The National Interest articles from September 2004

The National Interest archives from September 2004

Wagging the dog.(The Realist)
September 22, 2004... ABSENT A CLEAR and present danger to its national security, no ally of the United States should seek to dictate American foreign policy, especially a policy deleterious to America's pursuit of its own vital interest. Allies may try, but the...

A principled objection.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2004... Roger Scruton is not alone is his contempt for the precautionary principle ("The Cult of Precaution", Summer 2004). The Bush Administration's chief policymaker on regulation, Dr. John Graham, has dismissed it as "a mythical beast, much like a...

Despot watch.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2004... I enjoyed Joe Bob Briggs's amusing portrait of Muammar Qaddafi ("The Q-Man", Winter 2003/04). However, in speculating that Qaddafi may champion his daughter Aisha as his successor, Briggs curiously claims this scenario would create "the first...

History hurts.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2004... Neil McInnes's "Requiem for a Genocide" was a fine piece. I greatly enjoyed reading it and I sympathized with its line of argument. Still, while dismissing spurious charges of European colonial genocide, one may note the inevitable injury...

The Hispanosphere.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2004... Valenti Puig's "Spain's Atlantic Option" (Summer 2004) makes a well-argued case for a Euro-Atlantic orientation for Spain and offers a very useful analysis of the emerging network civilization of the Hispanosphere. Yet he wonders whether the...

Iraq at the Turn.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2004... Your symposium ("Iraq at the Turn", Summer 2004) provided an extraordinarily full and informative review of the country and our troubled region. Among many insightful contributions, John Thomson & Hussein Hindawi ("Rescuing the Future")...

Resetting the gauge.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2004... I would like to call attention to a mistake made by Michael O'Hanlon and Adriana Lins de Albuquerque ("Gauging the Aftermath", Summer 2004). The authors include Costa Rica among a group of nations withdrawing their troops from Iraq. It is...

Real Democratik.
September 22, 2004... DEMOCRATS have lost their way on foreign policy. The party has been stuck in post-Cold War drift--confused by the Somalia syndrome, wedded to outdated notions of alliances, and unable to get its arms around America's enormous power. Democrats...

Liberal realism: the foundations of a Democratic foreign policy.
September 22, 2004... THE UPCOMING presidential election represents a defining moment for the United States and its engagement in global affairs. The foreign policy of the Bush Administration represents a radical departure--in principle as well as practice--from the...

The right stuff: defense planning challenges for a new century.
September 22, 2004... IN THE coming decade, the United States will face a very different and much more challenging security environment than the one it confronted during the Cold War. New challenges will be posed by non-state actors, growing instability in the...

Spies like them.
September 22, 2004... THE 9/11 Commission Report dominates the agenda these days on Capitol Hill and the airwaves in the public debate over the restructuring of the intelligence community (IC). Commission members are now busily arguing for a new National...

Reversing proliferation.
September 22, 2004... OF THE three interwoven threats to America--terrorists, rogue states and the proliferation of WMD--the third has provoked the least public debate since 9/11. This is curious, since the invasion of Iraq was intended as an exercise in...

Advancing democracy.
September 22, 2004... IN THE Summer 2004 issue of The National Interest, Adrian Karatnycky called for "an effort to press democracy's expansion" that would take advantage of what he described as an opening in history when there is a chance utterly to...

The authoritarian illusion.
September 22, 2004... THE BELIEF that non-democratic regimes incubate anti-Western extremism, making their aggrieved populations vulnerable to recruitment by terrorist groups, is the principle assumption behind the democracy project, which argues that it is in...

The "amazing and mysterious" life of Ronald Reagan.
September 22, 2004... IN 1987, Ronald Reagan uttered the immortal phrase: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!" Two years later, the Berlin Wall, the symbol and brace of the Soviet empire, fell under its own weight, while the real thing collapsed without a sigh on...

America's energy challenge.(Business & Economics)
September 22, 2004... WHOEVER wins the presidential election this fall must immediately address America's dependence on the Middle East for such a large percentage of the nation's energy needs. At present, the United States is outsourcing its energy policy to...

Small is beautiful.(Business & Economics)
September 22, 2004... SMALL-TO-MEDIUM enterprises (SMEs) around the world face a common problem: obtaining a "sliver of equity" to enable them to achieve growth and positive cash flow. While this might not be an imminent problem akin to international terrorism or to...

Scimitars to plowshares.
September 22, 2004... TO SUCCEED in its Middle East policy of promoting democracy, peace and regional stability, the U.S. government (with the support of America's private sector) must bring economic prosperity to this troubled region. After years of dismal economic...

The late American nation.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... James C. Bennett, Anglosphere: The Future of the English-Speaking Nations in the Internet Era (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), 256 pp., $29.95. Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First...

A nation under guilt.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 622 pp., $34.95. Nikolaus Wachsmann, Hitler's Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 538 pp., $45. AT THE...

Pride and prejudice.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism (London: Verso, 2002), 105 pp., $13. Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 165 pp., $21.95. Alan McPherson, Yankee...

The realistic Roosevelt.(Essay)
September 22, 2004... THEODORE Roosevelt's foreign policy career lends itself easily both to hagiography and hostile caricature--particularly in a presidential election year. American advocates of the robust use of military force to deal with current challenges...