In looking ahead to the new year, and considering the events of the year 2000, I am reminded of what the late Murray N. Rothbard said in assessing the political terrain of a decade ago: he was addressing libertarians and their sympathizers, but Rothbard's advice...
Scoping out Condoleezza Rice
Let me get the bemusedly angry sidebar out of the way first. The most egregious offender in the media I saw was Tom Raum of the Associated Press, who began his story, "Carrying through on a promise to bring diversity to his administration, President-elect Bush on...
Western Civilization: Love It Or Leave It
AGAIN THE MILLENNIUM Today we stand just a few days this side of the real thousand-year mark, that is, midnight 31 December 2000. You knew I wasn't going to let that go, didn't you? I still wonder why all the calendar-challenged classes insisted on having a big song...
THE CANONIZATION OF COLIN POWELL
THE CANONIZATION OF COLIN POWELL Colin Powell had been officially named secretary of state for barely five minutes and already he was beating the war drums, demanding the beefing up of Iraqi sanctions and not-so-subtly hinting at a military confrontation in the Middle...
Israeli Wild Cards in the Peace Process
Fresh from his triumphs in bringing peace to Northern Ireland or at least the pretense of peace for a few weeks or months former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, as head of the new U.S.-led commission formed after the abortive Sharm al Sheik meeting a couple of months ago,...
Competing Producers of Security: Round One
STATES, NON-STATES, AND HISTORICAL METHOD Hendrik Spruyt’s The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton, 1994) is a very stimulating account of how modern states came to be and, perhaps more importantly, why competing forms of governance fell by the...
If It’s Good Enough for Serbia’s Goose, Why Not for Croatia’s Gander?
In an AP article dated 21 November, Croatia’s president, Stipe Mesic, insisted that "ousting Slobodan Milosevic was not enough," and "urged Yugoslavia’s new leaders on Tuesday to hand him over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal and face up to...
Making Lemonade
Given how odd and virtually unprecedented the Florida Follies are in a presidential election, any prediction should be guarded and qualified. But at this point – and the stock market seems to agree – it almost looks as if it is all over but the whining and...
The Will to Power
There has been a good deal of talk, during this post-election of our discontent, about sparing no effort to discern the will of the people, a process whereby the next president and the next administration will presumably be blessed with a shroud of legitimacy. It is...
A Peace Platform?
The closeness of the U.S. presidential vote suggests strongly that the next president will have very little even resembling a mandate to conduct foreign affairs. That lack of a mandate might prove a blessing if it is used to reassess current commitments and announce...