Sibling synchronicity

Council considers approving Dakar-Plateau in Africa as Pasadena’s sixth sister city

By Justin Chapman, Pasadena Weekly, 8/23/2018

Pasadena may form its first sister city relationship with an African city Monday when the City Council considers adopting Dakar-Plateau, Senegal, with a population of nearly 37,000, covering an area of 1.93 square miles, and serving as the political, financial and commercial center of the country’s capital of greater Dakar.

While discussions to form a Sister Cities relationship with an African city have been ongoing for at least 20 years, efforts ramped up in 2015 when the Sister Cities Committee created a 15-member ad hoc committee on Africa and appointed Boualem Bousseloub as its chair. Bousseloub is a Pasadena resident who was born in Algiers and has lived in Paris, Albi, Bruges and Sacramento.

Pasadena has established five other Sister Cities partnerships, including with Ludwigshafen, Germany, in 1948; Mishima – Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, in 1957; Järvenpää, Finland, in 1983; Vanadzor, Armenia, in 1991; and Xicheng District – Beijing, China, in 1999.

The idea of partnering cities grew out of the Twin Town concept in Europe in 1946 following World War II. Ludwigshafen was selected in 1948 by the Pasadena branch of the American Friends Service Committee. America’s involvement came in 1956 following President Dwight Eisenhower’s White House conference on citizen diplomacy, out of which grew Sister Cities International (SCI). Pasadena formally established its Sister Cities chapter in 1960.

Traveling to Dakar-Plateau

From March 21 to April 1, Bousseloub led a delegation composed of four members of the ad hoc committee on Africa, Pasadena Councilman and Vice Mayor John Kennedy and Honorary Consul of Senegal in Los Angeles Mame Toucouleur Mbaye, on a fact-finding mission to Dakar-Plateau. There they met with community leaders, including the mayor of Dakar-Plateau and member of the country’s Socialist Party, Alioune Ndoye, to determine the feasibility of forming a sisterhood with that city.

The delegation visited schools, youth centers, museums, the chamber of commerce, the Port of Dakar, the island of Gorée (the infamous gateway of slavery to the Western Hemisphere), the National Assembly, the US Embassy and other locations.

“Mayor Ndoye was with us from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day of our delegation, as was a cameraman from a private TV station,” said Bousseloub. “Everywhere we went we were received with great interest and warmth by officials as well as the citizens of Dakar-Plateau.”

Senegal is one of the most stable democracies in Africa. According to the BBC, for example, it is the “only country on mainland West Africa never to have had a military coup.” Although it is 96 percent Muslim, the country is also tolerant of other religions. Easter and Christmas are government holidays, for instance, and Muslim residents often have Christmas trees in their homes. Officials at the US Embassy also informed the Pasadena delegation that while Senegal is a conservative society, it is making positive progress on LGBTQ rights and there have been no recent active persecutions against LGBTQ people.

Senegal is not without its political turmoil, however. Dakar-Plateau is one of 19 district communes of greater Dakar, with each district commune having its own city government. In March, as the Pasadena delegation was touring Dakar-Plateau, the mayor of Dakar, Khalifa Sall, was sentenced to five years in jail for embezzling $3.4 million and falsifying documents. Sall and Dakar’s city government would not be involved in a Sister Cities relationship between Dakar-Plateau and Pasadena.

Identifying a Sister City

Before settling on Dakar-Plateau, the ad hoc committee explored other possibilities on the continent. They preferred a region that had an English-speaking population, no war or epidemics and a democratic political system that respected human and civil rights. They considered all 54 countries before narrowing the list down to three: South Africa, Ghana and Ethiopia.

They first approached Cape Town, South Africa, but after several months of waiting, Mayor Patricia De Lille informed the committee that Cape Town was only interested in investors, not a formal Sister Cities relationship. The cities of Durban and Port Elizabeth expressed interest, but did not follow up.

In June 2017, Senegal’s Honorary Consul in LA Mame Mbaye unexpectedly called Bousseloub and they discussed the possibility of a Sister Cities relationship with a city in Senegal. On June 18, 2017, Bousseloub gave an invitation letter to Mbaye, who delivered it to Ndoye in Dakar-Plateau. On July 13, 2017, Ndoye wrote back accepting the offer.

“Aware of the extraordinary exchange and collaboration opportunities between our two cities, we express our full support for this project,” Ndoye wrote.

The Importance of Exchange

Bousseloub and Jim Barry, a member of the ad hoc committee who lived in Senegal for five years, are optimistic that the Pasadena City Council will approve their proposal. They pointed out that the Sister Cities Committee overwhelmingly approved it.

Bousseloub also pointed out that Dakar-Plateau has a wealth of museums, a UNESCO World Heritage site, strong infrastructure such as its new airport and port, popular cultural festivals, financial institutions and youth programs. The presidential palace, the country’s major banks and all of its top companies are located in Dakar-Plateau.

If the City Council approves the proposal on Monday, the two cities would exchange official delegations led by Ndoye and Pasadena Mayor Terry Tornek and conduct signing ceremonies in each city.

Bousseloub then envisions extensive exchange opportunities between the two cities, including police officers, doctors, students, faculty and administrators of schools and universities, scientists, artists, musicians, business executives and athletes. Ultimately, he would like to see the creation of an annual Pan-African Market and Arts Festival at the Rose Bowl, and invite all of the African consulates in LA to participate.

“People on the West Coast of the United States have so little contact with Africa compared to people on the East Coast of the United States,” Barry said, addressing why Pasadena needs a Sister Cities relationship with an African city.

Bousseloub agreed, pointing out that the African-American community is a sizable portion of Pasadena’s population.

“This is a time when African Americans are searching for their roots,” he said. “We look at Pasadena as a mosaic. We want to add a beautiful new tile to make it a comprehensive and beautiful mosaic. We have Sister Cities relationships with three Asian cities and two European cities. Well, there are no Central or South American cities, and there are no African cities. I think there is something there that needs to be done in the future.”

Pasadena just finished hosting two college students from Ludwigshafen, Germany, who interned at a Pasadena law firm and the Huntington Library. One of the students, Sophia Hoffman, who stayed with different host families in Pasadena and Altadena for five weeks, told the Pasadena Weekly about how meaningful this experience was for her.

“I’ve had a wonderful time here,” she said. “I am glad and thankful for having the chance to be here. The people of the exchange program are very welcoming and cordial. I will always remember my time in California and I am sure that I will come back.”

To learn more about Pasadena’s Sister Cities Committee, visit pasadenasistercities.org.

Democracies Should Fight Sharp Power with Soft Power

Democracies are increasingly more vulnerable to the "sharp power" tactics of authoritarian regimes but should not adopt these same tactics in response, Joseph Nye and Shanthi Kalathil told Pacific Council members in the fourth installment of the 2018 Summer Teleconference Series, on the rise of authoritarianism

By Justin Chapman, Pacific Council on International Policy, 8/15/2018


Democracies are increasingly more vulnerable to the "sharp power" tactics of authoritarian regimes but should not adopt these same tactics in response, Dr. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and Ms. Shanthi Kalathil told Pacific Council members in the fourth installment of the 2018 Summer Teleconference Series, on the rise of authoritarianism.

Nye is a University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus, and former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University who is credited with coining the term “soft power.” Kalathil is the director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. The discussion was moderated by Ms. Jessica Ludwig, the research and conferences officer at the International Forum for Democratic Studies.

Listen to the full conversation below:

Nye defined soft power as resting on the ability to attract and sharp power on the ability to manipulate.

In November 2017, the National Endowment for Democracy released a report titled "Sharp Power": Rising Authoritarian Influence in the Democratic World which sought to understand why authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia were investing billions of dollars in efforts that might be typically regarded as forms of soft power to shape public opinions and perceptions around the world.

"Their initiatives were not necessarily aimed at winning hearts and minds in the general publics of the democracies, but instead they sought to manipulate the information environment by encouraging policy elites and thought leaders in the democracies to adopt particular narratives while at the same time acting to preempt, neutralize, and censor criticism of their regimes," said Ludwig. "We determined that a new term was needed. Whereas soft power tends to emerge in a more organic fashion from the values, cultures, and civic institutions of a society, ‘sharp power’ reflects the ability of authoritarian regimes to pierce, penetrate, or perforate the information environment and public sphere of targeted countries."

Nye pointed out that the rise of information technology has made sharp power much more important and effective today.

"While the rule of law and openness make democracies asymmetrically vulnerable, they are also critical values that we need to defend."

Joseph Nye

"In the 1990s, there was a lot of optimism that the internet would be marked by decentralized and democratic effects," said Nye. "President Clinton once argued that China’s efforts to censor the internet would be like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. But today, in the face of successful Chinese control of the internet and Russia’s interference in the 2016 American election, the democracies find themselves on the defensive."

He added that autocracies are able to protect themselves by controlling information while the openness of democracies create vulnerabilities that the autocracies can exploit through cyber information warfare. While this is not necessarily a new phenomenon, he argued that the speed and low cost of spreading disinformation has changed.

"Ironically, one of the causes of these vulnerabilities is the rise of social media and mobile devices," he said. "If you go back to George Orwell and his image of Big Brother, citizens now voluntarily carry Big Brother around in their pockets. Along with Big Data and artificial intelligence, technology has made the problem of defending democracy from information warfare far more complicated than was foreseen a decade ago. While the rule of law and openness make democracies asymmetrically vulnerable, they are also critical values that we need to defend."

"In China, the Communist Party is well aware that power depends not only on whose army wins but also on whose story wins."

Shanthi Kalathil

Kalathil argued that authoritarian regimes tend to project values externally that they live by internally. 

"When we examine the ways the major authoritarian regimes engage internationally we start to see how this manifests itself through what we call sharp power," she said. "In China, the Communist Party is well aware that power depends not only on whose army wins but also on whose story wins. For them, this means shutting down contending views, literally erasing those views from public discourse by coercion, if necessary, and restricting that voluntary component on which true soft power depends."

She pointed out that these tactics go beyond controlling the narrative within China, citing an example of African journalists working in Africa and hired by Chinese state media who were not allowed to report negatively about their own African governments.

Kalathil also argued that democracies do not yet know which metrics should be used to measure the success of autocracies’ sharp power efforts, noting that public approval or "winning hearts and minds" might not necessarily be the right metric, such as when measuring the success of soft power efforts.

"Today, in the face of successful Chinese control of the internet and Russia’s interference in the 2016 American election, the democracies find themselves on the defensive."

Joseph Nye

"How do you show self-censorship, for example?" she asked. "Also, people to people exchanges—which are usually considered some of the most fundamental ways by which countries can engage in soft power—can at times shade into sharp power. We in the democracies need to be fully aware of the conditions that surround our expectations for these exchanges and the expectations on the other side. For example, when Chinese students come to the United States, are they really free to speak their minds? Do they really feel as though they are getting the most out of that exchange experience without feeling some pressure to self-censor?"

Kalathil argued that democracies should live by their democratic values while calling out authoritarian behavior and avoid engaging in xenophobic activities that would diminish their true soft power. 

Both Nye and Kalathil said there needs to be greater transparency on the part of universities and other institutions in democracies who have partnerships with cultural institutions such as China’s Confucius Institute to determine whether benign cultural activities start becoming manipulative sources of sharp power.

"We shouldn’t kid ourselves that people in China can go against the wishes of the Communist Party," said Nye. "On the other hand, we benefit from having contact with Chinese students. We can slightly open their minds or give them broader perspectives. It doesn’t help us to close down these institutions, but we are going to have to monitor them more carefully. We have to set the value framework."

"Democracies need to get off the back foot and understand it’s not just a case of reinvigorating institutions that may have been effective during the Cold War, but rethinking how democracies can most effectively project their voices and define their values."

Shanthi Kalathil

Nye and Kalathil agreed that the closing of the U.S. Information Agency in the late 1990s was a mistake, noting that institutions such as USIA would be valuable instruments in the information warfare playing out today. Nye pointed out that USIA recognized that developing soft power takes time.

"The closing of USIA and other moments where the United States and other democracies retreated from that space were emblematic of that post-Cold War moment where the defining sentiment seemed to be, ‘Well, we won, so let’s pack it in,’" said Kalathil. “Now we’ve arrived at this post-post-Cold War moment. That’s a terrible term for it and we’re still trying to define what the current era is. Someone defined it as an era of ‘strategic competition between authoritarian regimes and democracies.’ If that’s the case, democracies need to get off the back foot and understand it’s not just a case of reinvigorating institutions that may have been effective during the Cold War, but rethinking how democracies can most effectively project their voices and define their values."

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Justin Chapman is the Communications Officer at the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Learn more about the Summer Teleconference Series and read summaries of previous installments in the series.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.

The Domestication of International Affairs

AUGUST 13, 2018
By: Madison Jones McAleese, Justin Chapman, Foreign Policy News

In the span of just a few months, President Trump has made significant changes to the United States’ role in the international community. Trump removed the United States from the Iran Nuclear Deal and held discussions about creating a new deal with North Korea; he moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and recently removed the United States from the UN Human Rights Council, to name a few. Trump publicly praises Kim Jong-un and sides with Vladimir Putin while criticizing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the European Union.

The Trump administration has given new meaning to partnerships, deals, negotiations, treaties, understandings, covenants, and indeed all of international relations. What does this mean for the future of international affairs? How does the United States move forward within the liberal world order if our international institutions are being threatened?

First, we need to understand that international relations have very little to do with international issues. The administration seems keen on the domestication of international affairs—that is, making foreign policy decisions based on interests at home. Make no mistake, Trump’s recent policies are not made loosely; he is purposeful in his decision-making.

What’s best in Trump’s mind is not necessarily best for America. His general policy of "America First" would be more accurately stated as, "L’état, c’est moi": the state is me.

Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem appeases the evangelical base of conservatives who, in large numbers, helped to elect Trump. The newly imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum were created to protect the U.S. manufacturing industry, while withdrawing from the COP21 Paris Climate Agreement was a nod toward U.S. coal, petroleum, and natural gas groups.

The president’s close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could explain his hardline stance against Iran, despite his softening on North Korea. Not to mention the personal glory, and potential financial gain, of achieving the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The Trump administration is clearly making important international policy decisions to help garner political support from conservative Christians, donors, manufacturers, the fossil fuels industry, and more. He is domesticating what should be international.

But President Trump is not making feckless decisions. He is putting "America First" in his own mind. But what’s best in Trump’s mind is not necessarily best for America. His general policy of “America First” would be more accurately stated as, "L’état, c’est moi": the state is me.

It’s Trump versus the world. Not America versus the world.

In setting aside national security and long-term international competitiveness in order to answer to powerful lobbies at home, the president’s loyalty to these lobbies could undercut the importance of the international institutions we have worked so hard to build.

But this isn’t meant to be an anti-Trump diatribe. We must remember international policy has answered to domestic interests before. Isolationism and "America First" is not new. But the post-World War II order made way for a new paradigm of international engagement where the United States led on the global stage. We gave more credence to international institutions, cooperated with democratic allies, and put our trust in the diplomatic corps, our military, and intelligence agencies to carry out international relations in our best interests.

Under President Trump, he alone is running international relations and is acting on behalf of lobbies loyal to him.

In setting aside national security and long-term international competitiveness in order to answer to powerful lobbies at home, the president’s loyalty to these lobbies could undercut the importance of the international institutions we have worked so hard to build.

We propose a full court press. We must encourage our institutions to look beyond our own national interests. We can maintain America’s place in a world built on relationships and cooperation, striving towards peace. Public diplomacy can help us achieve these goals; regional leaders, like mayors, governors, business leaders, educators, and those in the arts and entertainment industry can fill that role.

Congressional leaders should speak to the importance of international institutions like the United Nations, and the significance of joining and adhering to multilateral agreements with our allies.

Local leaders like Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Deputy Mayor for International Affairs Nina Hachigian are enhancing LA’s position on the global stage by promoting action on climate change, encouraging trade, and welcoming immigrants. New York City’s Office for International Affairs, led by Commissioner Penny Abeywardena, is focused on promoting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and connecting New Yorkers to the global diplomatic community. Cities like San Diego, Seattle, and Vancouver cooperate frequently, as do Miami and Havana, and El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Here at the Pacific Council on International Policy, we are working to establish the West Coast as a foreign policy powerhouse.

There is an increased desire for cities to establish themselves globally, especially now as the United States finds itself isolated from the international community. But we need to do more. Congressional leaders must step up and speak to the great partnerships the United States has with the world by highlighting our alliances with Canada and Mexico. They should speak to the importance of international institutions like the United Nations, and the significance of joining and adhering to multilateral agreements with our allies.

And educators, artists, entertainers, and business leaders should do the same. Encourage international cooperation and engagement. Facilitate connections with our allies. Teach students about the global community. American interests can still be served, and even optimized, by collaboration with international actors.

L’état, c’est moi. But not for long.

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Madison Jones is the Communications Associate at the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Justin Chapman is the Communications Officer at the Pacific Council on International Policy.

This article was originally published by Foreign Policy News. Also published by the Pacific Council.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.