Commentary

Only ten days elapsed between the Yugoslav election and the collapse of the Milosevic dictatorship. After a decade of losing wars and a pillaged, wrecked economy, the people of Serbia appear to have overthrown post-communist Europe’s bloodiest ruler. Why...

In May 2000, Philippines president Joseph Estrada visited Beijing and signed five accords to ease tensions over disputed islands in the South China Sea. It is surely encouraging to see two countries that have sparred in recent years take...

It is no secret that signs of social, political, and economic progress in Africa have been rare indeed. What is less often discussed is the responsibility borne by African leaders for the misery of their own people. But powerful...

U.S. policymakers seem to have given up on Japan. Who can take a country seriously when its June 25 elections featured almost no debate on how to revitalize a stagnant economy? When the electorate returned to power one of...

How did the United States get into Vietnam? What was it doing there? What happened at home? How did we get out? What have we learned? For two days, these questions were explored in great depth by some of...

The debate over whether Hafez al-Assad of Syria would ever make peace with Israel has now been settled: not in his lifetime. Assad’s death at the age of 69 on June 10, 2000, removes from the scene a stubborn...

On September 5, 1978, then President Jimmy Carter convened a summit conference at the Camp David retreat to save a faltering peace negotiation between Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Twelve days later they produced...

When the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law that restricted the state’s government agencies’ purchases from companies doing business in Burma, the Court’s decision was, as a matter of constitutional law, fairly unremarkable and, in...

The unexpectedly upbeat tenor of the Korean summit meeting is prompting analysts to consider the possibility of unexpected strategic challenges for the United States in East Asia. Although it seems unlikely that either a comfortable peace settlement or swift...