The National Interest articles from June 2005

The National Interest archives from June 2005

An announcement.
June 22, 2005... June 1, 2005 To Our Readers: This issue marks the 20th anniversary of The National Interest. Readers of the magazine will notice that there have been some changes--changes we think will help to rejuvenate and regenerate TNI and to...

Rejecting Russia?(The Realist)
June 22, 2005... DOESN'T THE United States already have enough problems to deal with in the world? Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi remain at large, our work in Afghanistan and Iraq remains incomplete, and North Korea and Iran are both poised to become...

The India imperative: a conversation with Robert D. Blackwill.(Interview)
June 22, 2005... What are the origins of the transformation of U.S.-Indian relations? NO BILATERAL relationship in George W. Bush's first term improved as much as that between the United States and India. The president has noted, "After years of...

How to nation-build: ten lessons from Afghanistan.
June 22, 2005... FOR THREE and a half years, the United States has been engaged with the Afghan people in an ambitious program of state-building. Afghans have a strong sense of national identity, despite their ethnic diversity. The key task has been to...

An axis of democracy? The uncertain future of Israeli-Indian relations.
June 22, 2005... THE TRANSFORMATION in the relationship between India and Israel, from one that was at best cool and correct to one that is now hailed as a strategic alignment is among the striking changes in the post-Cold War landscape. This shift has been...

Israel and Arab democracy.(arab-Israeli peacemaking)
June 22, 2005... A COMMON criticism of President George W. Bush is portraying him as a patsy of Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon. The Bush Administration, so the theory goes, has allowed Israel to dictate its whole range of Middle East policies, be it...

Desperate times, half measures.
June 22, 2005... THE BUSH Administration and its European allies will soon have to make some tough decisions on what to do about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Iran's extensive program to develop an independent nuclear fuel cycle has reached a point where, short of...

Containing Europe.
June 22, 2005... EVER SINCE Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld drew the invidious distinction between old and new Europe, Europeans have been alert for signs of a new American strategy to dominate their continent through a policy of divide and rule. President...

Mergers and acquisitions.(mergers among states)
June 22, 2005... TALK ABOUT empire has become a cliche. Historians and economists busy themselves comparing America's contemporary role with Rome, Napoleonic France and imperial Britain. They assume that empire is the only model for a state seeking to project...

Imperialism of the fittest.(international relations, world government)
June 22, 2005... THE INTERNATIONAL order that had its beginnings with the Treaty of Westphalia (1648)--in short, a world comprised of sovereign territorial states--is coming to a close. Many states today are not truly sovereign--not in the accepted Westphalian...

It's quite a moment.(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
June 22, 2005... It's quite a moment. You're taking it easy, on a sunny afternoon, listening to the Jocks chaffing--and then out of the alleys two hundred yards away, figures are hurrying, hundreds of them, converging into a great milling mob, yelling in...

Rethinking non-proliferation.(nuclear energy policy of United States)
June 22, 2005... AMERICA'S GOAL of stopping nuclear non-proliferation has suffered two serious setbacks in recent years. Both North Korea and Iran appear to be pursuing ambitious nuclear weapons programs. What U.S. officials have not recognized is that such...

Post-nuclear strategy.
June 22, 2005... NUCLEAR WEAPONS are overrated. They are no magic talisman that, by simple possession, can guarantee the survival of a regime. After all, the Soviet Union, the world's second-largest nuclear power, lost not only its sphere of influence, but...

The Democrat armed.(United States politics)
June 22, 2005... HOW COULD a decorated war hero, experienced senator and outstanding debater lose a presidential race that turned largely on national security issues to an incumbent who during his first term badly miscalculated both the urgency of the main war...

Where credit is due: the provenance of Middle East reform.
June 22, 2005... A SUDDEN burst of political activity has jolted the Middle East. Iraq's historic January 30 elections transpired with considerably less violence than predicted. Two weeks later, male citizens in Saudi Arabia went to the polls to vote in the...

Religion and the West.
June 22, 2005... A FEW YEARS ago I was having breakfast in a hotel in Austin, Texas. At the next table sat two middle-aged men in business suits, both reading newspapers. One looked up and said: "The situation is really heating up in the Middle East." He...

Privatized peacekeeping.(peace negotiations)
June 22, 2005... IT CAN be said that international peacekeeping is marginally better than the alternative of all-out war. Popular perceptions of peacekeeping frequently include noble, blue-helmeted soldiers hailing from a cross-section of the world's countries...

The future of Russian energy.(Business & Economics)
June 22, 2005... VLADIMIR PUTIN has grand designs for the Russian oil and gas industry. In the post-Cold War era, the design should be based on the huge hydrocarbon reserves that could return Russia to its past glory. Russia's energy sector could be a source of...

The dragon awakes.(China)
June 22, 2005... NAPOLEON'S PREDICTION is coming to pass: China's awakening is moving the world around it. China is building its military capacity at a pace that has Washington's attention. The added muscle allows Beijing to more aggressively pursue regional...

The other black gold.(caviar)
June 22, 2005... BELLY UP to a bar in 19th-century New York, and chances are you would have been standing close to a bowl of caviar serving peanut duty on the counter to encourage a profitable thirst among the punters. The glistening beads would not have made...

Iran's atomic journey.(Iran's Nuclear Option: Tehran's Quest for the Bomb)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Al J. Venter, Iran's Nuclear Option: Tehran's Quest for the Bomb (New York: Casemate, 2005), 451 pp., $29.95. NO ISSUE looms larger on the contemporary foreign policy agenda of the United States and its European allies than the Islamic...

Resisting the charms of war.(The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 272 pp., $28. "TODAY AS never before in their history", explains Andrew Bacevich, "Americans are enthralled with...

The origin of modernity.(The Strange Death of Moral Britain, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, The Roads to Modernity)(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Christie Davies, The Strange Death of Moral Britain (Somerset, NJ: Transaction, 2004), 264 pp., $39.95. Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World (New York: Three Rivers, 2002), 480 pp., $14.95. Gertrude Himmelfarb, The...

Osama bin Laden's heir.(Reporter-at-Large)(Omar Ahmad Abdullah Al of Qatar Petroleum Corp.)
June 22, 2005... ON MARCH 19, the second anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, a 38-year-old Egyptian computer expert detonated his explosives-laden Land Cruiser inside the compound wall of the Players Theater in the Farij Kulaib neighborhood in Doha,...