Recording / transcript of talk by Douglas Johnston. Johnston is president and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy. He's the co-editor of Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft.
( Some great music as well! A recording here and details of All tracks are shown here: )
Presenter Krista Tippett: My guest this hour is a military and diplomatic strategist, Douglas Johnston. Instead of approaching religion as a problem in global crises, he's modeling a new kind of diplomacy. In places like Pakistan, Iran, and Sudan, he is successfully engaging religious leaders and passions to combat the causes, not just the symptoms, of violent religious extremism.
Since the Iraq Study Group report in December, a growing chorus of voices has called for a new diplomatic and cultural engagement with Muslim nations, especially Iran. But there is one critical ingredient to the success of such efforts in the world we inhabit now, Douglas Johnston says, and the U.S. does not know how to discuss it globally and inter-religiously.
Link: Diplomacy and Religion in the 21st Century [Speaking of Faith® from American Public Media].
The greatest threat in the post-Cold War world, says Douglas Johnston, is the prospective marriage of religious extremism with weapons of mass destruction. Yet the U.S. spends most of its time, resources, and weapons fighting the symptoms of this threat, not the cause. The diplomacy of the future, he is showing, must engage religion as part of the strategic solution to global conflicts.
Comments