The National Interest articles from December 1997

The National Interest archives from December 1997

The dangers of expansive realism. (proposal for North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion)
December 22, 1997... . . . it is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality. It may be boring, but one has to know where it is. We cannot have the Mississippi flowing toward the...

In our own image: the sources of American conduct in world affairs.
December 22, 1997... In the long span of American history, two moments stand out for their creative refashioning of the political order. The first comprises the framing, ratification, and amendment of the Federal Constitution from 1787 to 1790; the second, the...

The Tory debacle: is Thatcher to blame? (Conservative Party's defeat in UK May 1997 election; former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher)
December 22, 1997... The devastating rebuff administered to the Conservative Party by British voters in May of this year came as no surprise. The party was tired, publicly split on policy, and scandal-ridden. The voters did the party a favor by granting it respite...

A new axis: the emerging Turkish-Israeli entente.
December 22, 1997... In Sincan, a suburb of the Turkish capital of Ankara, a routine event took place on February 2 of this year. The town council sponsored a rally to commemorate "Jerusalem Day" and, as elsewhere in the Middle East, the occasion offered a chance to...

Albania's cappuccino coup. (ex-communists' victory in June 1997 election)
December 22, 1997... 'Oh, I know all about the Albanians', cried a lady; 'they are those funny people with pink eyes and white hair.' But the Albanian is not so quickly explainable; and of all the Balkan peoples he is least known to the English. - Edith Durham in...

Europe's underclass.
December 22, 1997... The theories of Le Corbusier have much to answer for. The once fashionable French architect believed in vertical cities that echoed the dehumanized life of the modern world: "We must create", he wrote, "the mass production spirit." In the city of...

Too much memory: a beginner's guide to the Irish question.
December 22, 1997... When I arrived in Northern Ireland last July 1, among other reasons to observe the local "marching season", I bought the Belfast News Letter and the London Times. The former devoted sixteen of its thirty-two pages to the pending crisis over the...

The prudent Irishman: Edmund Burke's realism.
December 22, 1997... One of the many consequences of Soviet communism's collapse is disarray in the conceptual structures of American foreign policy. Left without a clear focal point, one-time hawks now flap like doves, while erstwhile doves behave like birds of...

Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776.
December 22, 1997... Is America just a nation among nations or novus ordo seclorum? That is the ur-question, and since the days of John ("Citty upon a Hill") Winthrop in 1630, Americans have never stopped asking themselves what sets them apart from the rest. Rightly...

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives.
December 22, 1997... Is America just a nation among nations or novus ordo seclorum? That is the ur-question, and since the days of John ("Citty upon a Hill") Winthrop in 1630, Americans have never stopped asking themselves what sets them apart from the rest. Rightly...

The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After the Cold War.
December 22, 1997... Is America just a nation among nations or novus ordo seclorum? That is the ur-question, and since the days of John ("Citty upon a Hill") Winthrop in 1630, Americans have never stopped asking themselves what sets them apart from the rest. Rightly...

We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History.
December 22, 1997... Changes in historical accounts are driven mainly by developments, if not fashions, within the historical profession, by current political concerns, by the availability of new sources of information, and by the way in which the events being...

The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years.
December 22, 1997... Changes in historical accounts are driven mainly by developments, if not fashions, within the historical profession, by current political concerns, by the availability of new sources of information, and by the way in which the events being...

Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev.
December 22, 1997... Changes in historical accounts are driven mainly by developments, if not fashions, within the historical profession, by current political concerns, by the availability of new sources of information, and by the way in which the events being...

The Untouchable.
December 22, 1997... On the copyright page of John Banville's The Untouchable, its American publisher provides the requisite "Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data" as follows: "Espionage, Soviet - Great Britain - History - Twentieth century - Fiction."...

Allah in the West.
December 22, 1997... Gilles Kepel is director of research at the French National Science Research Council and a leading Western authority on the world of Islam. The 1994 English-language version of his most recent opus, The Revenge of God, as well as his 1985 book...

A Reporter's Life.
December 22, 1997... On January 30, 1968, the beginning of the Chinese lunar new year festival known as Tet, 70,000 communist troops launched a surprise offensive throughout South Vietnam. The attackers surged into more than a hundred cities and towns, and, for the...

A Memoir.
December 22, 1997... On January 30, 1968, the beginning of the Chinese lunar new year festival known as Tet, 70,000 communist troops launched a surprise offensive throughout South Vietnam. The attackers surged into more than a hundred cities and towns, and, for the...

Events Leading up to My Death.
December 22, 1997... On January 30, 1968, the beginning of the Chinese lunar new year festival known as Tet, 70,000 communist troops launched a surprise offensive throughout South Vietnam. The attackers surged into more than a hundred cities and...