Book cover for The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam by Christopher S Bond and Lewis M Simons

The Next Front

Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam

2009 Released
288 Pages
5-6 Hours
Audiobook Unavailable
Paperback Unavailable
Trade Paper PressISBN 9780470730072
A U.S. senator and Pulitzer Prizewinner, both experts on Southeast Asia, offer a bold new approach to address radical Islam and fight global terror

The next front in the war on terror is in Southeast Asia, warn Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO) and Lewis Simons, both leading experts on the region. The U.S. has bankrupted its policies in dealing with the Islamic world. As Fundamentalist Islam gains traction in Southeast Asia, backed by Saudi money, the U.S. must act swiftly to re-establish its credibility there and help defuse global terrorism. Bond and Simons present a bold plan to accomplish this key goal by substituting smart power (civilians in sneakers and sandals) for force (soldiers in combat boots) in Indonesia and the other nations of Southeast Asia, home to the world's greatest concentration of Muslims.

  • Introduces a critical new "smart power" approach to combat global terror
  • Written by two experts on Southeast Asia with extensive contacts in Washington and overseas
  • Tackles a crucial challenge to U.S. foreign policy and President Obama's administration
  • Examines a wide range of views and people, from Osama bin Laden-trained armed terrorists to radical clerics to western-trained officials who plead for Americans to come to their countries to teach, start small businesses, and improve health care

The Next Front offers exactly the kind of fresh, out-of-the-box thinking the United States needs to rebuild its credibility and transcend its foreign policy failures.

Lewis M Simons

Pulitzer Prize-winner Lewis M. Simons began his career as a foreign correspondent in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War. He saw the war through to the end, covering the fall in quick succession of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Since then, Simons has reported on war, civil unrest, politics, and economics from throughout Southeast Asia; India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh; Iraq and Iran; China, Japan, North Korea, and South Korea, as well as the former Soviet Union. He was a staff correspondent for The Associated Press, the Washington Post, Time, and Knight-Ridder Newspapers. Simons won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1986 for exposing the billions that the Marcos family looted from the Philippines. Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism named the series one of 50 Great Stories of the Century. Simons was twice more a Pulitzer finalist and has received numerous other journalism awards, including the George Polk, and was an Edward R. Murrow Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. Simons's op-ed and analytical articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, Atlantic, and Smithsonian magazines. He has contributed frequently to National Geographic and his work is published in USA Today, where he is a member of its Board of Contributors, the Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and Daily Kos. He has appeared on ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, BBC, and CBC. He is coauthor with Senator Christopher S. Bond of The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam. He also is author of Worth Dying For and a contributing author of half a dozen books on war and international affairs. A former U.S. Marine, he is a graduate of New York University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is married to fellow journalist Carol Simons. They have three adult children and reside in Washington, DC.

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