Most Americans have still not gotten beyond the end of the Cold War and associated changes in the nature of the world when it comes to thinking about the Middle East. For decades, both before and after the formation of Israel, the United States has believed it has had...
The revolution that overthrew Yugoslav socialism, led by Vojislav Kostunica, is far from over: having gotten rid of Slobodan Milosevic, and freed the country from the sclerotic grasp of the Serbian Socialist Party, Kostunica became the President of the Federal...
The world may believe that the carefully staged, orchestrated, and subdued signing of the "Made in America" Ohrid framework document translates into peace in Macedonia, the latest Balkan boiling pot. It, however, does not. It will not provide any measurable change to...
Japan's Prime Minister Junichero Koizumi will face many tests in the months to come: reforming Japan's sclerotic economy, reinvigorating a society fossilized by habit and chafing under the heel of the US occupation. The Japanese people have placed their hopes in him,...
During the Cold War, outrage at the idea of "moral equivalence" animated the neoconservative critics of non-interventionism. How dare those leftists hold up the Soviet occupation of Hungary and all of Eastern Europe and equate it with, say, the American occupation of...
There are essentially two types of peace agreements: those that ratify a peace that is in place for whatever reason (conquest, surrender, war-weariness) and those that seek to push forward a "process" that has not yet brought anything resembling an actual peace. One...
In a recent Chicago Tribune article, Michael Lev discussed the question that every foreigner in China finds himself asking after his first trip to the market: Which is better – the free market or the supermarket? After taking a stroll through a muddy, crowded...
The Kitty Genovese of the Balkans The settlement due to be initialed August 13 by both sides in the Macedonian-Albanian conflict has got to be the strangest "peace agreement" in recent history. "War Looms despite Signing of Macedonia Peace Deal," the Reuters headline...
The Framework Agreement for Peace is due to be signed this week by the government of Macedonia and someone who allegedly represents the Albanian rebels. I say "allegedly" because the rebels are not present at the negotiating table and it is not known whether...
My last column, "Hiroshima Mon Amour: Why Americans are barbarians," has provoked a storm of protest from the clueless and the humorless – reinforcing my own conviction that Americans, for the most part, are indeed barbarians, without the ability or the desire to...
