News Abroad

Is Sharansky Right? Does Everyone Want to Be Free?

by Martin Kramer

On February 23, 2005, Tel Aviv University hosted a panel on democratization, featuring Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner, who currently serves as the Israeli minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs; Hebrew University political scientist Shlomo Avineri; and Martin Kramer. The panel focused on Sharansky's much-discussed book, The Case for Democr

Is Europe Dying? Notes on a Crisis of Civilizational Morale

by George Weigel

America's "Europe problem" and Europe's "America problem" have been staple topics of transatlantic debate for the past several years. Political leaders, media commentators, and businessmen usually discuss those problems in terms of policy differences: differences over prosecuting the war on terrorism, differences over the role of the United Nations in world affairs, differences over the Kyoto Protocol on the global environment, differences over Iraq. The pol

What's at the Bottom of the Growing Rift Between South Korea and the US?

by Sheila Miyoshi Jager

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 led to one of history’s worst atrocities. Known as the Taejon massacre, an estimated 5000 to 7500 civilian deaths have been attributed to a single incident committed by the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) in late September 1950. The incident, described as “worthy of being recorded in the annals of history along with the Rape of Nanking, the Warsaw Ghetto, and other similar mass exterminations” in the offici

Series: What America Needs to Do to Achieve Its Foreign Policy Goals ... Re Nuclear Weapons (2)

by William R. Polk

Click here to read the other articles in this series. America must renounce the threatening unilateralist approach to other nations proclaimed by the Bush administration to begin to reëstablish its leadership. Reëstablish is the key word. What I have to say is not so much an argument for change as for restoration, not radical but conservative, not theoretical but proven by experience. So,

Series: What America Needs to Do to Achieve Its Foreign Policy Goals ... Getting Serious About the UN (3)

by William R. Polk

Click here to read the other articles in this series. The reality of our world is that, like it or not, it is pluralistic. We may be the sole superpower although our perch may be more temporary than we now think, but we cannot accomplish unilaterally what we crave. And, for better or for worse, our best institutional means of action is the United Nations. So, we must stop the pointless and often ridiculous g

Series: What America Needs to Do to Achieve Its Foreign Policy Goals ... Dealing with Terrorism (4)

by William R. Polk

Click here to read the other articles in this series. What is now being done about terrorism has proven ineffective. We begin with misunderstanding what “terrorism” is.1 It is not a thing, a place or a group. To speak of waging war on it is vacuous. It is simply a tactic which is used in desperation by those who do not have power comparable to those they regar

Beyond Imperialism: The New Internationalism

by Akira Iriye

Much has been said about the United States having become, or having to become, an empire. To provide the chaotic world, especially in the wake of the Cold War, with some semblance of law and order, it has been asserted, the international community needs a new world order, a global empire, a superpower that can speak on behalf of all countries and all peoples, a power willing to use its military and economic resources to protect all against the forces of violence and anarchy. There is only one na

Why Remaking Iraq Might Be a Lot Harder than Remaking Japan Was

by David Greenberg

Over the last few weeks, Iraq war talk has suddenly leapfrogged over the prospective combat itself to how to remake the country after we win. The New York Times reports that the White House is considering a military occupation, and a recent Atlantic features a James Fallows thinkpiece on how nation-building might play out. Both accounts cite one particular historical case as a model: post-World War II Japan, in which Gen. Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander for Alli

Are the Saudis Destined to Become Our Enemies?

by Josh Pollack

Today, no single relationship affects the economic security of the United States-and indeed, the industrial world as a whole-than the one between America and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi regime controls a quarter of the world's oil reserves and the bulk of unused oil production capacity, serving as the linchpin of the OPEC cartel. Saudi Arabia's role assures customers price stability in the global oil market, keeping inf

Did Jonathan Pollard Deserve a Life Sentence?

by Edwin Black

He's being released at the end of the year.  Here's how it happened that he got a life sentence. 

Can Vietnam Teach Lessons Useful in Iraq? A Symposium

by Jamie Glazov, David Kaiser, Stephen J. Morris, Michael Rubin

Following is a symposium conducted by Jamie Glazov in FrontPageMagazine.com with: David Kaiser, the author of Politics and War: European Conflict from Phillip II to Hitler, Economic Diplomacy and the Origins of the Second World War and American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War;Stephen J. Morris, a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at SAIS Johns Hopkins University

We Should Call Torture By Its Proper Name

by Edward Peters

Torture has not been unknown in the late twentieth century, but it has often been very reluctantly or marginally known. As Alan Dershowitz has pointed out, “Torture has been off the agenda of civilized discourse for so many centuries that it is a subject reserved largely for historians rather than contemporary moralists (though it remains a staple of abstract philosophers debating the virtues and vices of absolutism).”(1) Since 9/11, however, torture is back on several ag

Sistani, Sadr and the Shia: The Whole World Is Watching

by Paul Sullivan

The Shia have been brutalized, murdered, raped, and robbed by the leaders of Iraq for decades. They have never been able to have a significant say in the running of a country where they have been majority since the late 19 th century. They clearly think this is their time. At the same time there has been an ongoing power struggle within the Shia community that may have led to the murders of Ayatollah Sayyed Abdul Majid Al Khoie, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir Al-Hakim and others. Even th

The Bush Administration's Militarism

by Lawrence S. Wittner

The word "militarism"--which refers to a reverence for military ideas and policies--seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years. But perhaps it should be revived, for it tells us much about the Bush administration's national security policy.In the year 2000, the United States was militarily supreme throughout the world, with a military budget that surpassed that of all its potential rivals combined. Nevertheless, George W. Bush, campaigning for the presidency, castiga

Iraq in April 2004

by Paul Sullivan

The situation is very complex and fluid. As we approach the June 30 deadline it may get more complex, more fluid and much more violent. Some in the U.S. had completely unrealistic expectations given the facts on the ground in Iraq. These overly optimistic predictions have not been met. It makes one wonder whether they knew the facts on the ground, or whether they considered such harsh realities to be an important part of a decision-making process. Part of the p

King Chirac: Off with Their Scarves!

by Wayne te Brake

French President Jacques Chirac's recent call for legislation forbidding the tokens of religious affiliation – headscarves, skullcaps and “large” crosses – in French public schools is pregnant with historical and political irony, not least of which is the political clout it implicitly gives to teenage Muslim women. Unfortunately, it also distorts the history of pluralism and religious freedom in the West. In a passionate, nationally televised address on Dece

Review of Chalmers Johnson's The Sorrows of Empire

by Stanley Kutler

Chalmers Johnson's The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic explores the present extent of what Johnson regards as U.S. militarism and empire. It is a disquieting revelation of the effects of current affairs upon American freedom and democracy. Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and professor emeritus at UC San Diego, is a formidable writer whose many books have garnered considerable acclaim. His work on the Japanese postwar pol

Why We Better Keep an Eye on Azerbaijan

by Ron Briley

While the military occupation of Iraq continues to evoke considerable opposition and distrust among the Iraqi people (even with the capture of Saddam Hussein), the Bush administration has opened a diplomatic offensive to promote democracy in the Middle East. With an estimated four trillion dollars worth of oil lying off the western shores of the Caspian Sea, the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan figures prominently in American plans for the region. Western oil companies are

Why Are Bolivians Mad at the United States?

by Jeremy Ravi Mumford

Bolivia's new president, Carlos Mesa, came to power in mid-October after violent protests drove his predecessor, Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada, from office. This small, poor South American country is hardly familiar to most Americans, but we have a stake in it, especially because our policy is failing there. It's failing because Bolivians are trapped in a colonial past -- and not just in the sense that the United States dominates their government. At a deeper level, B

What Bush Has in Common with TR Should Worry Us

by William Loren Katz

Some time after 9/11 U.S. News and World Report (January 14, 2002) revealed that President Bush's spin-masters were recasting his image from the flegmatic William McKinley who launched the Spanish-American war in 1898 to that of brash Teddy Roosevelt, who said, "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one" and carried a list of six target nations. TR biographer Edmund Morris has lectured in the White House about how Bush's traits of "ener