The National Interest articles from December 2001

The National Interest archives from December 2001

God and mammon: Does poverty cause militant islam?
December 22, 2001... THE EVENTS of September have intensified a longstanding debate: What causes Muslims to turn to militant Islam? Some analysts have noted the poverty of Afghanistan and concluded that herein lay the problem. Jessica Stern of Harvard University...

The risks of victory: An historian's provocation.(politics of terrorism)
December 22, 2001... IF IT is true, as so many pundits rushed to tell us after the events of September 11, 2001, that everything is different, all is changed, and nothing will ever again be the same, then it follows that the study of history is unlikely to provide...

The world of achilles: Ancient soldiers, modern warriors.
December 22, 2001... NOTHING IS great, writes Seneca, "which is nor at the same time calm." (1) In contrast to warriors, gladiators, he goes on to say, "are protected by skill but left defenseless by anger." We should pay attention to Seneca, because the...

Couldn't be worse? Iraq after saddam.(President Saddam Hussein)
December 22, 2001... THE MAIN working hypothesis, taken almost as an act of faith and embraced by many Western policymakers and pundits since the end of the Gulf War, is that the West's "Iraq problem"--and most of Iraq's problems, too--would be easily solved once...

Curtains for the ba'ath.
December 22, 2001... EVEN BEFORE September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration faced difficult challenges and choices as it charted U.S. policy toward Iraq. The period of Iraqi quiescence following Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 was clearly over, the...

The law at war: How Osama slipped away.(suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden)
December 22, 2001... IN THE SPRING of 1996, the White House was preoccupied with Bosnia--implementing the Dayton Agreement, ferrying American troops across the Sava River, building facilities at Tuzia, attempting to install an unworkable three-headed government in...

Tightening the screws: The economic war against terrorism.
December 22, 2001... SHORT OF the actual use of force, economic sanctions are among the U.S. government's most powerful tools in the war on terrorism. They seek to deprive terrorist organizations of the financial wherewithal to support and conduct operations such...

Cyprus: The predictable crisis.
December 22, 2001... MOST international crises take leaders by surprise. While the region or issue that might blow up can often be identified in advance, the timing and contour of any particular crisis usually cannot. The coming dispute between Turkey and the...

Retail diplomacy: The edifying story of UN dues reform.(United Nations)
December 22, 2001... PERHAPS THE most widely heard and trenchant criticism of the Bush Administration's foreign policy before September 11 was that it displayed a wilful and counterproductive unilateralism. Clearly, since the terrorist attacks, that policy has...

Small mercies: China and America after 9/11.
December 22, 2001... "THIS CHANGES every thing" was Senator Chuck Hagel's verdict as he surveyed the transmogrified landscape of international and domestic politics in the immediate wake of the "911" attacks. Others, such as retiring senator and China nemesis Jesse...

Odom's russia: A forum.(response to William Odom's essay, "Realism About Russia ," in the Fall 2001 issue)
December 22, 2001... WILLIAM Odom's essay, "Realism About Russia ", in the Fall 2001 issue of The National Interest put forth a stark and controversial view of Russia prospects and of how US. policy should adapt to those prospects. In the interest of generating a...

Meaning well: The curious life of a habsburg idealist. (Books).(Emperor Maximilian II)
December 22, 2001... Paula Sutter Ficlitner, Emperor Maximilian II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 368 PP., $35. "IN OTHER countries dynasties are episodes in the history of the people; in the Habsburg Empire peoples are complications in the history...

A whole new world?
December 22, 2001... Michael Wood, Conquistadors (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 288 pp., $27. Robert Harvey, Liberators: Latin America's Struggle for Independence, 1810-1830 (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2000), 561 pp.,...

The four schoolmasters.(Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World)
December 22, 2001... Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001,), 345 pp., $30. THE BRITISH statesman Lord Bryce once remarked that describing American foreign policy was like...

The fifth schoolmaster?(letter from Pres. Theodore Roosevelt to Carl Schurz)(Brief Article)(Transcript)
December 22, 2001... In a very interesting French book the other day I was reading of how the Mediterranean was freed from pirates only by the "pax Britannica," established by England's naval force. The hopeless and hideous bloodshed and wickedness of Algiers and...

Not being there.
December 22, 2001... I accept that the Bush team has a strong underlying argument about the ABM Treaty's obsolescent features--as it did on the Kyoto treaty, the germ warfare treaty and the Durban anti-racism conference's treatment of Israel. But in each of these...

It's the clash, not the cash.
December 22, 2001... It is quite astonishing how little we have understood, or empathised with, the huge crisis that has faced that vast and populous section of the world stretching from the Mahgreb through the Middle East and Central Asia into South and South-East...

INS rules: Three strikes, you walk.(US Immigration and Naturalization Service)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... For Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, a 23-year-old Palestinian and aspiring terrorist, the third time was the charm. In 1996, agents for the Immigration and Naturalization Service twice caught Abu Mezer attempting to sneak into the United States at...

When pushtun comes to shove.(history of the Pustun tribes)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... Historically, the Pushtun tribes, secure within their mountain bastions centered on the Suleiman range and the Safed Koh, have successfully resisted all attempts to subdue them by Greeks, Persians, Kushans, Mongols, Mughals, Sikhs, British, and...

Foggy.(Israel-Arab conflicts)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... We are going after terrorism in a comprehensive way, not just in the present instance of Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but terrorism as it affects nations around the world.... Secretary of State Colin Powell, October 2, 2001 The...

We will bury you, esq.(international law)(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... In current circumstances, when, for reasons of their own, Russia, China and France as Security Council members have all given assent (for the moment) to U.S. action, it may be a temptation for the Bush administration to accede to this process...

Aura and mystique.
December 22, 2001... By striking at the heart of New York City, the terrorists ensured that at least one deep segment of the country ill-disposed toward a new president is now the most passionate in his defense. Anyone who has ever tried to get one over on a New...

All in good time.
December 22, 2001... 'We have nothing to do with each other', one Uighur said. 'The Chinese here act like they see right through us, like we're not people to them.' Then there is the issue of the time. Big stores, or those owned by Chinese, mostly quote...

On the road with maximilian's ambassador.(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... There remained one annoyance, which was almost worse than a lack of wine, namely, that our sleep used to be interrupted in a most distressing manner. We often had to rise early, sometimes even before it was light, in order to arrive in good...

Letters.
December 22, 2001... The Next NATO: James Kurth's "The Next NATO" (Fall 2001) had a subtitle that may be more relevant now than it was when first published: "Building an American Commonwealth of Nations." Little did he know, of course, that the ghastly but...

Errata.(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2001... In the Fall 2001 issue, Yossi Klein Halevi's essay, "The Asymmetry of Pity", dated Yasir Arafat's Johannesburg speech as having been given in 1995. It was 1994. In the box on page 151, the source of the second excerpt was dropped. It should...