The National Interest

Dear Will,

I have been reading with great interest the volume on Democratic foreign policy that you edited for the Progressive Policy Institute, With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty, and I find parts of it admirable. This is especially true of your co-authors’ arguments that the Democrats should look to the Truman era for inspiration; on the need for the United States to adopt a far more generous and far-sighted approach to foreign development… more

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.

Over the last several years, the United States has… more

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. According to court documents entered in the trial… more

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. Fukuyama declares:

"Whatever its complex roots, neoconservatism has now become inevitably linked to concepts like preemption, regime change, unilateralism, and benevolent hegemony as put into practice… more

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… more

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… more

The transformation in the relationship between India and Israel, from one that was at best cool and correct to one that is now hailed as a strategic alignment is among the striking changes in the post-Cold War landscape. This shift has been widely praised, particularly by Israeli, Indian and American commentators. They believe that its potential significance extends well beyond the dense network of transactions that has developed between the two sides, and out across the entire region of South… more

With the passing of George Kennan, the last living member of the most successful foreign policy team in modern American history has left the stage. Kennan, Charles Bohlen, Robert Lovett, George Marshall, Dean Acheson and Harry Truman--these are the giants who set the United States on the road to victory in the Cold War. The containment doctrine they developed was followed in one form or another until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rarely in history has such analytical brilliance… more

Russia acquired its Far East (Dal'nii vostok) the old fashioned way, through war and conquest. The imperialism of the Muscovite state, its Romanov successors and finally Josef Stalin's Red Army fixed the region's current borders with China, Japan and North Korea. The balance of power favored Russia's accumulation of land in these earlier times; its present weakness has cast doubt on its ability to retain all of the territory it now holds. The forces that pushed Russia into the forbidding… more

Indonesia is staggering like a heavyweight boxer who has absorbed too many blows in too many places. A faltering economy, a fractious and feeble central government, communal war and secessionism could culminate in the state's collapse and the country's fragmentation. The result would be more than a local disturbance, for Indonesia is no ordinary place.

With 224 million people Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous state, a sprawling archipelago of 13,600 islands (3,000 of them inhabited) nearly three times… more