This writer has recently published a book which examines the cultural origins of a certain American outlook that, since the Second World War, has inspired generally unsuccessful military interventions into non-Western countries, the most dramatic of them being the...
The Obama administration has at last issued its own National Security Strategy, a 52-page document that takes the place of the strategy statements published by the George W. Bush administration, beginning in 2002, notable for their belligerence in proclaiming...
Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam By Gordon M. Goldstein Holt, 300 pp., $16.00 (paper) The debate over foreign policy that culminated in President Barack Obama's address to the nation on December 1, 2009, concerns a war that began with...
President Barack Obama's speech to the West Point graduating class last Saturday was meant to convey a "new" American national security strategy, less evident in his words than in the manner in which the White House pitched the speech to the press, the press following...
The European Union doesn't know where it stands at this moment. NATO thinks it knows and is gambling. Has the EU a future, or has disintegration set in? The behavior of the Germans under the conservative Merkel government is taken by many to signal that the end, if...
Large and firmly implanted bureaucratic organizations are almost impossible to kill, even when they have no reason to continue to exist, as NATO has not since the Soviet Union, communism, and the Warsaw Pact all collapsed. There is no equivalent to driving a stake...
The meeting on nuclear security convoked by Barack Obama this week was meant to prevent nuclear proliferation. This is a worthy cause, but – while I am writing before the meeting closes – I would assume that it will at best produce empty promises, as the...
Washington once again finds itself dangerously entangled with the hostile policies, nationalistic interests and supporters, and personal ambitions of a foreign figure whom it counted on to serve American interests. This time it is in Afghanistan, the latest in what,...
DOHA, Qatar - Internationally speaking, there are only two subjects to talk about in the Middle East. These are Israel, the Palestinians, and the Americans; and Iran and Israel. The two subjects dominated the annual meeting here of the Institute for Mediterranean...
