Category: The American Interest

Many Central Europeans who are now in their late middle age or older have fond memories of American soldiers in their midst.  In France in 1944, nylon stockings and chocolates were the tools of seduction, resented by men and welcomed

The European Union underwent a major transformation last May.  It was enlarged to 25 states when eight former communist countries—Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, and three Baltic republics—were formally admitted, as well as Malta and Cyprus.  The union

The Soviet Communist Party used to devote a lot of attention to the problem of inefficient agriculture.  The party’s Agrarian Policy Commission debated endlessly, throughout the final quarter-century of the Soviet state’s existence, how to improve the system.  Should the

If, as appears certain, Islamic terrorists planted the bombs that killed over 200 commuters and wounded 1,400 others on Madrid’s trains on March 11, the operation was singularly successful in achieving its political objectives.

Until that morning, the Popular Party

In a speech at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., on February 11, President Bush warned against the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and suggested measures to dismantle a growing black market in nuclear fuel and technology. 

A chain is as strong as its weakest link.  In President Bush’s “War on Terror,” that weak link is not in the Middle East or North Africa or the Subcontinent but in Europe.  For years, Chronicles has been warning that

It is reasonable to assume that a country’s foreign policy is conducted in the interest of that country’s security and well-being and that those entrusted with its formulation and conduct will act in a coherent and rational manner.  At the

In 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini told Oriana Fallaci that Western music dulls the mind.  “It involves pleasure and ecstasy, similar to drugs,” he explained; it does not exalt the spirit but puts it to sleep, and “it distracts our youth who

For 200 years, the Balkan states have been manipulated by the powers of “Old Europe” to slow and control the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.  They were created, enlarged, and shrunk as the need arose.  During the two world wars,

Another futile round of the six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear program ended in Beijing last September.  The communist authorities in Pyongyang subsequently declared that further negotiations involving both Koreas, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States were pointless, but

On August 25, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that he would look into ways to strengthen U.S. combat power without increasing the size of the military.  While the “end-strength” of 1.4 million should stay the same, he intends to

But for the death and suffering it has caused to thousands of innocents, the Liberian imbroglio would have an almost farcical quality—Graham Greene meets Lehar.  On one side, there was the LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy), a ragtag

It is sometimes necessary for a great power to keep a distant small country under military occupation—if need be, for a very long time.  The Romans could not contemplate an “exit strategy” from Palestine in the first century A.D.—or from

There have been strong empires with weak currencies, but not often and not for long.  The Soviet Union, Spain after Philip II, the Ottoman Empire after Suleiman, and an impoverished Britain after Versailles all come to mind.  That financially fragile

In the aftermath of the war in Iraq, its most determined advocates predictably claimed that the United States should proceed with her alleged mission of bringing democracy to the Middle East.  The advocates of this approach seek to push the

Four weeks before the latest war against Iraq, President George W. Bush declared that it would be motivated by a “vision” of democracy and liberation for the entire Middle East.  A U.S.-sponsored regime change in Baghdad, he proclaimed, would “serve

On November 21, 2002, NATO leaders meeting in Prague invited seven ex-communist nations to join their ranks in an expansion termed “historic.”  The three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (the alliance will, for the first time, include former

As the first contingent of U.N. weapons inspectors arrived in Iraq last November, U.S. government sources leaked a disturbing story about one of our key “allies” in the War on Terror.  Pakistan apparently has been helping North Korea with her

On November 3, Islam triumphed politically in Turkey, rendering the entire U.S. strategy in the Middle East tenuous and causing dismay in Europe.  Recep Tayyip Erdogan, barred from public office for Islamic agitation, led his Justice and Development Party (AKP)

Last October, North Korea announced that it has a nuclear-weapons program.  Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confirmed that North Korea already has a “small number” of nuclear weapons, and a Pentagon official later added that the United States thought Pyongyang had

The current president of the soon-to-be-defunct Yugoslav Federation, Vojislav Kostunica, has won the initial stage of Serbia’s presidential elections, the first held since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic almost exactly two years ago.  Kostunica garnered 31 percent of the vote,

In the final years of the Soviet Union, as glasnost broadened the scope of permissible public debate, it was still deemed advisable to precede any expression of controversial views with a little disclaimer.  For example, “While I hold no brief

The ongoing turmoil in America’s stock markets and a series of corporate scandals have attracted considerable attention from commentators and editorialists all over the developed world, who fear that economic instability in the United States may plunge the world’s top

On June 24, President George W. Bush delivered his long-awaited speech on the Middle East.  Most of his 15-minute statement was devoted to harsh criticism of the Palestinians, including the assertion that “peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, Europe was closer to America, politically and emotionally, than at any time since World War II.  For a moment, the threat of Islamic terrorism had rekindled a dormant awareness on both sides of

When I first met General Alexander Lebed, shortly after he was forced to retire from his military career in 1995, he was a crusty soldier with great political ambitions, itching for action but visibly uncomfortable in mufti.  His tie knot

There are contests in which a decent person prefers not to take sides, such as the bloody wars between Mafia families or Stalin’s disputes with Trotsky and Tito.  The war between Khomeini’s Iran and Saddam’s Iraq also comes to mind,

President Bush’s recent State of the Union Address was an historic occasion.  His speechwriting staff went through nearly 30 drafts and finally presented him (and the rest of us) with a mature ideological framework that reflects the balance of outlooks

In the aftermath of September 11, the chairman of the House International Relations Committee noted that the war on terrorism has revealed the need to overhaul U.S. foreign policy.  “Can anyone doubt that the sum of our efforts has been

It is not necessarily a bad thing for a national leader to remain at the helm for a very long time, provided that he is successful.  Otto von Bismarck’s 28 years as Prussia’s and then the Reich’s chief minister were

Writing in the New York Times on September 26, Paul Krugman insisted that the war against Afghanistan would not be “a war on behalf of the oil companies; not even a war on behalf of SUVs and McMansions.”  It was,

In the aftermath of September 11, you have done a reasonably good job managing the crisis, symbolizing the nation’s unity, restraining the laptop bombardiers, and preparing a military response that was neither hasty nor disproportionate. Now that two months have

After President Bush’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Italy in July, it is almost certain that a new round of NATO expansion will be announced at the forthcoming summit in Prague, regardless of Moscow’s misgivings. The alliance will

No foreign-policy issue facing the United States is more important than our longterm relationship with China, the most populous nation and the fourth-largest country on Earth. If we think in terms of uninterrupted statehood, China is the oldest nation-state, accustomed

A year ago, Robert Philip Hanssen apparently felt the need to explain to the Russians his motives for supplying them with thousands of top-secret U.S. intelligence documents over the preceding decade and a half. The veteran FBI agent wrote them

With the landslide victory of Ariel Sharon in the Israel general election on February 6, it is obvious that America needs to reevaluate its policy in the Middle East. A revised policy should be based on three key premises.

First,

In the second presidential debate last October, George W. Bush warned Vice President Gore that it is not America’s role to patrol the planet and to arrange other peoples’ lives in its own image. The United States must be proud

American policies in the Balkans over the past decade have come to embody all that is wrong with the fundamental assumptions of the decisionmakers in Washington. A thorough revision of those policies would be an important step toward a more

At the European Union summit in Nice last December France initiated plans for a new European military structure. While the stated purpose of the emerging 15-member alliance is to complement NATO rather than replace it, there is growing concern in

On September 1, President Clinton announced that he would leave to his successor the decision on whether to move from research and development to deployment of the National Missile Defense (NMD).

The announcement to shelve the NMD was long overdue.

Because of illegal immigration, there is no other country that affects America’s way of life as profoundly as does Mexico. Its politics should he followed, therefore, with the same attention to detail that characterized Kremlinology at the height of the

Be careful what you wish for, goes the old adage. You just might get it. So it is with America’s desire that the Europeans do more for their own defense.

The E.U. has proposed the development of a European rapid

For years, the Clinton-Gore administration has been in the forefront of efforts to create international judicial bodies—such as the Yugoslav war-crimes “tribunal” at The Hague—that could be used as auxiliary tools of diplomatic decisionmaking in Washington. Madeleine Albright liked the

In the last week of May, the Clinton administration successfully pressed Congress into granting China permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status as part of a recently negotiated trade pact. With that vote—the result of an unholy alliance between the GOP

We have always known that a Gore presidency would continue the flawed foreign policy of the Clinton administration; but now we know that—unlikely as it may sound—things may be even worse if the Vice President wins in November. On the

The outcome of Taiwan’s presidential election in March is potentially the most significant single event affecting American security since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most analysts have failed to address the fundamental dilemma that Taiwan now presents for the