Commentary

Will a more mature, developed, and self-confident China be a cooperative partner or a strategic adversary? For more than three decades, American foreign policy has been predicated on the desirability of encouraging China’s entry into the global community of...

Most high schools and even colleges and universities do not offer courses on technology in America, which is extraordinary because technology plays such a dominant role in our life. For instance, of the many revolutions invoked by the invention...

Throes of Democracy Walter A. McDougall, professor of international relations at University of Pennsylvania and author of Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877, reviewed how, after an unprecedented economic boom, by June 1857, the New York...

Twenty-five years ago, when I began to contemplate a dissertation topic concerning women’s work on Civil War battlefields, a prominent historian asked me, “Were there any women at the front?” Since then, historians have documented the lives of women...

Of the United States’ $600 billion defense budget, at least 40-50 percent goes to technology. Technology issues are extremely important in national security, and I would like to give an overview of some of the major issues and a...

China’s legal encounter with the West began unhappily in the first half of the nineteenth century. At the close of the preceding century, the Qianlong emperor had dismissively informed an emissary from King George III that China had no...

In yet another display of madness, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and his cronies have decided that if you lose the presidential election, simply do not announce the result and maybe everyone will go away. Mugabe and his party, Zanu-PF,...

No story in American history has captured the popular imagination better than that of Abraham Lincoln’s youth. A poor boy growing up in what was then a remote area, enduring the tragic death of his mother at an early...

The U.S. elections in November 2008 will bring new leadership and reconsideration of policies toward Asia. In China, the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao leadership, which began its second and final five-year term in 2007–08, faces new leaders in its key...

I. A Horse of a Different Color? Democracy and Distrust in Taiwan Following a seventeen-point victory in Taiwan’s presidential election on March 22, 2008, Ma Ying-jeou took office on May 20 with an inaugural address that reiterated his priorities:...