The Nation

This election, more than any other since 1980, could turn on questions of foreign policy and national security. Yet despite the obvious difference in worldview of the two candidates, and the increasingly acrimonious exchanges between them, the two campaigns have staked out remarkably similar positions on Iraq, the "war on terrorism," and more generally on America's position in the world. Indeed, leaving aside questions of style and tone, the discussion to date has largely come down to the question of… more

The most commonly proposed Democratic alternative to the Administration's policy in Iraq--turning over political authority to the United Nations and getting more countries to provide more troops and money--is well intentioned but lacks seriousness, for two reasons.

First, it is not realistic to expect the UN to assume such responsibility without more resources, without assurances from the United States about security and without some control over the conduct of American military strategy. Likewise, it is not realistic to expect countries… more

About a decade ago, I invented a game with a colleague of mine who, like me, had once worked for Irving Kristol. We called it neoconservative bingo. The idea was that the cliches of neoconservative discourse would be arranged in various combinations on bingo cards: "The World's Only Superpower"; "The New Class"; "The China Threat"; "Decadent Europe"; "Against the UN"; "The Adversary Culture"; "The Global Democratic Revolution"; "Down With the Appeasers!"; "Be Firm Like Churchill." The free space in the… more

During the early years of the civil rights revolution, Theodore Bilbo, the ferocious segregationist senator from Mississippi, published a book titled Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization. He argued that the inevitable result of the abolition of formal racial segregation would be racial amalgamation.

He was right, according to new studies of racial intermarriage by Randall Kennedy and Renee Romano. In the words of Romano, "The old segregationist fear that integration would lead to 'race mixing' was well founded."

Race… more

While the Bush Administration looks to the weapons inspection process in Iraq to turn up a material breach worthy of war, hawks in and out of government have been making a separate case for invasion, claiming that a US military strike against the country is necessary under the amorphous rubric of the "war on terrorism" and because of Saddam Hussein's alleged connections to Al Qaeda. In fact, it is Saudi Arabia rather than Iraq that has supplied much of the… more

The war in Afghanistan could become a defining event not just for the fight against terrorism but for NATO and US-European-Russian relations. Already the war has brought changes that just a few months ago would have been unimaginable. For the first time in its history, NATO has invoked Article 5 of the Washington treaty establishing the alliance -- not to defend Europe, as was originally envisioned, but to support a US war in a region far from the European theater.… more

Nearly a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, foreign-policy pundits are still struggling to give a name to the post-cold war world. That they have so far … more

American foreign policy in the post-cold war world has been a tale of two Americas. One America, the revolutionary power, has sought to tear down national barriers in the name of globalization and to remake the world in America's liberal market image. The other America, the status quo power, has worked to preserve US dominance. Over the past decade, these conflicting political/cultural tendencies have found common expression in a foreign policy best described as one of US… more

With his recent speech on healthcare, Bill Bradley has moved the worsening plight of the uninsured back into the spotlight. In doing so, he has offered a challenge not only to his main presidential rivals, Al Gore and George W. Bush, but also to a nation too long resigned to accepting the uninsured as an indelible stain on the civic fabric of America.

Just… more