The National Interest articles from May 2008

The National Interest archives from May 2008

Running on empty.(The Realist)(oil supply)
May 1, 2008... SOUND BITES and sloganeering just won't cut it anymore. Energy security--defined as reliable supplies at reasonable cost obtained in an environmentally sustainable manner--is no longer assured. All the presidential candidates loudly proclaim...

Not your average banker: a conversation with Robert B. Zoellick.(Interview)
May 1, 2008... CURRENT PRESIDENT of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick, sat down for a long talk with TNI's executive editor, Justine A. Rosenthal, almost a year into his tenure at the Bank. Zoellick discussed his new agenda--from putting the pieces back...

Free trade.(The Fair Play Debate)
May 1, 2008... FREE TRADE can benefit everyone--the developed and developing world. In large part because of open markets, the global economy is experiencing its greatest half century. In fact, free trade has increased American household income by lowering...

Fair trade.(The Fair Play Debate)
May 1, 2008... IT HAS become commonplace for politicians of both political parties to trot out rhetoric about how we need free-but-fair trade. Expanding markets through trade liberalization, it is urged, is a win-win situation. How is it, then, that in spite...

The perilous punditocracy.
May 1, 2008... THE RECORD of the American pundit class with regard to the 2008 presidential election can be summarized in one word: wrong. For the last twelve months, political journalists in unison have created and then imposed countless predictive...

Our imaginary foe.(Looking East)
May 1, 2008... IRAN'S THEOCRATIC leaders are not an attractive group of men. Their behavior and their public statements provide much ammunition for those who are convinced their regime should be toppled. Iran is a dangerous country. But Iran does not...

The friend of my enemy.(Looking East)(Russia, United States and Iran)
May 1, 2008... THERE ARE few issues that cause greater friction in U.S.-Russian relations than Iran's nuclear-weapons program. President Bush and other senior administration officials see Russia as critical to pressuring Iran to abandon this program and claim...

Eurasian invasion.(Looking East)(Europe and China alliance)
May 1, 2008... ONE OF the defining features of the post-cold-war era is the absence of a peer or near-peer competitor to the United States. This reality, combined with the military inferiority of regional adversaries, has meant that the United States and its...

Covering your assets.(Looking East)
May 1, 2008... PEOPLE ARE beginning to worry about the strategic consequences of the United States' large current-account deficit. A deficit that has been sustained in no small part by the unprecedented buildup of dollar assets by central banks and sovereign...

All the world's a stage.(image of America)
May 1, 2008... SIMPLY PUT, America's image in much of the Muslim world remains abysmal. Iraq, the war on terrorism, American support for Israel and other key features of U.S. foreign policy continue to generate animosity in the Middle East, Asia and...

Conflicts without borders.(Contagions)
May 1, 2008... MANY GOVERNMENTS around the world identify stopping and stemming "ethnic and religious hatreds" as a major foreign-policy priority. Quite simply, in the words of the 2006 U.S. National Security Strategy, such "conflicts do not stay isolated for...

Democracy bound.(Contagions)
May 1, 2008... AMERICAN FOREIGN policy identifies the ongoing spread of democracy around the world as a vital national interest, seeing other democratic states as "effective partners joining with us to promote global freedom and prosperity," in the words of...

Unsage advice.(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Zbigniew Brzezinski, Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 240 pp., $26.95. Madeleine Albright, Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's...

Rule, Britannia?(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (New York: Knopf, 2007), 464 pp., $27.95. Brendan Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British ...

I say NATO, you say no NATO.(Essays)(North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
May 1, 2008... "NATO NOSTRA." NATO is ours. That could be the new motto of President Sarkozy. For him, NATO is no longer something "alien," "Anglo-Saxon" or "American" as it was for his predecessors. On the contrary. "That Atlantic Alliance," he told his...