The New York Times Magazine

The Man For a New Sudan

Ron Tang — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:46:00 -0400

When Roger Winter’s single-engine Cessna Caravan touched down near the Sudanese town of Abyei on Easter morning, a crowd of desperate men swamped the plane. Some came running over the rough red airstrip. Others crammed into a microbus that barreled toward the 65-year-old Winter as he climbed down the plane’s silver ladder. Some Sudanese call Winter “uncle”; others call him “commander.” On this day, angry and anxious, the people of Abyei wanted Winter’s help in averting a return to civil war between the predominantly Arab north and the black south -- a decades-long conflict, claiming more than two million dead,… more

Waving Goodbye to Hegemony

Ron Tang — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Turn on the TV today, and you could be forgiven for thinking it's 1999. Democrats and Republicans are bickering about where and how to intervene, whether to do it alone or with allies and what kind of world America should lead. Democrats believe they can hit a reset button, and Republicans believe muscular moralism is the way to go. It's as if the first decade of the 21st century didn't happen -- and almost as if history itself doesn't happen. But the distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush,… more

New York Times Magazine Reviews Parag Khanna's 'The Second World'

Communications — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 13:15:00 -0500

New America in the News:

“The first and second worlds are being reunited into something which has no name yet, nor a number,” wrote the sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf back in 1990. “Perhaps it will just be the world.” Or perhaps not! The United States, China and the European Union seem to be forming an irritable triplet: no one of them can dominate either of the other two. They may make common cause, but it is just as likely that they will compete for control. And the places where they will compete have been labeled, by the New America Foundation analyst Parag Khanna, the second world.

The second world used to mean the Soviet Union and its dependencies. Khanna has appropriated it (in his coming book of the same name) for countries that have substantial economies but do not belong to the Big Three. Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, Russia, possibly India and South Africa — it’s the most successful members of the old nonaligned movement, more or less, plus resource barons, and when you add them all up it amounts to a good chunk of the world. The U.S., the E.U. and China court them — even depend on them — for vital resources and to adjust their own balance of power. ...

For the complete review of Parag Khanna's forthcoming book The Second World, please follow this link.

George Bush I

Articles — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 14:43:00 -0400

None of us can control our ancestors. Like our children, they have minds of their own and invariably refuse to do our bidding. Presidential ancestors are especially unruly — they are numerous and easily discovered, and they often act in ways unbecoming to the high station of their descendants.

Take George Bush. By whom I mean George Bush (1796-1859), first cousin of the president’s great-great-great-grandfather. It would be hard to find a more unlikely forebear. G.B. No. 1 was not exactly the black sheep of the family, to use a phrase the president likes to apply to himself. In fact,… more

The Flight from Iraq

adminn — Sun, 13 May 2007 10:39:00 -0400

I. Roads to Damascus

At a meeting in mid-April in Geneva, held by António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, the numbers presented confirmed what had long been suspected: the collapse of Iraq had created a refugee crisis, and that crisis was threatening to precipitate the collapse of the region. The numbers dwarfed anything that the Middle East had seen since the dislocations brought on by the establishment of Israel in 1948. In Syria, there were estimated to be 1.2 million Iraqi refugees. There were another 750,000 in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon… more

The Rise of the Office-Park Populist

Articles — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 21:34:00 -0500

On Election Day last month, Democratic candidates did something they haven't done for a while: they decisively won the middle class. Middle-income voters -- including white, middle-income voters who have abandoned the party in droves in recent years -- preferred Democratic candidates by wide margins. Indeed, only voters with family incomes in excess of $100,000 a year were more likely to support Republicans than Democrats in House races in November.

The conventional view among the pundit class is that this middle-class restoration, valuable as it was for Democrats, creates thorny new tensions. Motivated mainly by their disgust with corruption, incompetence and… more

Iraq's Jordanian Jihadis

Articles — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 04:00:00 -0500

Jordan has long been thought of as the quiet country of the Middle East. People called it the Hashemite Kingdom of Boredom and went there for a rest. King Hussein and his son, King Abdullah II, who assumed the throne in February 1999, were friendly enough with the United States, respectful toward Israel and measured advocates of modernization. As for the Islamist stirrings that have roiled the region since the Iranian revolution of 1979, it was widely believed that the king's domestic security service, the Mukhabarat, had infiltrated every group that might think to stir unrest. But in truth Jordan… more

The Totally Religious, Absolutely Democratic Constitution

Articles — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

A decade ago, almost everyone across the political spectrum--from neoconservatives to Islamic fundamentalists--agreed that democracy and Islam were inherently incompatible. This consensus followed from definitions: democracy means the rule of the people, whereas Islam teaches the sovereignty of God. In October, though, Iraqis went to the polls and ratified a Constitution that committed itself with equal strength to both democracy and Islam. The document announced that Iraq would be a democracy with equality for all and declared that no law could contradict the principles of democracy. At the same time, it declared Islam the basic source of law and the… more

War-Mood Metrics

Articles — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

A little less than a year ago, in the aftermath of the first Iraqi elections, the most irresponsible thing being said in Washington was that everything was going to be fine. Now, with the next set of elections scheduled for December 15, the new irresponsibility is the increasingly respectable assertion that the war has already been lost. Irrational optimism has been replaced by unjustified pessimism. This is not some triumph of experience over idealism. One a priori ideological standpoint is simply giving way to another.

The last, bloody year in Iraq has seen an uninterrupted stream of insurgent attacks on… more

The Meaning of No

Articles — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Casting a yes vote in next Saturday's constitutional referendum in Iraq would be easy to understand. Although the proposed document is too decentralizing for some tastes and too Islamic for others, those who choose to ratify it are clearly embracing democratic politics instead of violence. But what would it mean to vote no, as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis seem poised to do?

If enough no votes are cast in the right places, they will sink the constitution. Should two-thirds of the voters in 3 separate provinces (out of 18 in Iraq) check the no box, Iraqis would be sent… more