This document contains summaries of several articles and interviews: 1. Stephen Walt's article discusses how bad foreign policy ideas persist despite evidence that they don't work, due to factors like limited knowledge, powerful states resisting change, closed societies, and vested interests. 2. Charles Homans' article examines how WikiLeaks disclosures hurt political leaders in Tunisia, Libya, India, and damaged the reputation of the London School of Economics. 3. A Radio Free Europe interview with expert Clay Shirky discusses how the conflicting goals of US foreign policy hamper effective social media communication on platforms like Twitter. 4. Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev's article argues for strengthening the OSCE to build

2. Contents
 Stephen M. Walt, 2011, “Where do bad ideas come
from and why don’t they go away?” Foreign Policy
(January/February 184): 48-53.
 Nursulton Nazarbaev, 2011, “The OSCE and global
security in the 21st century,” New Europe, 9 January,
 Charles Homans, 2011, “Wikilosers,” 25 March,
 RFE, 2011, “Social-media expert says conflicting U.S.
foreign-policy goals hamper effective communication,” 20
April,

3. Stephen M. Walt
Professor
Harvard University
“Where Do Bad Ideas Come
From and Why Don’t They Go
Away?”

4. Stephen M. Walt
 UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM
 Bookshelves are filled with such reassuring
PRONOUNCEMENTS, from the sage advice offered by
Richard Neustadt in Thinking in Time: The Use of History for
Decision Makers to the rosy forecast of Matt Ridley’s The
Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, not to mention Francis
Fukuyama’s famously premature claim that humanity had
reached “the end of history”;
 Human welfare improved as new knowledge challenged and
eventually overthrew popular dogmas, i.e. from aristocracy to
mercantilism;
 Yet , there is no inexorable evolutionary march that replaces our
bad, old ideas with smart, new ones.

5. Stephen M. Walt (cont.)
 “DOMINO THEORY”
 If the U.S allowed Communist forces to gain control of Vietnam,
it would set off a chain reaction of other countries succumbing
to Communist rule.
 The domino theory has re-emerged, phoenix –like, in the
current debate over Afghanistan.
 Germany’s defeat in World War I, should seemingly have
seared into German's collective consciousness the lesson that
trying to establish hegemony in Europe was almost certain to
lead to disaster.
 The French experience in Vietnam presumably should have
taught the future president not to order the military to do
“regime change” and “nation building” in the developing world.
 The U.S case in Iraq and Afghanistan.

6. Stephen M. Walt (cont.)
 WHY is it hard for states to learn from history?
 The limits of knowledge;
 There are relatively few iron laws of foreign policy and the facts
about each case are rarely incontrovertible . US invasion Iraq
 Strong but foolish states;
 Countries that have successfully risen to the status of Great
Power may be less inclined to adapt quickly in the future.
 Closed societies and closed minds;
 When governments restrict the public access to information,
bogus ideas & misguided policies are less likely to be
exposed/shown and either corrected.
 Cui bono? Bad ideas come from somewhere
 The reason why foolish ideas persist is that someone has an
interest in defending or promoting them.

7. www.foreignpolicy.com
Charles Homans
Associate editor
Foreign Policy
“Wikilosers”

8. Charles Homans “Wikilosers”
Bradley Manning
U.S Army private
 Allegedly gave WikiLeaks
its cache of U.S.
government document
after stealing them from
the U.S. government’s
Secret Internet Protocol
Router Network
(SIPRNet) during his 2009
deployment to Iraq, was
arrested in May.

9. Charles Homans (cont.)
Zine el-Abidine
Ben Ali
Former Tunisian President
 The State Department
documents put an outside
authority’s imprimatur on
the stories of corruption
and official decadence that
Tunisians had heard for
years, particularly the
degree to which the family
of Ben Ali’s wife had
benefited from his years of
rule.

10. Charles Homans (cont.)
Howard Davies
The LSE Director
 The reasons to resign his
post were primarily linked
to Qaddafi, but the last
straw is that the School
had been involved in a
multimillion-dollar deal to
provide training to Libyan
civil servants and
professionals in London.

11. Charles Homans (cont.)
Manmohan Singh
India’s Prime Minister
 ….has been in hot water
due to Singh’s ruling
Congress Party had paid
lawmaker in India’
Parliament eye-popping
sums ($ 2.5 million) to
support a nuclear deal with
the United States.
 $ 2.7 billion telecom
license scandal kept
Parliament tied up for 2
months.

12. “Social-media expert says
conflicting U.S. foreign-policy
goals hamper effective
communication”
www.rferl.org
Radio Free Europe
Interview with
Prof. Clay Shirky

13. Clay Shirky
 The U.S. State Department & Twitter in Arabic,
Hindu, Persian, Russian and other languages?
 It is really startling about the State Department’s use of
Twitter is the way in which it has become painfully
obvious that they actually can’t say the same thing to
everybody.
 Can the U.S. State Department will be able
to adjust its Twitter practices in the future?
 …..they will actually never be able to use Twitter
in a complete open way

14. Clay Shirky (cont.)
 SoS, Hillary Clinton: “the department would be
awarding millions of $ in funding to support digital
activists & technologists as they try to evade
government censors”
 We are going to see an enormous amount of
investment in both pro-censorship & pro-propoganda
technologies.
 Will Mubarak’s attempt to blackout Internet used
by other authoritarian leaders?
 Yes, because it’s a desperation move and in desperate
times people do desperate things.

15. www.neweurope.eu
Nursulton Nazarbaev
The president of
Kazakhstan,
Former OSCE
Chairman in-Office
“The OSCE and global security in
the 21st century”

16. N. Nazarbayev
 The Astana Summit of the OSCE, December
1-2, 2011.
 Argument: was there are a point to it?
 “……the value of the OSCE is exactly in the
fact that, at times of different, critical years for
Europe and the world, its goals and principles
have remained a universal basis for maintaining
and strengthening security in the vast area of the
northern hemisphere from Vancouver to
Vladivostok.”

17. N. Nazarbayev (cont.)
 Reasons to convene the OSCE Summit:
1. “…..in the 21st century, the OSCE can and
must use all of its vast experience to build an
ambitious new security system spanning the
entire Eurasian continent…..”
2. It was important to recover the OSCE from
critical state in which it found itself.
3. It was necessary to restore the value and
effectiveness of direct dialogue among the
leaders of the OSCE.

18. N. Nazarbayev (cont.)
 The tasks under OSCE Chairmanship:
 to expand and strengthen the field of
consensus on fundamental issues of security;
 to renew and strengthen the regime of arms
control and confidence-building measures;
 to strengthen the OSCE’s capacity in
conflict prevention, crisis management &
post-conf. rehabilitation;

19. N. Nazarbayev (cont.)
 “Astana Commemorative Declaration: Towards a
Security Community”:
1. It confirms the relevance of the principles on which
the Organization was based and the commitment of
all 56 participating states to the norms and
commitments adopted within it,……..
2. the Eurasian vector of the OSCE has been enshrined
for the first time ever;
3. the document welcomed all initiatives to strengthen
the OSCE and its ability to adequately and effectively
address the challenges of the 21st century.

20. N. Nazarbayev (cont.)
 Proposed further targeted actions:
1. interaction in strengthening global security among
integration structures of the Eurasian continent. EU &
NATO, = EurAsEC + CSTO;
2. to single out the issues of financial and economic security
as a separate basket of the OSCE;
3. to establish a specific OSCE forum to elaborate new
contractual norms in disarmament and non-proliferation;
4. We have called for honest and open interfaith dialogue;
5. to organize the work on forecasting various security issues
as a separate dimension by creating an OSCE Security
Institute.

21. Thank you