The National Interest

The intersection of ongoing structural shifts in international energy markets with strategic trends in global financial markets poses the most profound challenge to American hegemony since the end of the Cold War.

Only a few years ago, Russia and the United States seemed to be headed towards a mutually-beneficial partnership in the common fight against international terrorism. But Russia’s recent behavior has left many wondering about its intentions, particularly when it comes to the United States. Fundamental disagreements on key issues and strong anti-American sentiment among the Russian population leave little doubt the relationship is strained. The threat of a renewed Cold War—or, worse, yet, military confrontation—has put the two former rivals back at the forefront of debate.

That the foreign policy of George W. Bush has been a catastrophic failure is disputed by none today except for a dwindling number of diehards on the neoconservative right. But there is no consensus on the scope of the failure. Has a sound global grand strategy been poorly implemented, at the operational and tactical level, in Iraq and elsewhere? Or is the failure much deeper than that? Is the grand strategy the Bush Administration has pursued inherently flawed?

This letter is an appeal to Democrats, now a congressional majority, to propose a ore positive, constructive relationship between the United States and Russia-less for Russia than for the United States.

At virtually any point between 1947 and 1991, if any serious thinker had proposed that we could form a strategic relationship with Russia but should refuse to do so, he or she would have been considered misguided at best and slightly deranged at worst. Yet that has happened today...

Dear Will,

It may be lonely at the top, but many presidents around the world wouldn’t have it any other way. Western observers are accustomed to the autocratic tendencies of Arab strongmen and African dictators, but elsewhere a new breed of executive is emerging, sometimes combining bravado with popularity, in other cases professing democracy while seeking exemptions from it, and even pioneering a model of governance which defies Western hopes of smooth democratic transitions.

Given the scale of the damage caused to the United States, the 9/11 attacks neither required much money to execute, nor did they take a large number of plotters. Terrorism is a cheap form of warfare -- the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, for instance, only cost a few thousand dollars. This is particularly the case when you have a cadre of young men willing to engage in suicidal terrorism.

Neoconservatism, at least as a powerful movement bearing that name, now looks moribund. The mortal blow may well be seen in the future to have been delivered by the defection of neoconservatism's last truly distinguished intellectual, Francis Fukuyama, and the shattering critique of neoconservatism delivered in his new book, America at the Crossroads.

While Washington is preoccupied with curbing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, avoiding policy failure in Iraq and cheering the "forward march of freedom," the political consequences of recent structural shifts in global energy markets are posing the most profound challenge to American hegemony since the end of the Cold War. The increasing control that state-owned companies exercise over the world's reserves of crude oil and natural gas is, under current market conditions, enabling some energy exporters to act with escalating boldness against U.S. interests and policies.

On January 13, a U.S. missile strike on the Pakistani village of Damadola, intended to kill Al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, missed its target but killed at least 17 other people, probably including Al-Qaeda members but certainly including local women and children. If it had succeeded, this would have been a notable coup in the struggle against Al-Qaeda. Instead, this violation of Pakistani territory has humiliated the administration of President Pervez Musharraf and compromised his government's assistance to the United States.