The National Interest articles from September 2007

The National Interest archives from September 2007

A real alternative.(Essay)
September 1, 2007... GIVEN THE tremendous challenges facing the United States, we would be wise to heed Dimitri Simes's call for our leaders and citizens to engage in a vigorous debate about the course and content of American foreign policy. He's also right that...

Wild parties.(political conditions)(Essay)
September 1, 2007... THE GENIUS of the U.S. Constitution has given America political stability and economic liberty that have combined to create the richest and most powerful nation on the planet--spending only 4 percent of the nation's income on the military. The...

Kipling redux.
September 1, 2007... LIBERAL INTERVENTIONISTS and neoconservatives share three rather unflattering characteristics. Both have a hair-trigger inclination to promote American unilateral military intervention overseas. Both assume a degree of moral superiority that...

A realist responds.(Essay)
September 1, 2007... DEREK CHOLLET wonders where I could have been during the last 15 years to have failed to notice the "intense, sometimes stifling, but largely healthy debate" regarding the U.S. role in the world. I was in Washington. But perhaps we have...

The big ten: the case for pragmatic idealism.(Essay)
September 1, 2007... THE PRINCIPLES that guide American foreign policy during the coming years will determine how successful the United States will be as it addresses the complex global challenges that confront us. A foreign policy simply rooted in values without a...

A conservative continuum.(Essay)
September 1, 2007... THE SOVIET Empire had just collapsed and Americans were giddily wondering what might be next. Some were talking of a peace dividend that Democrats might spend on social programs dear to their hearts or Republicans might send back to the...

Appetite for construction.(Essay)
September 1, 2007... WHAT IF George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice were right the first time? Remember when he said in the second debate with Al Gore back in 2000, I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building.... I mean,...

Arab spring fever.(Essay)
September 1, 2007... EUPHORIA SWEPT across legions of observers of Arab politics two years ago. A series of unusual scenes on the streets of the Middle East nurtured an inspiring story line of an emerging "Arab spring" that mimicked the earlier triumph of democracy...

Fear and loathing in Tehran.(Essay)
September 1, 2007... LIKE MOM and apple pie, supporting democracy in Iran has universal appeal in U.S. politics. So it is predictable that the February 2006 surprise request by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for $75 million in supplemental funding to support...

Iran, the rainmaker.(Clear and Present Dangers)(Essay)
September 1, 2007... EVER SINCE its start six years ago, the United States has been waging the War on Terror chiefly on the Sunni side of the religious divide within Islam. The principal targets have been Al-Qaeda and its affiliates. As recently as September 2006,...

The right stuff.(Clear and Present Dangers)
September 1, 2007... WHAT COMES to mind when someone mentions intelligence and the Iraq War? Why, of course, the intelligence estimate on Iraqi unconventional weapons programs--excoriated in a 500-page report that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued...

Radioactive hype.(Clear and Present Dangers)(Essay)
September 1, 2007... LET ME be clear at the outset (since it will likely be forgotten by readers who manage to get past this paragraph) that I consider dissuading more countries from obtaining nuclear weapons to be quite a good idea and preventing terrorists from...

Castro and the Caudillo.(Rocky Shoals of Reform)(Fidel Castro, authoritarian political-military leader )(Essay)
September 1, 2007... ONE OF the singular moments in a dictatorship is its end point. And for Fidel Castro and Francisco Franco those points converge revealingly--indicating a possible future for Cuba after its leader's demise. True, there are some notable...

Perestroika Cubana.(Rocky Shoals of Reform)(economic reforms )(Essay)
September 1, 2007... ON APRIL 21, 2007, Gram, a, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party released photos of a convalescing Fidel Castro meeting with a senior member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. The photos underscored how tightly Cuba...

Lessons from the bloc.(Rocky Shoals of Reform)(Essay)
September 1, 2007... GIVEN THE ever-worsening news about our failing occupation of Iraq, even devotees of Fox News have to wonder: "Why have we bungled this war so badly?" Readers of the burgeoning literature of Iraq War studies and exposes ask even more pointedly:...

Man of steel, re-forged.(Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War; 1939-1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 496 pp., $35.00. STALIN'S WARS by Geoffrey Roberts, a professor of history at University College Cork, is in many respects a...

Remember Prussia?(Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), 800 pp., $35.00. RUDYARD KIPLING'S 1897 poem Recessional warned of the transience of greatness with the lines "all our pomp...

Etat terrible.(Dangerous Nation)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 544 pp., $30.00. LEADING RUSSIAN political figures, including President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in recent years, have complained many times about...