Doug Bandow

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Making War to Keep Peace (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 367 pp. Reviewed by Doug Bandow Jeane Kirkpatrick, who served as UN ambassador under President Ronald Reagan, was commonly viewed as the godmother of neoconservatism. Yet when she died last year she had left the American Enterprise Institute, the think tank most … Continue reading “Making War to Keep Peace“

Put a straight-jacket on them. That seems to be Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks’s position on President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney. As she explains, “We’re in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration’s interrogation and detention … Continue reading “Iran, World War III, and the Madness of President George”

The despotic regime in Myanmar is among the most odious governments on earth. The military has ruled the isolated state for more than four decades. The urban democracy movement, symbolized by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, for years has battled bullets and beatings. Even more bloody has been the half-century struggle for autonomy by … Continue reading “Make China Be Nice?”

John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 484 pp.   The collective shrieking and caterwauling has been loud and continuous. How dare these two scholars – John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt from the Kennedy School of … Continue reading “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy“

Amidst the smoking ruin of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy comes yet another vision of the future: Iraq like Korea. A half century hence American forces will remain on patrol along the Euphrates. It’s a profoundly stupid idea, but then, no other administration vision involving Iraq has survived contact with reality. No weapons of mass … Continue reading “The Korean Failure as a Model for Iraq”

The Republican Party once professed to promote fiscal responsibility. It sought to limit government growth, expected program benefits to exceed costs, and refused to give any agency a blank check. No longer. If there is a Republican Party consensus – other than the ever courageous presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) – it is that … Continue reading “The Price of Promiscuous Intervention”

Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 361 pp. by Doug Bandow Communist dictators and apparatchiks have routinely visited the U.S., with nary an eyebrow raised in polite society. Third World dictators have traipsed through Washington with only an occasional protest. But the … Continue reading “Treacherous Alliance“

Other than an increasingly beleaguered band of administration factotums and neoconservative propagandists, few Americans defend the decision to invade Iraq. The mistakes have been too catastrophic and too many for the rest of us to take seriously more of the same promises about the coming new millennium in Iraq. But the crisis of U.S. foreign … Continue reading “Desperately Searching for a New Foreign Policy”

After every Republican presidential debate, viewers must ask: are the candidates crazy? Not Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who has proposed dropping a nuke on Mecca or Medina, but the others, who have tied themselves to the Bush administration’s disastrous Iraq policy. Only Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has forthrightly criticized the administration. In the latest presidential … Continue reading “Are Republicans Crazy?”

Susan L. Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 320 pp. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) seems destined for superpower status. Already the world’s most populous nation, the PRC has been enjoying one of globe’s highest rates of economic growth. Chinese trade and investment now envelop the globe, and Beijing is … Continue reading “China: Fragile Superpower“