States

America has a bad habit of compromising its core values of freedom and democracy by forging alliances with dictators who don’t support these basic tenets. During the Cold War, all a developing country needed to do in order to gain U.S. support was to stay out of the Soviet orbit—the enemy of our enemy was our friend. We thus found ourselves siding with despots such as Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu of Zaire, the Shah of Iran—the list goes on. Similarly, being a source of vital resources or a protector of “international stability” in today’s world is too often sufficient qualification for U.S. aid.

Author Hilton Root takes a shrewd look at what is happening in American foreign affairs in Alliance Curse: How America Lost the Third World. He challenges long-held assumptions about our actions abroad, arguing that “outmoded” may be a more accurate description of our foreign policy than “current.”

Root’s book, just published by the Brookings Institution Press, comes at a turning point in America’s history. Unfortunately, our recent track record shows that we haven’t learned from the past. In Pakistan, a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, the United States has contributed billions of dollars to Pervez Musharraf’s government, largely to secure its support in the war on terror. That aid, however, still has not secured the loyalty of the military regime or the friendship of the population. Root questions the wisdom of providing aid to governments that remain corrupt and tyrannical, in light of the potential blowback.

So, what should America do at this crossroads? Root, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, argues that fostering economic development—not propping up dictators—is the better course for the country’s short-term and long-term goals. In the long term, it is actually a more effective strategy for building stability and winning the hearts and minds of the developing world.

You can hear from the author himself about his alternative strategy to close the gap between security and economic development. Hilton Root will be appearing at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. this Saturday, July 19th at 1 p.m. Don’t miss out!

- Learn more about Alliance Curse.

- Learn more about the event at Politics & Prose.

Get Out the Vote, 2nd ed. Reviewed in The American Prospect

Get Out the Vote, 2nd ed., by Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber, receives a glowing review in the July/August issue of The American Prospect. You can view the article online here.

The first edition of Get Out the Vote! broke ground by introducing a new scientific approach to the challenge of voter mobilization and profoundly influenced how campaigns operate. In this expanded and updated edition, the authors incorporate data from more than one hundred new studies, which shed new light on the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of various campaign tactics, including door-to-door canvassing, e-mail, direct mail, and telephone calls. Two new chapters focus on the effectiveness of mass media campaigns and events such as candidate forums and Election Day festivals. Available in time for the core of the 2008 presidential campaign, this practical guide on voter mobilization is sure to be an important resource for consultants, candidates, and grassroots organizations.

- Read Harold Meyerson's review, "Make it Personal: Two political scientists challenge the conventional wisdom about voter turnout," in The American Prospect.

- Learn more about Get Out the Vote, 2nd ed.

Does the Earth Need Saving?

The climate change debate has branched out to the U.S. Senate

How many trees must fall to save the earth? According to Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner: however many trees it takes to create a 492-paged bill on climate change. How long might it take to read said 492 paged bill? Well, on Wednesday June 4,the Senate found out. The AP article “Climate bill stalls in Senate after dispute” discusses how Senate clerks spent eight hours reading the bill aloud when “Republicans demanded a reading of the 492-page document because of a partisan dispute over judicial nominations. . . . The bill, the most ambitious legislation on global warming ever taken up in Congress, would cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by 71 percent by mid-century from power plants, refineries, factories and transportation.” This controversial bill may or may not make it out of the Senate, but the fact that it was introduced points to a significant number of people who believe something must be done to safeguard our planet from its most dangerous inhabitants: humans. Does this bill constitute the best course of action? Its provisions continue to be heavily disputed, but to determine the proper solution we must all first agree that a problem exists. Kurt Campbell outlines a compelling argument for the security and foreign policy implications of climate change in his most recent publication Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change. Campbell and his contributors examine three scenarios as a basis for future planning and analyze the implications of each, ranging from disease proliferation, large-scale migration, and increased low-intensity conflict to the risk of nuclear war. The effects of climate change have been felt in communities throughout the world, and now the debate regarding this environmental issue has finally found an arena in the United States Senate. Nobel Laureate, and former Vice President, Al Gore believes Campbell’s book “is an important effort to translate the broad outlines of climate change into more specific visualizations of the social, political, and moral consequences. . . .” Climate change may prove to be the single greatest challenge confronting the United States and indeed, human civilization. Climatic Cataclysm helps explain why.

- Read the AP article “Climate bill stalls in Senate after dispute.”

- Is the world edging toward a climatic cataclysm? Explore the evidence Climatic Cataclysm.