The National Interest articles from July 2008

The National Interest archives from July 2008

Dollars & sense.(The Realist)(opportunity costs of the war in Iraq)
July 1, 2008... THERE HAS been much talk of late about the cost of the Iraq War, due in no small part to the huge estimates postulated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Together with his colleague Linda Bilmes, Stiglitz asserts with confidence...

A user's guide to the century.(New World Order)(Essay)
July 1, 2008... THE "NEW world order" of the twenty-first century holds the promise of shared prosperity.., and also the risk of global conflict. This is the paradox of our time. The scale of human society--in population, level of economic production and...

Mo' money, mo' problems.(New World Order)
July 1, 2008... RISING PRICES in commodity markets have caused alarm, protests and even violence in places as diverse as Egypt and the Philippines. Even in wealthy nations, higher prices for fuels, foods and raw materials are squeezing consumers and...

Feeding frenzy.(New World Order)(food shortages and international conflict)
July 1, 2008... FOOD. MAN'S most-essential resource. And now a cause of war? For years, strategists, policy makers and the rest of the foreign-policy cadre worried the world's vanishing resources would be the cause of conflict. But of course, with energy...

Pandemic pandemonium.(New World Order)
July 1, 2008... PANDEMIC. THE word can spread fear to billions overnight. One of the few public-health terms that gives Hollywood nightmare plotlines. Literally meaning "all people," a pandemic is an extraordinary global health event in which an epidemic of...

Battle of the (youth) bulge.(New World Order)(demographic change implications)(Viewpoint essay)
July 1, 2008... OVER THE next few decades, the developed countries will age and weaken. Meanwhile, dramatic demographic trends in developing nations--from resurgent youth booms in the Muslim world to premature aging in China and population implosion in...

Cellphones in the Hindu Kush.(Company overview)
July 1, 2008... THE LAWLESS border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan has become America's most acute foreign-policy challenge. Virtually every major al-Qaeda attack or plot of the past four years has emanated from the region. Islamic militants threaten...

Rogue operators.(states sponsoring terrorists)
July 1, 2008... WE LIVE in a world where the greatest terrorist threats to the United States can hardly even be given a label. The actors are neither traditional terrorist groups nor the classic state sponsors. In the murkiest of undergrounds, weaknesses...

Geneva 2.0.(Geneva conventions)
July 1, 2008... IN JANUARY 2002, then-White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote a memorandum to President Bush in which he argued that "the current paradigm renders quaint" many of the provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. This remark set the stage...

McCain's choice.
July 1, 2008... SENATOR JOHN McCain (R-AZ) may describe himself as a "realistic idealist," but this formulation does little to paper over the very real schism among Republicans (and conservatives in general) about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy....

Homeward bound?(US military)
July 1, 2008... BOTH U.S. political parties--the Democrats and the Republicans--compete to see who can be more interventionist in world affairs. Although many liberal Democrats emphasize working through international institutions and organizations, such as the...

Of Democracy & Dinero.(Latin America)(Critical essay)
July 1, 2008... Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), 416 pp., $16.00. Translated with an introduction by John M. Cohen. Mario Vargas Llosa, Feast of the Goat: A Novel (New York: Picador USA, 2002), 416 pp.,...

Homo Neoconus.(America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War and The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam)
July 1, 2008... David Milne, America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008), 336 pp., $26.00. Andrew Preston, The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 334...