The Nation

Below is a longer version of the article published in The Nation. For the version appearing in The Nation, please click here.

Historical analogies are never exact. Yet many of the choices we have before us today are similar to ones that an earlier generation of progressives faced as the 1932 election approached. As we do today, the progressives of the 20th century confronted a society beset by a huge gap between classes and an economy laid flat by… more

The most damaging part of the Bush foreign policy legacy is not the precipitous decline in American power and influence brought about by the disastrous Iraq occupation. It is the way the Administration’s "war on terror" and its neoimperial project in the Middle East have distorted our vision of the world.

They magnify out of all proportion what should at worst be minor threats to our national security and ignore much larger developments, such as the extraordinary economic rise of China… more

"My issue is cooking oil," Dya Alawa, a 37-year-old Turkish woman said on the day of Turkey's historic July election, which saw the Justice and Development Party (AKP) emerge with a resounding victory. "That's why I'm voting AKP," she told the Washington Post. For her, the election was simple: the economy has improved under AKP stewardship since 2002, her husband has less fear of layoffs at his textile factory and she can buy cooking oil at reasonable prices.

Indeed, Alawa is not alone. While… more

There is a surreal quality to many of the foreign policy arguments being put forward in the 2008 presidential campaign, particularly among Republican presidential hopefuls. The Bush Administration’s fiasco in Iraq is a transformative event that calls for a fundamental re-thinking of US security strategy. The policies of "preventive" war, forward basing of US troops aimed at intimidating designated adversaries and unbridled support for missile defense and new nuclear weapons should all be cast aside in search of a new… more

Under the guise of promoting a "security dialogue" in the Persian Gulf, the Bush Administration has proposed $63 billion in arms transfers to the Middle East over the next ten years. As is so often the case, team Bush seems to prefer to let the weapons do the talking, even when it claims to be engaging in diplomacy. The foundation of the deal is a pledge to sell $20 billion worth of high-tech arms to Saudi Arabia and the other… more

The neoconservative foreign policy of George W. Bush is a catastrophic failure -- this is conceded even by a growing number of neoconservatives. As an alternative to the Bush Doctrine of US global hegemony, contempt for international law and support for regime change by armed intervention, liberal internationalism ought to be enjoying a renaissance. Instead, the body of strategic principles that guided US foreign policy at its best during the twentieth century is threatened. The greatest threat to liberal internationalism… more

What do you call a US policy...that has been repudiated at the United Nations by virtually every other country in the world? A policy that, after forty-eight years of abject failure, is still based on the false assumption that success--in the form of "regime change"--is just around the corner? Imperial. Illogical. Irrational. Insane...

The next occupant of the White House will have an unusual opportunity to bring US policy toward Cuba into the twenty-first century. Slowly but surely, the political actors… more

Did the Bush Administration miss a major opportunity in the spring of 2003 to engage Iran and stabilize the Middle East? Two high-ranking former Administration officials contend it did.In May 2003, Iran faxed a letter to the State Department, via the Swiss ambassador to Iran, proposing a sweeping realignment in US-Iranian relations. Iran offered "full transparency" on its nuclear enrichment program, to take "decisive action against any terrorists (above all Al Qaeda) on Iranian territory," to help stabilize… more

On a dimly lit road in Wazir Akbar Khan, the Upper East Side of Kabul, a couple of street kids gesture toward an unmarked iron gate behind which they assure us we can find what we are looking for. An Afghan guard gives us a wary once-over and opens the gate onto a dark garden at the end of which a door is slightly ajar. I open it and step into a world far removed from… more

With Iraq descending ever further into chaos and civil war, the first order of business of the new Democratic Congress when it convenes in January must be to pass a resolution establishing a clear and expeditious timeline for the withdrawal of US forces....

The monstrous events of November put an end to the illusion that US forces can somehow stabilize Iraq before they leave. The bloody civil war, brutal revenge killings and escalating sectarian violence claimed more than 200 Iraqi… more