E-Notes

A Subdued, Almost Embarrassed, Memorial It turns out I was mistaken. Earlier this year I noted that 2007 marks the fiftieth anniversary of both European unification and the Space Age. I predicted that whereas March 25, the date the...

Negotiating with Syria, as advocated by so many in the United States–including many members of Congress–can produce nothing positive. The problem is not so much “talking” to Syria, in a manner equivalent to a date. The real issue is...

The Chinese Communist Party holds its Seventeenth National Congress this month. That congress and the session of China’s national legislature next March mark the midway point and the reconfirmation in power of the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao leadership and provide...

The past few weeks have introduced a whirlwind of reporting on the current situation in Iraq. In particular, the reports of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces in Iraq, the U.S. General Accountability Office’s report, and the September...

Will America soon find itself in a counterinsurgency fight in another “Iraq”? There are responsible people who believe that, notwithstanding the U.S. experience since 2003, the American body politic still retains an appetite for colossal boots-on-the-ground efforts like Iraq....

The U.S. is increasingly using financial warfare to punish international actors, blocking the overseas bank accounts of North Korean, Iranian, and Russian companies involved in illicit activities such as nuclear and conventional weapons proliferation. Attacking the funding of terrorist...

The 100,000 square miles of sand in the Western Sahara that until November 1975 were the Spanish territory of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro–the latter an ironic name for an area lacking both water and gold–have been the...

invading Iraq, the U.S. unintentionally threw open the door to the expansion of Iranian influence in the region. With the U.S.’s commitment to majority rule, the Shia took political control of Iraq, and neighboring states watched in horror as...

Part I of II: The Other Age Born in the Year 1957 It has gone down in history as “the other world series”: a championship match even more shocking than the Milwaukee Braves’ upset victory over the New York...

On July 16, 2007, President Bush delivered a speech marking five years since his declaration of American support for a democratic Palestinian state. The original draft, scheduled a month earlier, had to accommodate an untoward event: the violent seizure...