William Pfaff
Essay
Jan/Feb
2001
America's predominance in the world has become the rallying cry of both liberals and conservatives in Washington. But this so-called New Wilsonianism is untenable: as history shows, a superpower inevitably invites opposition.
Essay
Jan/Feb
2001
America's predominance in the world has become the rallying cry of both liberals and conservatives in Washington. But this so-called New Wilsonianism is untenable: as history shows, a superpower inevitably invites opposition.
Comment
Jan/Feb
1995
Many African nations seem hopelessly destitute and anarchic. European nations have the moral obligation and the colonial expertise to give wise succor.
Review Essay
Nov/Dec
1993
Nationalism is not a modern, nineteenth-century phenomenon, author William Pfaff's claims to the contrary. Rather, it has deep, primordial roots. It will neither go away nor sober up into a sane "liberal" variety. Our hatreds are here to stay.
Essay
Summer
1993
War in the Balkans stems not from mysterious and unresolvable ancient hatreds but from forces and events of recent times-nineteenth-century romanticism, the emergence of nation states and the breakup of empires. The idea of an ethnic nation, based on political imagination rather than the European reality of racial intermixture, is a permanent provocation to war. Yugoslavia's war is about political values, specifically separatism versus secular, nonethnic democracy. Without nato guarantees against forcible border changes and a Western willingness to intervene, ethnic conflict will dominate the course of events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for years to come.
Essay
Special
1990
"Today there is not, as some argue, a single superpower, the United States; there are none". National power rests on a triad of (1) military power (2) economic and technological competitiveness (3) social cohesion and public consensus on national goals. Though pre-eminent in the first, the USA has faltered on the other two, with the result that "the world is moving towards a restored pluralism of power, a multipolar geopolitics". Concludes with speculation on three variables likely to shape the multipolar world (1) the future of the disintegrating USSR (2) relations within the EC, particularly as affected by German unification (3) how far the USA will be able to retrieve its position in respect of the second and third legs of the triad.
Essay
Jul
1966
Nato's "disarray" has been made into a crisis by President de Gaulle's decision to withdraw French forces and facilities from the integrated structure of the Alliance. For the other NATO powers, and for the United States, this has provided a shock, but-in some ways-a salutary one. The fundamental issues of Europe's future, of Soviet-Western relations and of American policy are now more likely to be addressed. Before the French action these issues would likely have been evaded. Now there still is time to think relatively slowly and carefully about the objectives of the European-American alliance and of the United States itself in Europe's affairs.
