March 16, 2005
Is Palestine the Pivot?
WEB EXCLUSIVE Read a postscript by Michael Scott Doran
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Palestine, Iraq, and American Strategy
March 16, 2005
Does the Bush administration deserve credit for the recent democratic flowering in the Middle East? Writing in Foreign Affairs two years ago, Princeton University's Michael Scott Doran argued against those who claimed that the Palestinian issue was the crucial pivot on which Middle Eastern events turned. In a new postscript to his article, he writes that recent events bear out his thesis. It is precisely by ignoring conventional wisdom and decoupling U.S. policy toward the Middle East from Palestine that the Bush administration has helped the United States, the Middle East -- and perhaps even the Israelis and Palestinians themselves.
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Previously in Background on the News
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Pharaoh Blinks?
March 2, 2005
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced last week that for the first time in the country's history, the next presidential elections would be open to candidates from several different parties. Given Mubarak's 23 years of soft authoritarian rule, the statement came as a surprise and might constitute a first step toward democratic reform. Or it might not. . . . Read more
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The Tsunami Orphans
February 16, 2005
Vast numbers of the children who survived last December's tsunami are now orphans who need to be placed in new families. Unfortunately, the legal standards that govern international adoption could keep them from finding loving homes abroad. . . . Read more
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In the Current Issue of Foreign Affairs
The complete text of selected essays and of all the book reviews from the March/April issue can be found on the Foreign Affairs Web site. Currently the following essays are available in their full text:
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Taking on Tehran
Kenneth Pollack and Ray Takeyh
If Washington wants to derail Iran's nuclear program, it must take advantage of a split in Tehran between hard-liners, who care mostly about security, and pragmatists, who want to fix Iran's ailing economy. By promising strong rewards for compliance and severe penalties for defiance, Washington can strengthen the pragmatists' case that Tehran should choose butter over bombs.
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The Overstretch Myth
David H. Levey and Stuart S. Brown
The United States' current account deficit and foreign debt are not dire threats to its global position, as would-be Cassandras warn. U.S. power is firmly grounded on economic superiority and financial stability that will not end soon.
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The Choice
Donald Kennedy
Jared Diamond's Collapse is a catalog of past environmental ruin. But despite the abundance of bad news, its message is one of cautious optimism: if modern society can learn from the failures of its predecessors, it can avoid their fate.
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Red-Handed
Mitchell B. Reiss, Robert Gallucci, Richard L. Garwin, and Selig Harrison
Mitchell Reiss, Robert Gallucci, and Richard Garwin allege that in questioning the Bush administration's case against North Korea, Selig Harrison misstated the facts; Harrison responds.
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Outstanding New Books
Plaudits from our book review panel in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs.
Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin America
by Kathryn Sikkink
". . . [an] illuminating account of how persistent policy entrepreneurs armed with fresh ideas inserted and then institutionalized human rights promotion into inter-American relations." --Richard Feinberg
Read the review
The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America
by Kenneth M. Pollack
" . . . this informed and eminently readable study provides a detailed narrative of that turbulent quarter-century of U.S.-Iranian relations from the advent of the Islamic Republic to the present." --L. Carl Brown
Read the review
The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace
by Morton H. Halperin, Joseph T. Siegle, and Michael M. Weinstein
" . . . [a] forceful case for a 'democracy centered' foreign policy . . ." --G. John Ikenberry
Read the review
Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights
by Allen D. Hertzke
"Freeing God's Children is the best available account of . . . the rise of the religious right in foreign policy . . ." --Walter Russell Mead
Read the review
Africa Since Independence: A Comparative History
by Paul Nugent
"Nugent's book is easily the best single-volume history of postcolonial Africa written in the last 20 years." --Nicolas Van De Walle
Read the review
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