July 25, 2007

Let 'Containment' Rest in Peace

Disillusioned with the Bush administration's foreign policy and military strategy in the Middle East, an influential school of thought has developed, clamoring for the United States to adopt a less intrusive approach to the region. While there's a le...

March 9, 2007

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose the Military?

Almost a decade ago the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick penned an essay asking "Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?" That is, why would those who live well reject the open society that allows them to do so? The essay was less a v...

July 14, 2006

Geopolitics Is on Putin's Mind at G-8 Summit

Say what you want about his authoritarian leanings, you have to respect Russian President Vladimir Putin's political and public—diplomacy skills. He is using flattery and espousal of certain fashionable causes with little impact on his nation t...

May 26, 2006

Restore History and Theory to Military Education

Strategic thinking —— roughly speaking, the art of using history and theory to grapple with today's security challenges —— is in decline in the U.S. defense community. Cutbacks in military education only compound the problem. ...

May 2, 2006

Negotiations Theory Goes to War -- Again

With apologies to Mark Twain, rumors of the North Korean bomb's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Hope flared briefly last fall when the protagonists in the "six—party talks" announced that they had agreed in principle on a nuclear—fr...

November 28, 2004

Hollywood to DOD: war Is more than weaponry

Critics like to give Hollywood a hard time for debasing American culture. While some flotsam does make it into theaters, I think moviemakers can pack an astonishing amount of wisdom into their products when they put their minds to it. Look no farther...

November 8, 2004

Did Saddam mimic Saladin?

The weird ease with which the Iraqi army and regime fell last year, combined with the stubbornness of the subsequent insurgency, has occasioned lively debate in national security circles. Here's one hypothesis: The Iraqi dictator, taking his cue from...

October 11, 2004

If Americans are cowboys, what are Europeans?

Our European friends love to castigate conservative American presidents for pursuing "cowboy diplomacy." It's a mystery to me why they consider this a putdown. A century ago our first cowboy president found his way onto Mount Rushmore. Theodore Roose...

October 9, 2004

Thucydides to Taiwan: arm yurself

Here's a question for the presidential candidates as they prepare for their last debate: How will you approach China—Taiwan relations? This isn't an abstract question: Our next president could well have to deal with a war in the Taiwan Strait....

August 18, 2004

Combat doesn't a president make

Something's been nagging at me about the prominence of military issues in this year's presidential campaign. As has been widely noted on this website and elsewhere in the media, Sen. John Kerry has predicated his run for the White House almost entire...

July 20, 2004

Revolting Elites

Sighted this week in Princeton, New Jersey: a BMW sports car bearing bumper stickers that proclaimed the driver to have "A PBS Mind in a Fox News World" and enjoined Americans to "Think: It's Patriotic." However silly the sentiments conveyed, you hav...

July 13, 2004

Rebuilding Alliances Involves More than Just Making Nice

A staple of Sen. John Kerry's critique of the Bush foreign policy is that President George W. Bush and his lieutenants squandered the goodwill of longstanding allies by their boastful words, plunged into Iraq without the explicit blessing of the UN S...

June 16, 2004

Tuscan sojourn shows pitfalls of military operations

The family and I are spending a few weeks at a villa in rural Tuscany. Generations of artists hardly did justice to the Tuscan countryside. Ancient churches, towns, and fortifications abound. Art is everywhere. Michaelangelo was born about five miles...

June 7, 2004

China's Creeping Expansion in the South China Sea

Perhaps blinkered by its focus on the immediate threats from the Middle East and North Korea, America is passively allowing a very dangerous course of events to unfold elsewhere, in another region vital to our national interests. Unless we awaken, an...

April 9, 2004

Machiavelli on Iraq

Uprooting a totalitarian regime —— a regime that has penetrated all corners of society —— and replacing it with something more humane is no easy task. This week's fighting in Fallujah and other hotspots attests to this soberin...

March 22, 2004

Trust But Verify -- Again

In mid—February, President George W. Bush gave a detailed rundown of how Dr. A. Q. Khan, the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, had masterminded covert transfers of nuclear technology and know—how to countries such as Iran an...