The National Interest articles from March 2006

The National Interest archives from March 2006

Geopolitical Jihad.(cartoon of Prophet Muhammad )
March 22, 2006... A CARTOON of the Prophet Muhammad donning explosive headgear detonated in the Islamic world--a picture telling a thousand fighting words. At least that is how many Muslims saw it, particularly those who responded to the depiction of Islam as an...

China, my China.(Comments & Responses)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... In the past two issues of The National Interest, there has been a great deal of discussion about "China's rise" in the international system. Let me give a Chinese point of view on China's evolving role in global affairs. In his address at...

A modest proposal.(nuclear energy)
March 22, 2006... ARE WE pursuing the right strategy to ensure that Iran (or, for that matter, any other aspirant nuclear power) does not cross the threshold to join the ranks of nuclear weapons states? To deter Tehran, it is essential that there be a united...

A profile in defiance: being Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
March 22, 2006... IN JUNE the hard-line mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, walked across American and Israeli flags painted on the pavement of a mosque and voted in Iran's ninth presidential election. After all the ballots were counted, the results stunned...

The Osirak fallacy.(nuclear energy: Iran)
March 22, 2006... AS PRESSURE mounts to reckon with Iran's nascent nuclear program, some strategists are arguing that the United States has run out of alternatives to military action. Many of them are pointing to Israel's 1981 air attack on Iraq's Osirak reactor...

A fragile consensus.(Iran's military power)
March 22, 2006... OVER THE past 25 years, European and American perspectives toward the Islamic Republic of Iran have sometimes converged and sometimes diverged. Initially, Europeans, like Americans, were concerned that Iran would try to export its revolution...

Democracy, realistically.
March 22, 2006... IS AMERICA'S national interest served by the spread of democracy? Realist critics have repeatedly chastised the Bush Administration for its "utopianism", arguing that, in using American power to spread political liberty around the world, the...

Al-Qaeda's media strategies.
March 22, 2006... We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media.... [W]e are in a media battle for the hearts and minds of our umma. --Ayman al-Zawahiri, July 2005 THE CENTRALITY of the Arab mass...

Strategic myopia: the case for forward enagement.
March 22, 2006... OUR NATION'S ability to foresee and respond to increasingly complex and networked threats is handicapped by an archaic and compartmentalized interagency system that dates from the Cold War. While the current system is already hard-put to keep...

A nuclear terrorism report card.
March 22, 2006... IN THE first debate of the 2004 presidential campaign, the moderator asked the two candidates: "What is the single most serious threat to American national security?" Both answered: nuclear terrorism. Vice President Dick Cheney followed up,...

Thinking beyond states.
March 22, 2006... WHEN GOVERNMENT officials formulate foreign policy, they tend to focus their analytical resources on the opportunities and challenges created by other governments: They coordinate policy with some states in order to overcome resistance from...

Known and unknown dangers.(terrorism)
March 22, 2006... LOOKING BEYOND the "usual suspects for global mischief-making, there are potential crises that could both truly surprise us in 2006 and prove enormously disruptive to our interests and well-being. Three profoundly different states offer an...

A consensus shattered.(trust in government)
March 22, 2006... WHEN THINKING about the new challenges we face, we must do more than look abroad. We have to take a closer look at ourselves--and ask the fundamental question of whether a strong national security policy can be conducted with a polity that is...

The threat of global poverty.
March 22, 2006... WHEN AMERICANS see televised images of bone-thin children with distended bellies, their humanitarian instincts take over. They don't typically look at UNICEF footage and perceive a threat that could destroy our way of life. Yet global poverty...

Less than Dolce Vita.
March 22, 2006... ON APRIL 9, 2006, Italians will vote on Silvio Berlusconi's record as premier of Italy--and are expected to give a negative verdict. The likelihood is that a coalition of center-left and left-wing parties led by a former president of the...

Conflict conundrums.(Europe)
March 22, 2006... EUROPE'S UNRESOLVED disputes--Kosovo's bid for independence, the breakaway regions of Georgia, the long-festering Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the Greek-Turkish divide in Cyprus--present the United States and other global and regional powers...

The culture club: exploring the central liberal truth.
March 22, 2006... IN THE early 1960s, when I started my career in development assistance, the experts were convinced that tyranny, poverty and social injustice could be successfully combated by a combination of decolonization, good policies, and the financial,...

Leveraging Islam.(antisocial behavior)
March 22, 2006... FOLLOWING THE implosion or removal of totalitarian regimes of the secular (communism, Saddam's state socialism) and religious (Taliban) varieties, we have witnessed an explosive growth in numerous forms of antisocial behavior. The resulting...

Clinging to faith: public intellectuals and the God that failed.
March 22, 2006... THE COLLAPSE of communist states in Eastern Europe in 1989 and of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 was widely assumed to mark the end of the historical career of communist systems and movements; it was also expected to discredit durably the...

The struggle for democracy.
March 22, 2006... PRESIDENT GEORGE Bush's promotion of democracy has become the unifying and driving principle of his administration's global foreign policy and the stated objective of the costly and controversial military effort in Iraq. The administration has...

Strategic horizons.(American Global Strategy and the "War on Terrorism")(New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy)(Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy)(The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century)(Book review)
March 22, 2006... Hall Gardner, American Global Strategy and the "War on Terrorism" (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 239 pp., 45 [pounds sterling]. Robert J. Lieber, The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century (New York: Cambridge University...

Patriot games.(Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak)(Movie review)
March 22, 2006... Burak Turna and Orkun Ucar, Metal Firtina (Metal Storm) (Istanbul: Timas Yayinlari, 2004), 302 pp., 6 YTL. Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak (Valley of the Wolves: Iraq), 122 min., Pana Films, Istanbul, 2006. DESPITE THE enormous advances of the...

The Middle East waiting game.(Reporter-at-Large)
March 22, 2006... "SEE YOU in paradise", a Palestinian journalist and Hamas member told me, half-threateningly, on the second day of a training program in Gaza City--delivering the words with a sardonic smile that haunted me half the night, as I tried to figure...