The National Interest articles from March 2008

The National Interest archives from March 2008

Bismarck for president.(The Realist)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... DIPLOMATS HAVE been referred to as "honest men sent to lie abroad" and hardly anyone is surprised when politicians take liberties with the truth. Former President Ronald Reagan, an icon among Republicans who well understood the power of a good...

Comments & responses.(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... "So when we talk about the antagonism that has arisen between bloggers and the FPC, we are really talking about liberal bloggers and the Democratic half of the FPC. This is a family feud, one that bears more than a passing resemblance to the...

Making the grade: from A to F, how the U.S. measures up in its struggle against global extremism.(Table)
March 1, 2008... I Combating Islamic Extremist Terrorism Overall Grade: D + Al-Qaeda headquarters C Al-Qaeda affiliated groups (e.g., Jemaah Islamiyah & Lashkar-e-Taiba) ...

Do no harm.(Situation: Critical)(United States and Pakistan)
March 1, 2008... IF YOU don't know what to do, better to do nothing--and the United States does not really know what to do in Pakistan. Moreover, things there are not nearly as bad as the Western media and some excitable politicians present. The situation is...

Do not resuscitate.(Situation: Critical)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... WE SEEM to be on constant red alert for state failure, but we can stop fearing and start looking. It's already happening in Somalia, Congo and Sudan; it is also likely to spread to Eritrea, Kenya, Nigeria and possibly even Ethiopia--and that's...

Staying alive.(Situation: Critical)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... SITTING AT the edge of international attention are states in all but name. Although existing as highly functioning nations, they rest also on the edge of extinction. Taiwan. Kurdistan. Somaliland. Kosovo. With little meaningful international...

Invasive procedures.(Situation: Critical)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... THE GOVERNMENTS of Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries of vital interest to the United States, are in danger of collapse. Whatever optimistic policy makers and presidential candidates may say, Washington has few remaining tools with which to...

Patient stabilized?(Situation: Critical)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... IRAQ'S PROGNOSIS is better today than it has been for a long time. An end to major violence, and with it a major reduction in the risk of a wider war and the human cost of further bloodshed, is now a real possibility. But to realize this...

Total recall.(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... CHINA ONCE languished, a closed economy with several hundred million people living in abject poverty. Today, it is a major engine for world economic growth. It boasts a rising middle class and the world's largest foreign-exchange reserves....

Prologue.(Great Powers in Wonderland)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "It's a great huge game of chess that's being played--all over the world--if this is the world at all, you know." DESPITE ALL the talk of a "unipolar moment" after the end of the cold war, the United States is...

Chapter one: a Persian tea party.(Great Powers in Wonderland)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... We quarreled--just before he went mad... But who's the Hatter? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHILE ISLAM remains fundamental to the core views of many members of the elite in Dan, it has been increasingly synthesized with distinctly Iranian...

Chapter two: the bear's croquet ground.(Great Powers in Wonderland)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "If I lose my temper, you lose your head.... Sentence first, verdict later." UPON BECOMING foreign minister in 1996, Yevgeny Primakov declared his motto to be "Russia was and remains a great power. Her foreign...

Chapter three: understanding the jabbermock.(Great Powers in Wonderland)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If the bear's so great, what of the dragon, then? "It seems very pretty... but it's rather hard to understand!" CHINA HAS a conflicted identity as a major power--but few nations have had as extensive, animated...

Chapter four: curiouser and curiouser.(Great Powers in Wonderland)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle." FOR MUCH of its postindependence history, India was a frustrated power--the aspirations of its political elite consistently outstripped the country's...

Chapter five: the Japanese quadrille.(Great Powers in Wonderland)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "But it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." Japan's on the verge of something more--which path will it choose? A GREAT DEAL has changed since the late 1980s, when Japan was...

Chapter six: eat me, drink me.(Great Powers in Wonderland)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... "It was much pleasanter" at home, when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered around by mice and rabbits." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BRAZIL'S GRANDEZA (greatness) years, defined by the desire to become a major...

Chapter seven: ASEAN's adventures.(Great Powers in Wonderland)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" said the Queen. THE ASSOCIATION of Southeast...

Chapter eight: the mock turtle's story.(Great Powers in Wonderland)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... "If you don't know where you are going, any road will rake you there." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE EUROPEAN is a "composite power" It frequently have a "common foreign and security policy" more on paper than in reality. Moreover,...

Chapter nine: a caucus race and a long tale.(Great Powers in Wonderland)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... "Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look a bout her and to wonder what was going to happen next." IN THE preceding pages, my colleagues discussed the foreign-policy...

Arm wrestling.(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... IN 2007, key pillars of the global arms-control architecture collapsed without any consensus on their replacement. The Russian-American dispute over the proposed deployment of U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems in eastern Europe has...

Pride and prudence.(Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full; Richard M. Nixon; George H. W. Bush; The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews; The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate; Henry Kissinger and the American Century)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Conrad Black, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007), 1,152 pp., $40.00. Elizabeth Drew, Richard M. Nixon (New York: Times Books, 2007), 192 pp., $22.00. Timothy Naftali, George H. W. Bush (New York: Times...

Wuthering Ike.(Ike: An American Hero )(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Michael Korda, Ike: An American Hero (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 779 pp., $34.95. DWIGHT D. Eisenhower was surely one of the most underrated presidents in American history. Posing as the amiable duffer and famed for his garbled...

Pax Corleone.(Critical essay)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IT IS ONE of the most well-known scenes in cinematic history. Don Vito Corleone, head of the most powerful of New York's organized-crime families, walks alone across the street from his office to buy some oranges...