Roundup: Media's Take

David Warren: Is Obama Like Gorbachev?

[David Warren, once editor of the Idler Magazine, is widely travelled - especially in the Middle and Far East. He has been writing for the Citizen since 1996.] There is nothing new under the sun: and I mean, nothing. It is a point brought home to us with increasing force by the expansion of the Internet. Conceive of an "original idea." Now, select two or more keywords suggested by it. Use them as search terms, and you will soon find that, say, 438,000 other people have ent

Drew Thompson: China at Sixty

[Drew Thompson is the Director of China Studies and Starr Senior Fellow at The Nixon Center] China celebrates the 60th anniversary of its founding today. The massive military parade, propaganda films and genuine outpouring of pride by the Chinese people are befitting China’s growing clout and influence. I can not forget sitting up at midnight on July 1, 1997 when Hong Kong was handed over to China and a smaller parade of military vehicles crossed the border into the New Territories

Robert Nedelkoff: The Statue of Mao In Yorba Linda

[Robert Nedelkoff worked on behalf of the Richard Nixon Foundation at the National Archives in College Park, MD From 1997 until March 2009. He has published articles in several magazines, including GQ and McSweeney’s.] Today, as is noted elsewhere at TNN, the People’s Republic of China celebrates its sixtieth anniversary. The day is being marked with celebrations throughout that nation and in Chinese communities around the world. But there are also a considerable Chinese with a prof

John Dickerson: Why Obama may want to ask Bush what to do in Afghanistan

[John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail.] President Obama came into office promising he wouldn't be captive to groupthink. He would test the assumptions of his advisers by seeking outside voices. As if to prove he meant it, he has already spoken to his predecessor at least once. He may want to do so again as he puzzles through what to do in Afghanistan. The call wouldn't be for strategic advice—Obama has kept much of the Bush

Economist Editorial: China's place in the world

FOR a country that prides itself on its “peaceful rise”, it was an odd way to celebrate a birthday. The People’s Republic of China marked its diamond jubilee on October 1st with a staggering display of military muscle-flexing (see article). Goose-stepping soldiers, tanks and intercontinental ballistic missiles filed through Tiananmen Square, past the eponymous Gate of Heavenly Peace, where, 60 years ago, as every Chinese schoolchild is taught (wrongly, it now seems), Mao Zedong declared that the

Caitlin Talmadge: To win in Afghanistan Obama must learn from Vietnam

[Caitlin Talmadge is a visiting fellow at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University. She is also a doctoral candidate in the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and coauthor of "US Defense Politics: the Origins of Security Policy."] A prompt exit from the country – and attainment of many of America's more ambitious strategic goals there – ultimately depends on the viability of Afghan security forces, not on the US

World views: Commission finds Tbilisi bears prime responsibility for the war in Georgia

La Repubblica - Italy The left-liberal daily La Repubblica calls the EU report on the war in Georgia a Solomonic judgement:"The report accuses both sides of severely violating international law and human rights. But paradoxically the effect of this Solomonic harshness has been that both the Kremlin and the government in Tbilisi have welcomed the report. Both emphasise the accusations against their adversary, while playing down those against their own military. ... But even if

John McWhorter: What Should African-American Studies Students Learn?

[John H. McWhorter, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes and comments extensively on race, ethnicity and cultural issues for the Manhattan Institute.] While this year has become best known as the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, it was also forty years ago that the first African-American Studies department was established, at San Francisco State University. Forty-one fall semesters later, there are hundreds of such departments. Has what they teach evolved

Lincoln Mitchell: Why 2010 Will Not Be 1994

[Lincoln Mitchell is Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics, Columbia University.] In the last few weeks, Republicans have put a new twist on their campaign of never ending fear. Now the Republicans are trying to scare Democrats into thinking that 2010 will be another 1994, meaning that the Democratic Party is poised for a sweeping defeat which will vindicate the Republican Party and show that they were right about Obama, Pelosi and Reid all along.

Henry A. Giroux: The Powell Memo and the Teaching Machines of Right-Wing Extremists

[Henry A. Giroux holds the Global TV Network chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada.] Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, echoing the feelings of many progressives, recently wrote in The New York Times about how dismayed he was over the success right-wing ideologues have had not only in undercutting Obama's health care bill, but also in mobilizing enormous public support against almost any reform aimed at rolling back the economic, politi

Barry Friedman: Why the Supreme Court is irrelevant.

[Barry Friedman is the Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. His book, the will of the people: how public opinion has influenced the supreme court and shaped the meaning of the constitution, is being published this month.] The most-watched case of the Supreme Court's last term, which ended in June, invited the justices to hold unconstitutional a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The law required certain jurisdictions--largely in the Old Sout

David Bromwich: William Safire: Wars Made Out of Words

[David Bromwich is Professor of Literature at Yale University.] There were no thrills while he reigned, but neither were there any headaches. He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance." What Mencken said of Coolidge can be reversed in the case of Safire. There were plenty of thrills, and after the thrills, the field was littered with casualties. And he had tons of ideas. He was keen to share them as soon as he thought them up. The career that took him from public relations to

Benjamin Schwarz: What the histories of the Depression era tell us about middle-class families in crisis, both then and now

[Benjamin Schwarz is The Atlantic’s literary editor and national editor.] NOT TO BE faux-populist about it, but although such matters as the electoral turmoil in Iran, the Bernanke/Lewis he said/he said, and the bloating of the list of Oscar finalists (to take the week of June 21) constitute what Charlie Rose and his knowing ilk like to think of as the national discussion, I suspect that an altogether different set of concerns haunts the commuter driving home, is fumbled over on the

John Prados: Diplomatic History in the Bush era

[John Prados is a senior fellow of the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. He is author of 'How the Cold War Ended: Debating and Doing History'(Potomac Books, forthcoming).] Apart from all the other excesses of the Bush Years there may be special problems for diplomatic history and historians. To some degree this is rooted in the changing dynamics of international relations but it also has a policy aspect. When the diplomatic history of the presidency of George W. Bush come

David Flumenbaum: Mao Takes Manhattan: Empire State Building Goes Red and Yellow for China

[David Flumenbaum is Managing Blog Editor for The Huffington Post] To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China under Communist rule and Mao's 1949 revolution, the Chinese will hold a military parade in Beijing on Thursday of unparalleled size -- 5,000 soldiers, 43,000 fireworks and a display of 52 new weapons -- followed by a civilian parade of 100,000 marchers and 60 floats, many chanting new nationalistic mantras coined by the Chinese government for the occ

Andrew Leonard: Krugman weighs in on Brooks: "Reagan did it"

[Andrew Leonard is senior technology writer for Salon.com.] A few hours after I posted my cranky disagreement with David Brooks' theory of American moral decay yesterday, a reader wrote in to point out that I might have missed the bigger picture: "Brooks situates the original inflection point at 1980," he wrote. "Worth noting who took office as President then and started escalating the public deficits..." Others made the same point in the comments. A

Glenn Greenwald: How similar are the cases against Iran and Iraq?

[Glenn Greenwald is a Salon contributor and was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York.] Scott Shane has an article in today's New York Times examining whether the government and media's behavior now with regard to Iran is similar to what happened in 2002 and 2003 concerning Iraq. I'm quoted in the articl

Zhang Wei-Wei: Eight Ideas Behind China's Success

[Zhang Wei-Wei is a professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations and visiting professor at Tsinghua and Fudan Universities in China. He was a senior English interpreter for Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders in the mid-1980s.] BEIJING — Beijing is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic on Thursday, and the fanfare will undoubtedly irk those whose ideological inclinations do not tolerate a “Communist country” being so self-righteous.

Gordon Chang: Sixty Years of Chinese Communism

[Mr. Chang is the author of "The Coming Collapse of China" (Random House, 2001).] There are, it is sometimes said, "a million truths in China." As the Communist Party celebrates the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic today, there are only three worth keeping in mind. First, the Chinese state will try to project strength. There will be fearsome weapons and 200,000 soldiers and performers in a grand procession in the center of Be

Roger Cohen: Germany Unbound

[Roger Cohen joined The New York Times in 1990. He was a foreign correspondent for more than a decade before becoming acting Foreign Editor on September 11, 2001, and Foreign Editor six months later. In 2009 he was named a columnist of The New York Times.] BERLIN — After two decades, a unified Germany is coming into focus, like some lumbering creature emerging from the mist. Its election result no longer merits a Page 1 story in The New York Times, but it’s still the European behe