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.
The Clinton Administration and Africa: A View From Ottawa, Canada
The Clinton administration's new African policy thrust, combined with the changing contours of Canadian African policy, has brought the two governments' approaches closer together than ever before. In most fundamental respects, their stated aims are closely congruent: They seek in general to promote stability and progress in Africa, conceived in broadly neo-liberal terms. Beyond these general objectives, however, Washington and Ottawa exhibit differences of emphasis and approach that are interesting given the especially close relationship that has long existed between the two countries. In important ways, Canada's "kinder, gentler" approach to Africa serves to soften the face of U.S. policy priorities without fundamentally altering them, and in this respect serves as a valuable contributor to the fulfillment of U.S. hegemonic priorities on the continent and around the globe. Canada nonetheless has its own history, habits, and linkages in Africa that, although under strain, still allow it to periodically play a surprisingly prominent role on issues of concern to Africans at this historical moment of continental transformation.
Nursing theory and administrative practice: Agenda for the 1990s
&NA; Despite past progress in the development of nursing theory, a theoretical nursing perspective is not yet common to the practice of nursing administration. Such a perspective could serve as a catalyst both to advance knowledge development for administrative nursing practice and to align clinical and administrative practice within a common framework. In this article assumptions, concepts, and questions common to both clinical and administrative nursing practice are identified. Select domain concepts are used to exemplify the themes shared by nurse clinicians and nurse administrators. The article concludes with a five‐item agenda as a guide for future theory development.