World Policy Journal

The United States is “fighting a different kind of enemy” in its War on Terror, or so says President Bush. He’s right. For the first time since the days of the Barbary pirates, America is doing active battle not with a rival nation, but with a non-state actor (al Qaeda) that lacks a geographical home, is motivated by ideology more than territorial ambition, and whose victories are defined in non-military terms. It is an enemy that uses communication technology, public… more

Over the past decade and half, two developments in the world economy have come together to create conditions for what could be a new era of faster economic growth and rising prosperity. One development involves the integration of China, India and the former Soviet Union into the global economy. The inclusion of these three populous regions into the global economy has created what economists call positive supply-side shocks, resulting in surpluses in labor, capital, and productive capacity. The most obvious… more

The Middle East diplomatic Quartet (composed of the United States, the European Union, the Russian Federation, and the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nation) authored and put forward its Road Map to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on April 30, 2003. The Road Map outlined steps to be taken by the parties. It was an ambitious plan that dealt with internal Palestinian security, humanitarian assistance, democratic reform, freedom of movement for Palestinians, Israeli military redeployment, and settlement freeze… more

Earlier this year, Muhammad Zaki Amawi and Marwan Othman el-Hindi, Jordanianborn U.S. citizens, and Wassim I. Mazloum, a Lebanese citizen, stood in a federal district court in Ohio, accused of conspiring to wage jihad against U.S. forces in Iraq. According to the indictment against them, Amawi had flown to Jordan last August carrying laptop computers that he intended to donate to the mujahidin in Iraq. Amawi, the indictment stated, had "unsuccessfully attempted to enter Iraq to wage violent jihad, or… more

In August 2000, a motley array of democracy activists, politicians, and fringe nationalists trudged into a hotel in Budapest. The assembled figures constituted the leading members of Serbia’s political opposition movement -- a fractured and increasingly desperate group. Only weeks earlier, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, hoping to catch his erstwhile opposition off guard, had announced snap presidential elections. After watching his domestic opponents spend eight years repeatedly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Milosevic was confident. But this time,… more

Out of the national trauma of September 11 has emerged a new grand strategy for American foreign policy, comparable in scale and ambition to the strategy of containment that guided American foreign policy for much of the Cold War. Championed by neo-conservatives in and around the Bush administration, this grand strategy -- which I call muscular dominance -- has won the acceptance of neo-liberal hawks associated with the Democratic Party as well. The troubled occupation of Iraq, together with the… more

As the Cold War came to an end, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama heralded the "End of History." Decades earlier, the sociologist Daniel Bell had predicted the "End of Ideology." While we wait for these grand visions to be universalized in practice, we can anticipate a change that, although more mundane, is more likely to occur sooner: the end of alliances. Military alliances, multilateral and bilateral, have been central to the diplomacy and national security strategy of the United States for more than 50 years -- so much… more

If there ever was a political instance of an immovable object meeting an irresistible force, it would seem to be George W. Bush versus the treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol.1 The president is as adamantly opposed to the protocol as environmentalists are overwhelmingly in favor of the international agreement reached in 1997 to reduce emissions of so-called greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide), which are widely thought to contribute to global warming. At first, President Bush said he opposed Kyoto… more