News Abroad

Why Today's Peace Activists Should Not Be Discouraged: An Example from 1958

by Lawrence S. Wittner

After nearly five years of bloody, costly war in Iraq, with no end in sight, many peace activists feel discouraged.  Protest against the war and the rise of antiwar public opinion seem to have had little effect upon government policy.But, in fact, it is too early to say.  Who really knows what impact peace activism and widespread peace sentiment have had in the past five years or will have in the near future?  Certainly not historians, who will spend decades pulling toge

The Army Monograph that Predicted Just About Everything that's Happened in Iraq

by Conrad C. Crane and W. Andrew Terrill

HNN Editor: Dr. Conrad Crane is sometimes referred to as the historian who predicted what would happen in Iraq. In point of fact a lot of historians warned that we were headed into a mess. But Crane, Director of the U. S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, PA, bravely issued his warning from his perch at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. His monograph, co-authore

Resurrecting Christendom: A Blueprint

by Timothy R. Furnish

Last September Jim Pinkerton penned a brilliant cover story for the American Conservative entitled “The Once & Future Christendom,”1 wherein he argued that Western civilization could only be saved from the onslaught of global radical Islam by uniting under the umbrella of its shared Christian heritage. He illuminated his thesis with trenchant examples taken from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

Russia – Again America’s “Dark Twin”?

by David S. Foglesong

After years of ambivalence about post-Soviet Russia, many Americans appear to be reverting to the historic habit of treating Russia as America’s shadow self and

The Great Danger If Russia Stays on the Path It's On

by Andreas Umland

The roots of Russia’s currently rising nationalism are threefold: pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet. The idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” i.e. of a special Russian mission in world history, goes back several centuries. Russian nationalism had been – contrary to what many in the West believed – an important element of Soviet ideology ever since the 1930s. Like in the early 19th century when Moscow’s so-called Slavophiles applied German nativist thought t

We Cannot Afford to Neglect Nuclear Disarmament

by William Lambers

Russia's plans for new nuclear weapons should serve as a wake-up call for the United States. The last thing Americans want to see are nuclear weapons popping up anywhere around the globe. We must regain the initiative toward nuclear disarmament by opening talks on additional bilateral nuclear arms reductions with Russia.During the Cold War, nuclear disarmament was a long-term goal of U.S. foreign policy. President Reagan called for "the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons

Is Globalization Here to Stay? (Maybe, Maybe Not)

by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke

To commentators such as Thomas Friedman, today’s globalization is a largely technological phenomenon. Once learned, new technologies ar

South Korea's Leader Tries to Turn His Back on History

by Alexis Dudden

South Korean president-elect Lee Myung-bak has wasted no time stirring things up in Seoul. True to his Hyundai Construction CEO stripes, the businessman-politician for the people wants to act quickly on his campaign pledge to increase peoples’ incomes. One way to do this, he believes, is by rapidly destroying government bureaucracies that he says waste time and money. He promises to be president of the bottom line. Of course many are eager to have more cash in their pockets. Lee&

We Could Take Humanitarian Lessons from Herbert Hoover

by William Lambers

On May 17, 1946, former President Herbert Hoover spoke to America about a world threat "more destructive than armies," a force so powerful as to bring &qu

Putin’s New Man at Brussels

by Andreas Umland

On 10th January 2008, the Russian President named Dmitry Rogozin (b. 1963) as his government’s new ambassador at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels. Vladimir Putin’s appointment should raise attention in the West as it is a move that, in many ways, exemplifies what is currently going on in Moscow and where Russia is heading. Rogozin’s promotion is characteristic of a number of recent trends in both domestic and foreign policies of the Kremlin.

A Nuclear-Free World? Policymaking Elites and the Public Agree

by Lawrence S. Wittner

On January 15, 2008, in an Op-Ed column entitled "Toward a Nuclear-Free World," four concerned American citizens called upon U.S. government and other governments to set "the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons" and to take substantial action toward this goal.  No, these Americans weren't leaders of Peace Action, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Physicians for Social Responsibility

An American Historian Visits China

by Melvin Small

In recent months, stories about China seem to appear in the papers virtually every day.  I am no old China Hand, but I do write and teach about contemporary American foreign policy and, consequently, am familiar with China’s political history.  But I was not prepared for my visit to China this past summer.   After a standard 12 day American charter tour (Shanghai, Yangtze cruise, Chongqing, Sian, Beijing), I am still trying to process the startling things I ex

The Lesson America Can Learn from Its Own History

by Johann N. Neem

Over a century ago, the British historian Lord Acton warned that absolute power corrupts absolutely. While he acknowledged that humanity may be capable of much good, Acton worried that possessing too much power would tempt us to do wrong. And it has. As far back as the 16th century political thinkers argued that only a balance of power among states, the international equivalent of checks and balances, would preserve peace. Unchecked power would destabilize the world. They might have h

Democracy by Force, or by Example?

by Joyce Appleby

Spreading democracy has become the nation's principal foreign policy goal. Yet there has been little sustained public discussion about this ambitious program.  A few op-eds perhaps. Neither house of Congress has taken it up. Nor have polls asked voters if they share their president's stated aim to promote democracy in the Middle East, by force if necessary. It's a proposition that deserves some thought, and we're fortunate that in 1824 the House of Representatives actually gave

Why Do We Always Forget How to Wage Wars We Successfully Fought in the Past?

by Raymond Callahan

At first sight, the recurring difficulties experienced by conventional military forces when confronted by unconventional opponents is quite surprising.  Unconventional war – whether labeled insurgency, guerrilla war, asymmetrical war or some other label du jour – is as old as history, the natural response of those who feel unable to openly confront conventional opponents.  Yet armies, even quite good ones, often fumble their initial responses to such opponents,

The Turks Go After Kurdish Rebels ... And Kill 200 Sheep?

by Gordon Taylor

Two weeks ago, the Turkish Air Force launched fifty jets, most of them Lockheed-Martin F-16s, toward targets in the Kandil Mountains of northern Iraq. In the following hours, according to bianet.org, some $20 million was spent for fuel, bombs, and missiles, twelve villages were damaged, and five PKK Kurdish guerrillas were killed along with two civilians. Doing the math, we see that ten F-16s were needed to kill one guerrilla, giving us a cost of $4 million per guerrilla.For veteran Tu

Ron Paul Is Correct About Pakistan

by David T. Beito and Scott Horton

The conventional wisdom among presidential candidates is that the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has proved the importance of continued American meddling in that land. Both Republicans and Democrats are rushing to mumble incoherent platitudes before the cameras while several have even proclaimed their next big idea for how Pakistan ought to be run.Democratic candidate Bill Richardson made his first headline in months by proclaiming that President Bush o

Back in the USSR?

by Andreas Umland

The outcome of Russia’s fifth post-Soviet parliamentary elections was, seemingly, a triple victory for the Russian President Vladimir Putin: First, United Russia, whose only listed candidate on the ballot was Putin himself, won the elections with an impressive 64% of the turnout. This translates into 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma for the Kremlin-created party. Such a large majority will allow its faction to adopt unilaterally not only ordinary laws, but also constitutional la

Is the U.S. an Empire?

by Charles S. Maier

Iraq alone would not decide whether America had become or was to become an empire. Other issues might also have an impact: To what degree would the United States attempt

The Return of Antisemitism

by Steve Hochstadt

Comment by Daniel PipesResponse by Steve Hochstadt Antisemitism is back. Of course, antisemitism never completely disappeared in America. Everywhere I have lived, signs of prejudice against Jews popped up: complaints about being “Jewed” out of money, acceptance of Jewish stereotypes, complaints about supposed Jewish control of newspapers, films, or whatever else the complaina