Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon (IPA member)
The Art of Peace: Engaging a Complex World
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019 – 7:30pm to 8:45pm
Westminster Institute, 6729 Curran Street, McLean, VA, 22101
RSVP
Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon is a Senior Fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, teaches at American University, and IPA leader. For several decades, she has been one of the finest analysts and best proponents of public diplomacy in the war of ideas. Her new book is The Art of Peace: Engaging a Complex World (Routledge). Other of her books relevant to this topic are Cultural Intelligence for Winning the Peace and Why America is Such a Hard Sell: Beyond Pride and Prejudice.
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (Ret.) says, “Juliana Geran Pilon explains disconnects between the instrumental use of violence and objectives in recent and ongoing conflicts. The neglect of the political and human nature of war has been a common cause of strategic failure as well as a common flaw in theories that oftentimes contribute to those failures. Indeed, recent wartime plans have exhibited a narcissistic approach, failing to account for interactions with determined enemies and other complicating political, cultural, historical and economic factors. Armed conflict is a competition and, as Dr. Pilon points out, winning the peace requires fighting across all contested spaces and considering the consolidation of military gains as an integral part of war. It is not enough to read The Art of Peace. We must also heed its lessons.” Gen. James Mattis (Ret.) states that, “Juliana Pilon is to be commended for pressing the question of American competence in carrying out its global engagement. As she rightly points out in her book, we need to fully engage both our fundamental powers in American foreign policy: the power of inspiration and, when and where needed, the power of intimidation.”
Dr. Pilon believes that the steep rise in unconventional conflict has increased the need for diplomatic and other non-hard power tools of statecraft. Throughout the years, U.S. foreign policy has strayed from diplomacy and become – and stayed – militarized. The military, even if indispensable to national security as a deterrent, should not be the only – or even the main – branch of government required to prepare itself for future threats. The need for diplomatic and other non-hard-power tools of statecraft has not diminished; on the contrary, the steep rise in unconventional conflict has raised their importance. She supports an American strategy that effectively synchronizes all instruments of power. It can no longer afford to sit on the proverbial three-legged (“military, diplomacy, development”) national security stool, where one leg is a lot longer than either of the other two, almost neglecting altogether about a fourth leg – information, especially strategic communication and public diplomacy. In 2014, she helped found the Daniel Morgan Academy in Washington, DC. Her other books include:Cultural Intelligence for Winning the Peace;Why America is Such a Hard Sell:Beyond Pride and Prejudice;The Bloody Flag: Post-Communist Nationalism in Eastern Europe,and Notes From the Other Side of Night. She has also published over two hundred articles and reviews on international affairs, human rights, literature, and philosophy, has made frequent appearances on radio and television, and has served on several advisory boards. She has taught at several colleges and universities including the National Defense University and George Washington University. During the 1990s, she was first Director and later Vice President for Programs at IFES (The International Foundation for Election Systems), where she designed and managed a wide variety of democratization-related projects.
Born in Romania, she emigrated with her family to the US; she earned a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and was an Earhart Foundation post-doctoral fellow at the Hoover Institution.