The National Interest articles from December 2002

The National Interest archives from December 2002

All the way: crafting a U.S.-Russian alliance.
December 22, 2002... RUSSIA AND the United States both stand on the verge of fundamental foreign policy choices likely to change dramatically their mutual relationship and, quite possibly, much more besides. For Russia, the choice centers on how thoroughgoing an...

Sonderweg: The closing of the German mind.
December 22, 2002... THE GERMANS are always late, wrote Thomas Mann, and the results of Germany's elections this past September surely count as evidence. Most of what used to be called Western Europe during the Cold War has turned its back on the leftwing, high-tax...

Normative shift.(inflluence on international relations)
December 22, 2002... THE POPE's apologies to Muslims for the sins of 12th century Crusaders, the crises over Kosovo and East Timor, the prosecution of Augusto Pinochet, the rows in the International Whaling Commission, the harangues of Slobodan Milosevic from his...

An inky wretch: The outrageous Genius of Marchamont Nedham.(17th century journalist and master of partisan reporting )
December 22, 2002... THE New York Times has come under sustained assault in recent years. In 1993, Times alumnus Hilton Kramer anticipated the trend when he began writing a weekly New York Post column dissecting the gray lady's ongoing machinations. The attack...

The scandal of U.S.-Saudi relations.(United States accepts unacceptable restrictions on women, Christians and Jews from Saudi Arabian officials )
December 22, 2002... When it comes to the Saudi-American relationship, the White House should be called the 'White Tent.' Mohammed Al-Khilewi, a Saudi diplomat who defected to the United States (1) CONSIDER TWO symbolic moments in the U.S.-Saudi...

A Poet's Pessimism.(Poem)
December 22, 2002... A Poet's Pessimism The city won for Allah from the Giaour, The Giaour from Ottoman's race again may wrest; And the Serai's impenetrable tower Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest; Or Wahab's rebel brood who dared divest The...

Bullish on democracy: research notes on multinationals and the Third Wave.
December 22, 2002... ONE OF THE most contentious issues in globalization is the international social responsibility of investors--mainly multinational corporations (MNCs)--in industrialized democracies. To be sure, the debate over how (and if) these investors can...

Of boldness.(Poem)
December 22, 2002... This is well to be weighed; that boldness is ever blind; for it seeth not danger, and inconveniences. Therefore it is ill in counsel, good in execution; so that the right use of bold persons is, that they never command in chief, but be seconds,...

End of an affair? Immigration, security and the U.S.-Mexican relationship.
December 22, 2002... THEY SEEMED made for each other. Taking office side by side as "compassionate conservatives", George W. Bush and Vicente Fox were united by more than a hankering for cowboy boots and ranching. President Bush was eager to demonstrate his...

Working out. (Letter from Sinaloa).
December 22, 2002... WITH LESS than four years left in his term, Mexico's President Vicente Fox looks increasingly like a lame duck. To his credit, he has brought honest people into government, cracked down on narco-trafficking, backed a freedom of information...

Nobel wisdom.(Jimmy Carter on North Korea)(Interview)
December 22, 2002... JIMMY CARTER:... what the North Koreans were waiting for was some treatment of their exalted leader with respect and a direct communication....I think he was quite ready. I didn't have to argue with him. When I outlined the specific points...

Shaken, not stirred.(actual James Bond quote on making of Martini's from the book 'Casino Royale')(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
December 22, 2002... "A dry martini", he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet." "Oui, monsieur." "Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice...

Power Steering. (Books).('The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone' and 'The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the Twenty-First Century')(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 222 pp., $26. Michael Mandelbaum, The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and...

The democratic ego at war.(excerpt from 'Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin' )(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
December 22, 2002... There is, let me assure you, nothing in nature more egocentrical than the embattled democracy. It soon becomes the victim of its own war propaganda. It then tends to attach to its own cause an absolute value which distorts its own vision of...

Endless Churchill. (Books).(5 books on Winston Churchill)(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001), 736 pp., $28. Geoffrey Best, Churchill: A Study in Greatness (Rio Grande, OH: Hambledon Press, 2002), 384 pp., $21. John Keegan, Winston Churchill: A...

A Papier-Mache Fortress. (Books).('The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History')(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 921 pp., $40. PHILIP BOBBITT's The Shield of Achilles is a bad book. It is error strewn, it suffers from grand delusions of...

A Matter of Writing Life and Death. .('Primo Levi' and 'The Double Bond: Primo Levi')(Book Review)
December 22, 2002... Carole Angier, The Double Bond: Primo Levi (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002), 898 pp., $40. Ian Thomson, Primo Levi (London: Hutchinson, 2002), 624 pp., [pounds sterling]25. PRIMO LEVI (1919-87) was a largely autobiographical...

Not to notice.(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
December 22, 2002... In January 1941 the fate of Europe and the world seemed to be sealed. Only the deluded could still think that Germany would not win; the stolid English "had not noticed that they had lost the game", and obstinately resisted under the bombings;...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
December 22, 2002... Reforging the Atlantic Alliance: Philip Gordon's "Reforging the Atlantic Alliance" (Fall 2002) is a thoughtful and well-reasoned case for American policy support to the Alliance, but he treads too lightly on the critical importance of...

Dual frustration: America, Russia and the Persian Gulf. (Quarterly).
December 22, 2002... IRAN AND IRAQ loom larger than ever in Russian-American relations. At a time when the number of issues on which Moscow and Washington disagree is dwindling, these two are still contentious enough--despite Russia's "yes" vote in the UN Security...

An American in Tehran.(W. Morgan Shuster in 1911 Iran )(Brief Article)
December 22, 2002... Britain and Russia cooked up ways to end the Iranian constitutional experiment. Britain had come to realize that one king came to heel more easily than eighty parliamentarians with their own opinions and agendas. Into this uncertain environment...

Party in a madhouse.(German pacifism as a reaction to terrorism; excerpt from 'Die Deutschen und der Terror')(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
December 22, 2002... Following the terrorist attacks in the United States a wave of pacifist excitement swept through Germany. It was driven by two ideas: what did the Western world do to the perpetrators so that they saw reason to become as nasty as they did? And:...