Effective Defense Support for Public Diplomacy (DSPD) with a Sub-Saharan Africa Target Audience: A Case Study of the African Crisis Response Force Proposal
Abstract : The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the effectiveness of Department of Defense (DoD) Defense Support for Public Diplomacy (DSPD) sources and messages using the African Crisis Response Force (ACRF) as a controlled comparison case study. The ACRF case can provide useful lessons for USAFRICOM on how to communicate more effectively with its African partners. From a more narrow DSPD perspective, the absence of an explicit adversary in Africa means that military tactics there should be focused on capturing human terrain through the robust utilization of information operations rather than more conventional stratagems. To accomplish this, the DoD needs to understand how to communicate effectively with Africans. The command's focus on interagency cooperation and building partnerships with African states makes successful Information Operations even more critical and the role of DPSD even more central to ensuring that DoD actions align with and complement other elements of national power to synchronize an American grand strategy in Africa. The focus in this thesis is on informational causal mechanisms, defined as the "physical, social, or psychological processes through which agents with causal capacities operate, but only in specific contexts or conditions, to transfer energy, information, or matter to other entities." Using Wilbur Schramm's disaggregation of communications into a source and message, the case studies will treat the ACRF's and related DSPD sources and messages as independent variables, and the acceptance or rejection of ACRF as the dependent variable. The target audience is composed of the state-level actors who possessed the ability to accept or reject the ACRF proposal.
Africa in the New International Order: Rethinking State Sovereignty and Regional Security
Part 1 Regional Change and Global Security Issues: the Role of Regional and Global Organisations in Addressing Africa's Security Issues, I. Gambari the OAU, State Sovereignty and Regional Security, S. Gomes Regional Security and Changing Patterns of Relations, I.W. Zartman. Part 2 Country Studies: Somalia - a Regional Security Dilemma, A. Simons Civil War and Identity in Sudan's Foreign Policy, F. Deng and K. Medani the International Context of Internal War - Ethiopia/Eritrea, T. Lyons Ethnic Conflict and Security in Southern Africa, M. Ottaway Regional Security in Southern Africa in the Post-Cold War Era, D. Venter. Part 3 ECOMOG: Liberia, and Regional Security in West Africa, R. Mortimer the Involvement of ECOWAS in Peacekeeping in Liberia, M. Vog. Part 4 Extracontinental Actors and Regional Security: removing the shackles? US Policy Toward Africa After the Cold War, P. Schraeder Moscow's Policies in Africa, J. Lefebvre.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1