Background on the News - 2006-03-13

The fall of Baghdad in April 2003 opened one of the most secretive and brutal governments in history to outside scrutiny for the first time. Seizing a unique opportunity, the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) commissioned a secret comprehensive study of the inner workings and behavior of Saddam Hussein's regime based on previously inaccessible primary sources. Two years in the making, the report of the "Iraqi Perspectives Project" draws on interviews with dozens of captured senior Iraqi military and political leaders and hundreds of thousands of official Iraqi documents from all levels of the regime, and is destined to rewrite the history of the war from the ground up. Excerpts from the report itself are presented exclusively in a special double-length article in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs.

• Read "Saddam's Delusions: The View From the Inside," by Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray

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:

Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq

by Paul R. Pillar

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon

Stephen Biddle

Most discussions of U.S. policy in Iraq assume that it should be informed by the lessons of Vietnam. But the conflict in Iraq today is a communal civil war, not a Maoist "people's war," and so those lessons are not valid. "Iraqization," in particular, is likely to make matters worse, not better.

The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy

Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press

For four decades, relations among the major nuclear powers have been shaped by their common vulnerability, a condition known as mutual assured destruction. But with the U.S. arsenal growing rapidly while Russia's decays and China's stays small, the era of MAD is ending — and the era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun.

The Man Without a Plan

Amartya Sen

In The White Man's Burden, William Easterly offers important insights about the pitfalls of foreign aid. Unfortunately, his overblown attack on global "do-gooders" obscures the real point: that aid can work, but only if done right.

Previously in Background on the News

Indian Spring
March 8, 2006
President George W. Bush's announcement last week that Washington will tolerate India's nuclear status has drawn fire from analysts who fear the move could undermine nonproliferation efforts everywhere. . . . Read more

To Be or Not To Be
February 22, 2006
Seven years after the end of the war in Kosovo, the terrority's final status is still up in the air. Formal negotiations about independence for the semi-autonomous province of the federation known as Serbia and Montenegro resume this week, but it is unclear where the talks (among representatives of Serbia, Kosovo, the United States, NATO, and the UN) will lead. . . . Read more

Beware of What You Wish For
February 8, 2006
Although in his State of the Union address President Bush reiterated his commitment to spreading democracy in the Middle East, recent elections in the region have benefited Islamist radicals most of all. . . . Read more

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