The Next Front

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.

Senator Christopher S. "Kit" Bond (R-MO) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, the only Republican that year to win a seat previously held by a Democrat. He was re-elected in 1992, 1998, and 2004. In the Senate he has improved care for veterans and service men and women and has built a reputation as an advocate for a strong U.S. military, as a reformer of the intelligence community, and as an expert on Southeast Asia. He is vice chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.

Lewis M. Simons has been a foreign correspondent since 1967, reporting from Vietnam and throughout Southeast Asia; India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran; China, Japan, North and South Korea, and the former Soviet Union. He wrote for the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and Knight-Ridder Newspapers and won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the Marcos family's hidden billions. Author of Worth Dying For, he is a regular contributor to National Geographic and his op-ed articles have appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post.