Foreign Affairs articles from July 1995

Foreign Affairs archives from July 1995

Back to the womb? Isolationism's renewed threat.
July 1, 1995... American isolationism is an ambiguous concept. The United States has never been isolationist with regard to commerce. Our merchant vessels roamed the seven seas from the first days of independence. Nor has the United States been isolationist with...

Still the Lingua Franca: the exaggerated death of the dollar.
July 1, 1995... Reports of the dollar's death have been greatly exaggerated. It is of course true that the value of the U.S. currency has fallen against the Japanese yen and Deutsche mark recently. It is also true that some measures of the dollar's use as an...

Economic cocaine: America's exchange rate addiction.
July 1, 1995... The fashionable view among economic pundits and the financial press is that American industry, led by the auto and semiconductor makers, has regained its international competitiveness in recent years. On the contrary, the root cause of virtually...

The fall of the dollar order: the world the United States is losing.
July 1, 1995... A sailor embracing his girl in Times Square amid cheering throngs may be the dominant image of America's victory in World War II. Today Times Square is full again, but this time with foreign tourists, who crowd into New York and other American...

Dutch tulips and emerging markets. (global capitalism)
July 1, 1995... ANOTHER BUBBLE BURSTS DURING THE first half of the 1990s, both economic and political events in developing countries defied all expectations. Nations that most thought would not regain access to world financial markets for a generation...

Latin America the morning after. (economy)
July 1, 1995... EUPHORIC PERCEPTIONS, FRAGILE REALITIES BEWILDERED BY the bizarre turn of events in Mexico, novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez told his colleague Carlos Fuentes that they should throw their books into the sea. "We have been totally defeated by...

Fulfilling Brazil's promise: a conversation with President Cardoso. (Fernando Henrique Cardoso)(Interview)
July 1, 1995... BRAZIL'S PENCHANT in this century for bursts of reformist zeal followed by relapses into political chaos and authoritarianism has kept alive the wry observation that "it is the country of tomorrow--and always will be." Through the years, the...

From exiles to immigrants. (Cubans in Florida)
July 1, 1995... THE MIAMI CUBANS COME 'HOME' EVERY DIASPORA judges itself, whether secretly or ostentatiously, to be both unique and uniquely sinned against. In this, the three-quarters of a million Cuban-Americans of South Florida are anything but...

The case for deep engagement. (military presence in East Asia)(East Asian Security)
July 1, 1995... IT HAS become fashionable to say that the world after the Cold War has moved beyond the age of power politics to the age of geoeconomics. Such cliches reflect narrow analysis. Politics and economics are connected. International economic systems...

The Pentagon's ossified strategy.(East Asian Security)
July 1, 1995... AMERICAN TROOPS are still in South Korea 45 years after the outbreak of the Korean War, five years after the end of the Cold War, and five years after Russia and China--South Korea's former aggressors--gave it official recognition. But is the...

The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1994.
July 1, 1995... For 14 years, from the 1973 Jackson-Vanik amendment until the 1987 Intermediaterange Nuclear Forces Treaty, a group of intellectuals known as neoconservatives shaped, and sometimes dominated, American foreign policy. They wrote for Commentary,...

The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... This is a work of great insight coupled with extraordinary blindness. As a history it reflects the author's great erudition and is impressive in the scope of the material that it masters. But it also constitutes a massive failure to come to terms...

The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... This book demonstrates that nature is not, contrary to Rousseau and his contemporary environmentalist followers, in the least bit benign or peaceful, and that destructive urges are hard-wired deep into our genetic systems. Like James Q. Wilson's...

Quiet Cataclysm: Reflections on the Recent Transformation of World Politics.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... The essays in this book are a sensible antidote to the apocalyptic literature coming from academics and foreign policy professionals recently in trying to characterize the post--Cold War order. Mueller is guardedly optimistic about the world,...

Human Rights Watch World Report: 1995.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... The work of the human rights monitors chronicled here constitutes a valuable international public service; many of the abuses, particularly in lesser-known countries, would go completely undocumented but for the work of the organizations...

The Sovereign State and Its Competitors.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... The changes of recent years--economic interdependence, growth of regional and international organizations, and self-assertion on the part of new subgroups or transnational groups--have led many to speculate that the post-Westphalian system of...

Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... While they do not break any new ground, the essays in this book are uniformly well-written and provide a clear and organized discussion of the problem of nationalism in Europe today and its implications for U.S. foreign policy. David Calleo...

One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... If the logic of collective action seeks to answer how groups of self-interested individuals can cooperate for benign purposes like moneymaking, where group and individual rewards do not correspond, the logic of group conflict asks why they can...

The Central Banks.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... These two books, both written by accomplished journalists, complement one another nicely. The first is serious but not scholarly. It has neither footnotes nor references. The authors adopt the currently fashionable view that central banks should...

The Confidence Game: How Unelected Central Bankers Are Governing the Changed Global Economy.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... These two books, both written by accomplished journalists, complement one another nicely. The first is serious but not scholarly. It has neither footnotes nor references. The authors adopt the currently fashionable view that central banks should...

The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... This short book puts forward three theses: world markets, including many services, have and will continue to become highly globalized; the modern nation-state has developed too many rigid rules and practices--fiercely defended by special economic...

A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Twenty-three informative chapters on all the major environmental topics, ranging alphabetically from acid rain to water. A recurrent theme is that newspapers and popular magazines report prominently any claim regarding bad or worsening...

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... A sprawling, engrossing, even terrifying study of how humankind can expect to suffer continuous lethal eruptions of illness, despite the progress of medicine. The fundamental idea has caught on broadly, but Garrett, a gifted popular science...

Presidential War Power.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Fisher, a senior researcher at the Congressional Research Service, believes that the discretion allowed modern presidents in the use of military power would have come as an unpleasant surprise to the framers of the Constitution. He deplores what...

Heart of the Storm: The Genesis of the Air Campaign Against Iraq.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Reynolds and his colleagues convincingly (though at times luridly) contend that the Air Force was far from united behind Colonel John Warden's concept of independent strategic operations in the Persian Gulf War. Reynolds opens with an apologetic...

Lucky War: Third Army in Desert Storm.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Reynolds and his colleagues convincingly (though at times luridly) contend that the Air Force was far from united behind Colonel John Warden's concept of independent strategic operations in the Persian Gulf War. Reynolds opens with an apologetic...

Somalia and Operation Restore Hope: Reflections on Peacemaking and Peacekeeping.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... In a mixture of memoir and postmortem, Hirsch and Oakley describe in considerable detail the diplomacy, and to a lesser extent the military action, that the United States embarked on with and through the United Nations. Although the authors, who...

Somalia Operations: Lessons Learned.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... In a mixture of memoir and postmortem, Hirsch and Oakley describe in considerable detail the diplomacy, and to a lesser extent the military action, that the United States embarked on with and through the United Nations. Although the authors, who...

Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945-1950.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... In 1949 Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson canceled a pet carrier project of the U.S. Navy while supporting the Air Force's B-36 heavy bomber program. A terrific feud between the services broke out, in which Navy personnel leveled dark...

Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During World War II.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... It is revealing that the author declares that "the Nazi state was vanquished without ever using its huge chemical arsenal." It most certainly did use such gruesome weapons--but only against the populations of the death camps, bereft of friends,...

The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Lind, a senior editor at The New Republic, is a rising young intellectual. His book is an extraordinary performance, breathtaking in its audacity, combining an original reinterpretation of American history with a double-barreled attack on New...

Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Brimelow, a senior editor at Forbes and National Review and himself an immigrant from Britain, argues that the consequences of the last great revision of American immigration law in 1965 have been nothing short of catastrophic. Though he insists,...

Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America's Search for a New Foreign Policy.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... The author, defense correspondent for The Nation, examines the post--Cold War strategic doctrine directed against "rogue states"--a doctrine requiring, in the Pentagon's view, the capacity to wage two Desert Storms at the same time. Klare argues...

Modernity and Power: A History of the Domino Theory in the Twentieth Century.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Ninkovich, a professor of history at St. John's University, centers his investigation on the worldviews of presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, with Woodrow Wilson--the originator of the domino theory--occupying the starring...

The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... This prodigiously researched volume examines a group of maverick senators, including William Borah, Robert La Follette, and many lesser lights, who developed an acerbic critique of American foreign policy from the First World War to the 1930s....

The Atlantic Charter.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Eight essays by British, American, and Canadian historians, which explore the historic eight-point delaration of principles Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt adopted in August 1941. The essays by Theodore Wilson and David Reynolds assess...

Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... A riveting account of the often obstructed fight against the Sicilian Mafia and its system of corruption and drug trade, a system enforced by terror and murder, with tentacles abroad and links to Italian politics. By tenacious use of interviews...

The European Sisyphus: Essays on Europe, 1964-1994.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... A master analyst of contemporary Europe, a veteran observer of French affairs has collected some of his essays written in the last three decades, dealing with the state of Europe from de Gaulle to Gorbachev. The tone belies the title, though...

German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870-1914.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... An important study, widely researched, of the continuing conflict between Protestants and Catholics in unified Germany, a central but much-neglected theme of modern German history. Smith, a young American historian, describes the cultural and...

A New Moment in the Americas.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... This book is an embarrassment to its participants. In advance of the Summit of the Americas, the U.S. Information Agency had the bright idea of convening a conclave of cultural leaders from across the hemisphere. The "conversation" dedicated to...

The Economic History of Latin America Since Independence.
July 1, 1995... Bulmer-Thomas addresses the old conundrum: despite the region's abundance of natural resources and a favorable land-to-labor ratio, why hasn't a single Latin American republic become a developed country, and why are external influences...

Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... University Press, 1995, 578 pp. $60.00. Overall, this is the best book now available on a central component of Latin American democracy. Given the discipline's abysmal record at prediction and the time lag in scholarly production, the appearance...

Remaking the Argentine Economy.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... This is an accessible, theoretically sophisticated overview in an informative comparative setting. Felipe de la Balze, active in both academia and the private sector, places the Argentine political and economic turnaround in a broad historical...

Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... On what historians 25 or 50 years from now will surely treat as this decade's defining misadventure--unless elsewhere something still worse lies ahead--Woodward provides the definitive contemporary study. Woodward, as the great majority who have...

How Russia Became a Market Economy.
July 1, 1995... Aslund--an expert on the Soviet economy and its reforming successors--along with his colleague Jeffrey Sachs, was there from the start, and he gives the reader all the flavor of what it was like to strike up a relationship with former Prime...

Remaking Russia: Voices from Within.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Isham has brought together an interesting group and turned their essays into answers to three questions: "Who are we (Russians)?" "Where are we going?" And, "How do we get there?" They answer not as pedestrian analysts doing the job for an...

Starting Over in Eastern Europe: Entrepreneurship and Economic Renewal.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Johnson and Loveman are two business school professors who have made an indepth study of the new and converted enterprises in Poland. The result is a fascinating and arresting look on the micro level at the impact of economic reform. They build...

Russia/U.S.S.R./Russia: The Drive and Drift of a Superstate.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Lewin, a distinguished historian of the Soviet period, weights in to the debate over the meaning of those years in the larger context of Russian history before and after. That is why "U.S.S.R." is sandwiched between two Russias in the title of...

This Side of Peace: A Personal Account.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... The early rounds of Arab-Israeli peacemaking were followed by a flood of memoirs and studies, mostly from the Israeli and American angles. For many Americans, Hanan Ashrawi, as spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation, became the Palestinian...

Broken Covenant: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis Between the U.S. and Israel.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... The title of this memoir by Israel's former foreign and defense minister promises a harsh indictment of American policy. There is indeed plenty of criticism of the Bush-Baker team's "interference" in Israeli politics via the withholding of...

Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... A leading historian of modern Iran has crafted five excellent essays that together paint a convincing picture of Iran's recent development. Abrahamian begins by dismissing the notion that the Iranian revolution was rooted in fundamentalist Islam....

Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Anyone who has read the novels of Naguib Mahfouz knows that the popular quarters of Cairo hold a special fascination because of the rich mixture of family and neighborhood networks. Now a talented American political scientist has written about...

The United States, Japan, and Asia.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... The book edited by Curtis offers eight thoughtful essays, which focus on challenges to U.S. policy in the Pacific and stress the critical importance of U.S.-Japan relations. Particularly important is how the United States and Japan relate to...

The Strategic Quadrangle: Russia, China, Japan, and the United States in East Asia.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... The book edited by Curtis offers eight thoughtful essays, which focus on challenges to U.S. policy in the Pacific and stress the critical importance of U.S.-Japan relations. Particularly important is how the United States and Japan relate to...

Inherited Rivalry: Conflict Across the Taiwan Straits.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... The deficiencies of this volume highlight the need for a balanced and sober account of recent relations between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan. First, there is a pretentious emphasis on the part of the editors and some of the...

Explaining and Influencing Chinese Arms Transfers.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... This is a short but well-researched essay on Chinese arms sales by a U.S. Army colonel now working in the Department of Defense who is also a China specialist. It is an important contribution to a subject that has the potential to exacerbate...

The Political Economy of Korea-United States Cooperation.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... This useful volume is the first product of the Korea--United States 21st Century Council, a forum launched in 1994 to bring together top officials, private sector leaders, and policy-oriented researchers. One of the prominent themes is the...

The New Geopolitics of Central Asia and Its Borderlands.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... These three volumes are part of a new growth industry--writing about the newly independent states of Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. By far the most intellectually stimulating book to emerge on this topic in the past year is...

The New States of Central Asia and Their Neighbors.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... These three volumes are part of a new growth industry--writing about the newly independent states of Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. By far the most intellectually stimulating book to emerge on this topic in the past year is...

Islam and Politics in Central Asia.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... These three volumes are part of a new growth industry--writing about the newly independent states of Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. By far the most intellectually stimulating book to emerge on this topic in the past year is...

Economic Change and Political Liberalization in Sub-Saharan Africa.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... This collection of papers from a 1992 Harvard conference poses one central question: how has political liberalization in Africa been affected by economic decline and externally imposed economic reform? Most would agree that the collapse of...

The Heritage of Islam: Women, Religion, and Politics in West Africa.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... Does religion shape society less or more than society shapes it? Less, according to this solidly researched study of the comparative status of Muslim women in northern Nigeria and Senegal. Historically and geographically less exposed to Western...

Latin America: the next generation. (economic growth)(Special Advertising Section)
July 1, 1995... In 1992, if you travelled the twenty-five kilometer stretch of the Pan American Highway from the town of Puente Piedra, south to the center of Lima, you needed no signs to tell how much longer your ride would be. Once you had crossed four...