The National Interest Online

As the presidency of General Pervez Musharraf enters what seem to be its last days, we need to keep one thing firmly in mind. It is that despite the Bush administration’s support for Musharraf, it was also the Bush administration that did the most to destroy him, by forcing him into a subordinate role in a war on terror that most Pakistanis detest. It was not Musharraf’s (very mild) “dictatorship,” but the tag of “Busharraf” which originally crippled his domestic… more

Over the first half of 2007, central banks in the world’s emerging economies accumulated over $600 billion of new reserves. That’s double the total reserve position of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- an institution whose mission used to include preventing the collapse of these same governments, and whose new managing director recently raised questions about the body’s “relevance and legitimacy.” Over the same period, China, Russia and Japan joined the list of governments establishing “sovereign wealth funds”, whose worldwide… more

In his lackluster State of the Union address last night, President Bush defined America’s military actions in the Middle East as the “defining challenge of our time” and yet overall, Bush offered no credible plan that could lead to an improvement in America’s circumstances.

Yet again, Bush hyped the fear that Americans should feel from terrorists, who, he said, “want to force our country to retreat from the world and abandon the cause of liberty.” He stated that “this war is… more