Roundup: Media's Take

Douglas J Feith and Abram N Shulsky: The Dangerous Illusion of 'Nuclear Zero'

[Mr. Feith, a former under secretary of defense for policy, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of "War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism" (Harper, 2008). Mr. Shulsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and was director of strategic arms control policy at the Department of Defense from 1982 to 1985.] Moving toward "nuclear zero" is a signature theme of this administration. President Barack Obama's v

Bruce Fleming: The Service Academies’ March Toward Mediocrity

[Bruce Fleming, a professor of English at the United States Naval Academy, is the author of the forthcoming “Bridging the Military-Civilian Divide.”] ...[T]he Naval Academy, where I have been a professor for 23 years, has lost its way. The same is true of the other service academies. They are a net loss to the taxpayers who finance them, as well as a huge disappointment to their students, who come expecting reality to match reputation. They need to be fixed or abolished.

Christopher Hellman: Will Bad Times and a Bad Economy Finally Discipline the Pentagon?

[Christopher Hellman is communications liaison at the National Priorities Project in Northampton, Massachusetts. He was previously a military policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Defense Information, and spent ten years on Capitol Hill as a congressional staffer working on national security and foreign policy issues.]Is that the wake-up smell of coffee wafting through the halls of the Pentagon? After a decade

David Fontana: The Postradical Legal Generation

[David Fontana is an associate professor at George Washington University Law School. professor.] When President Barack Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court last week, he described her appeal in much the same way he has described his own: as a postpartisan figure. Just as Obama and Kagan represent a generation of national political figures trying to be postideological, so too they represent a distinctive generation of figures in elite law schools—as does Obama

Cord Jefferson: Is the Tea Party the New Black Panther Party?

[Cord Jefferson is a staff writer for The Root.] They were armed to the teeth. They were mad. They gathered at public buildings, guns tucked into their waistlines, demanding limited governmental authority and the right to self-determination. They believed the Democratic White House to be an untrustworthy, imperialistic power, one that "robbed" them under spurious circumstances. They were wary of the "Zionist media," and they loved to quote at length from America'

Joshua Kurlantzick: What the Heck Is Going on in Thailand?

[Joshua Kurlantzick is fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.] The idea of Bangkok spiraling into total chaos -- as it has over the past week, with 40 people killed so far in street battles between anti-government protesters and the military -- is shocking to foreigners. Thailand is not Iraq, or Yemen, or Pakistan; as portrayed in endless books, tourism advertisements, and films, it's a lush and peaceful place, the type of country where'd you take a honeymoon

Ted Galen Carpenter: Dealing with Iran

[Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books on international affairs, including Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America (2008). He is also a contributing editor to The National Interest.] Akbar Ganji is someone U.S. officials should heed when it comes to policy toward his native Iran. Ganji, a writer and journalist who became the fifth biennial recipient of the Milton Friedman Award

Abe Greenwald: Saving Iraqi Kurdistan

[Abe Greenwald is associate editor of COMMENTARY and writes regularly for its blog CONTENTIONS.] Erbil, Iraq. In the lobby of a certain hotel in the Kurdish city of Erbil, you find the familiar row of wall clocks indicating current time in various metropolitan hubs. Only something breaks your heart a little about the local twist put on this fixture of jet-set urbanity. Between clocks whose faces have been factory-stamped Istanbul or New York or Madrid, you see one displaying local t

Donald Kirk: Cambodia, Pol Pot, and the Lessions for North Korea

[Donald Kirk, based in South Korea, covered Cambodia and Vietnam in the late 1960s and early '70s for newspapers and magazines. He is the author of several books, most recently "Korea Betrayed: Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine."] Is the regime of Kim Jong Il the cruelest the world has seen since Adolf Hitler's in Germany or Josef Stalin's in the Soviet Union? For all the world has heard about North Korea and its people's suffering, the answer is no. The dubious distinction of cru

Cameron Abadi: The German Debate Over Afghanistan

[Cameron Abadi is associate editor of Foreign Policy.] THIS PAST February, the Bundestag overwhelmingly approved the continuation of the German mission in Afghanistan just as it has done every year since 2003. But it was a vote marked by two palpable differences from previous votes. For the first time, the members of one political grouping—the Left Party—protested on the floor of parliament and were subsequently barred from participating in the debate. The second difference was psyc

Kirk W. Johnson: Left Behind in Iraq

[Kirk W. Johnson is the founder and executive director of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies. He previously served as regional coordinator for reconstruction in Fallujah, Iraq, for the U.S. Agency for International Development. This article was adapted from a version previously published on the List Project's website.] America is leaving Iraq. We already itch to forget. The U.S. media gave more coverage to the elections in Zimbabwe than those held in March across Iraq. We awa

Joseph Nye: China's Century is Not Yet Upon Us

[The writer is University Distinguished Service professor at Harvard, and author of the forthcoming book The Future of Power in the 21st Century.] China’s current reputation for power benefits from projections about the future. Some young Chinese use these projections to demand a greater share of power now, and some Americans urge preparation for a coming conflict similar to that between Germany and Britain a century ago. One should be sceptical about such projections.

Larry Pressler: The Technicality Generation

[Larry Pressler, a former Republican senator from South Dakota, served in the Army in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968.] The problems faced by Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s attorney general, over his depiction of his military service are indicative of a broader disease in our society. The issues of integrity in business and politics that plague us today — the way elites are no longer trusted — are rooted in the dishonesty that surrounded the Vietnam-era draft.... Many of t

David Michael Green: The Age of Political Ennui

[David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.] Watching the British electorate in action (inaction?) during this campaign cycle I'm reminded of ... well, the American electorate. This is nothing new. There's been enormous parallels between the two countries for decades now, even if the timing of that link has gotten a bit skewed of late. Trading back and forth between two centrist parties in the first post-war d

Richard Cohen: A Superpower -- and a President -- With Declining Clout

[Richard Cohen is a columnist for the Washington Post.] Early this month Barack Obama went down to Louisiana to eyeball the possible damage from BP's exploded oil rig, keep the cleanup crews on their toes -- no version of "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" from him -- and show the Gulf Coast states and the rest of the nation his concern. On May 3 , The Post's Web site played the story precisely where it belonged -- entombed in the middle of the page. In its placement,

Henry Olsen: Britain's Compassionate Conservatives

[Henry Olsen is a vice president at the American Enterprise Institute.] The Conservatives had everything going for them heading into the May 6 election: a serious economic crisis, a deeply unpopular prime minister, and a young, vibrant Tory leader. Despite all this, the Tories have entered into government with support from a mere 36% of the electorate. Since its founding by Benjamin Disraeli in 1832, the Tory Party has, with one shining exception, rested on the notion o

Bret Stephens: The End of Nuclear Diplomacy

[Bret Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] There's a hoary cliché about how Western diplomats are always playing checkers while their (invariably) smarter adversaries play chess. In the matter of yesterday's nuclear agreement between Iran, Turkey and Brazil the line doesn't quite work. The game Tehran is playing isn't any more complicated than checkers. The trouble is, they're whipping us at it. As I write these lines, it isn

Jeffrey Goldberg: Beinart, Chait, and that Disappearing Zionist Feeling

[Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. Author of the book Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror, he has reported from the Middle East and Africa. He also writes the magazine's advice column.] Peter Beinart has a new essay (in the New York Review of Books) about the slow death (or possibly not-so-slow death) of Zionist feeling among young, liberal Jews, caused mainly by what he perceives to be the American Jewish establishment's acquiescence to the spr

David Brooks: Children of the ’70s

[David Brooks writes a column for the New York Times.] Today you can walk around the Upper West Side of Manhattan in such ease and safety that you could get the impression it was always this way. But it wasn’t. On July 5, 1961, a gigantic brawl broke out on 84th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. Two policemen, caught in the middle, fired warning shots into the air to stop the fighting, but a mob of 400 engulfed them. Traffic was halted on Columbus as bottle

Robert C. Koons: Liberal Bias Evident in Simplistic Narrative in Which Powerful Federal Government is Sole Engine of Progress and Equality

[Koons is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas. The opinions expressed here are his and do not reflect the views of the university.] The State Board of Education's proposed revisions for K-12 social studies curricula have come under fire from a coalition of left-leaning politicians and their academic allies. Contrary to what an irresponsible media campaign would lead you to believe, the state board has taken a few, small steps in the direction of promoting objectivit