Esquire

The Globalization of Steak

Articles — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:05:00 -0400

As food and grain prices rise around the world, causing hunger and political unrest from Egypt to Indonesia, I still find myself nearly every weekend walking around the corner for brunch to Brasserie Les Halles in Manhattan, where the steak frites is $17.50. Steak has been stable not just in its price, but also its gastric and emotional effect: Afterward I am both full and full of myself.

It first struck me in Shanghai at the tail end of two years of traveling the world on a lean budget to research a book. Deng Xiaoping was only partially right: To get rich is glorious, but to flaunt… more

Flynt Leverett in Esquire on the History of the Impending War with Iran

Communications — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 07:31:00 -0400

New America in the News:

In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm – not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn’t realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn’t wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say.

“The hard-liners are upping the pressure on the State Department,” says Leverett. “They’re basically saying, ‘You’ve been trying to engage Iran for more than a year now and what do you have to show for it? They keep building more centrifuges, they’re sending this IED stuff over into Iraq that’s killing American soldiers, the human rights internal political situation has gotten more repressive – what the hell do you have to show for this engagement strategy?’”

But the engagement strategy was never serious and was designed to fail, they say. …

Flynt Leverett is a Senior Fellow with the American Strategy Program at New America Foundation. For more on this briefing, please visit Esquire's website.

The Young American

Articles — Sun, 01 Dec 2002 00:00:00 -0500

I was in a TGI Friday's in Cairo last October, sharing dessert with a group of stylish young Egyptian women, when one of them flipped open her cellphone to show me this text message: SATURDAY NIGHT DANCE PARTY BOMBS IN WORLD TRADE CENTER DJ OSAMA BIN LADEN FLY-IN COURTESY OF AMERICAN AIRLINES

My companions, two lawyers and a medical student, laughed with delight, the sounds blending with American pop music and the wind from the Nile.

In the months after September 11, I found these paradoxes around the world: Westernized Egyptian party girls who consider Osama bin Laden a hero; an… more

On Americanism: Envisioning a Post-Minority Country

Articles — Sun, 01 Dec 2002 00:00:00 -0500

The seven million Americans -- half of whom are under eighteen years of age -- who were listed by the Census Bureau this year as coming from "multiple racial backgrounds" herald the beginning of the end of multiculturalism in the United States.

Multiculturalism, the ideology that promotes the permanent coexistence of separate but equal cultures, gained currency a generation ago. On the one hand, it was a necessary corrective that encouraged Americans to acknowledge non-European contributions to the nation's cultural heritage. On the other, it has become a remedial lens through which to envision the emergence of America's racially mixed future.

The… more

The Big Idea: Asset Building

Articles — Sun, 01 Dec 2002 00:00:00 -0500

A novel solution to yawning inequality in America is on the horizon: widespread wealth creation. Usually, alarms of gaping inequality are met with calls for boosting the minimum wage, the earned-income tax credit, and unions (all good ideas), or redistributing wealth through higher taxes. But wealth creation has been a great idea for the U.S. historically, and now we just need to do it for the majority of Americans that have little or no wealth.

And it is a majority. While 20 percent of Americans control 83 percent of the nation's wealth, 60 percent -- a hands-down majority… more