The National Interest articles from November 2007

The National Interest archives from November 2007

The closer: every major presidential candidate is asking for more, more, more when it comes to foreign policy. Maybe what we need is less.(The Realist)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... A PROPOSITION: AMERICA USED to be the world's relief pitcher. The secret weapon trotted out in the ninth inning to shore up the win. With all this talk of great-power fatigue, the end of the American era, the squandering of U.S. power and...

The art of the possible.(Essay)
November 1, 2007... AMERICAN FOREIGN policy confronts a basic paradox. The United States stands alone as the world's most powerful nation, with the strongest military, the largest economy, the highest level of technological capacity and the most extensive cultural...

The three "nos" knows.(Apocalypse When?)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... "RADIOACTIVE HYPE" by John Mueller sharpens the barbs from his recent book, Overblown, in ways that demonstrate that he is, above all, a committed contrarian. One can agree with many points in his article and book. But his central propositions...

Cassandra's conundrum.(Apocalypse When?)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... FIRST, LET me agree with one of John Mueller's main points: The dangers to our national security are very often hyped, and this alarmism produces undesirable consequences. And it is not just venal politicians and ideologues who participate in...

Non-proliferation parody.(Apocalypse When?)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... THE ESSAY "Radioactive Hype" by John Mueller makes a number of intriguing and counterintuitive assertions. Most provocatively, it raises questions about the human costs and other unintended consequences of a "non-proliferation first" foreign...

Apocalypse later.(Apocalypse When?)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... I WISH, first, to thank my distinguished detractors for their considered comments and, second, to register a few points of clarification, disagreement and dismay. Dismay is the easiest. All three seem in various ways to want to detach quiet and...

Foreign policy goes glam.
November 1, 2007... WHO WOULD you rather sit next to at your next Council on Foreign Relations roundtable: Henry Kissinger or Angelina Jolie? This is a question that citizens of the white-collared foreign-policy establishment thought they'd never be asked. The...

Mesopotamian muddle.(From Arabia to Zion)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... RARELY HAVE we faced more daunting problems in the Middle East and seemed farther away from resolving or even defusing them. There is surely no more important foreign-policy priority than finding ways to ameliorate the challenges and conflicts...

A broken engagement.(From Arabia to Zion)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... IT MAY seem counterintuitive, but September 11 produced an opening for improved U.S.-Iran relations that could have enhanced the U.S. ability to marginalize the number one threat to U.S. and Western interests: fundamentalist, suicidal Sunni...

Plan Z for Iraq.(From Arabia to Zion)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... MOST DISCUSSIONS about newly liberated states, such as Iraq, Kosovo or Afghanistan, start with what outsiders consider a preferred end product--a multi-ethnic, united, democratic, rights-respecting nation-state and one that is receptive to U.S....

What resource wars?(From Arabia to Zion)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... RISING ENERGY prices and mounting concerns about environmental depletion have animated fears that the world may be headed for a spate of "resource wars"--hot conflicts triggered by a struggle to grab valuable resources. Such fears come in many...

Breaking more Naan with Delhi: the next stage in U.S.-India relations.(Rising & Resurgent Powers)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... FIVE CENTURIES ago the lure of doing business in India was so strong that a generation of bold and adventurous Portuguese navigators and sailors changed the map of the world in order to get there. Vasco da Gama and his compatriots discovered...

Hu's on first?(Rising & Resurgent Powers)(Hu Jintao)(Editorial)
November 1, 2007... IN RECENT issues of The National Interest, there have been a series of articles that take China's rise to both regional and global pre-eminence as a given) But it is worth stepping back to take a sober look at some of the very real challenges...

Russia plays the China card.(Rising & Resurgent Powers)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... THE FRICTION between China and the Soviet Union that began to mount in the spring of 1969 along the Sino-Soviet border signaled to Washington that the communist world was not monolithic. Indeed, despite their seemingly common ideological...

A pipeline runs through it.(Rising & Resurgent Powers)(Essay)
November 1, 2007... IN THE early 18th century, the great Enlightenment philosopher Baron de Montesquieu pointed out that producers of manufactured goods possess a distinct trade advantage over producers of raw materials. The oil crisis of 1973, however, showed...

Arrested development: the fight against international corporate bribery.(Essay)
November 1, 2007... IN THE last 15 years, there has been growing recognition that corruption--including bribery, extortion and misappropriation--has a particularly insidious impact on developing nations. It distorts markets and competition, breeds cynicism among...

An officer and a professor.(Captain Professor: The Memoirs of Sir Michael Howard )(Book review)
November 1, 2007... Michael Howard, Captain Professor: The Memoirs of Sir Michael Howard (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 221 pp., $44.95. IN RECENT decades, a British invasion has been taking place in American academia. One history...

Betting on the Wrong Donkey.(Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security)(Book review)
November 1, 2007... Kurt M. Campbell and Michael E. O'Hanlon, Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 224 pp., $26.00. ONE ALMOST wonders if Kurt Campbell and Michael O'Hanlon wish that the Democrats had lost the...