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2008 Archives

  “Detractors of Hillary,” World Beat, December 23, 2008 “China/US: Rivals, Partners in Asia,” Inter Press Service, December 17, 2008 “No More Axes,” World Beat, December 16, 2008 “Review: Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic,” Foreign Policy In Focus “Speak Memory,” World Beat, December 9, 2008 “Bomb India?” World Beat, December 2, 2008 “Tackling the Global Military Industrial… Continue reading 2008 Archives

Rebounding with Obama

After suffering through an abusive relationship, many people will fall in love “on the rebound.” They finally escape the clutches of an ogre only to jump, often without looking, into the embrace of another person, any other person. This leap of love is sometimes a lucky one, sometimes not. The last seven years of the… Continue reading Rebounding with Obama

Crying Terrorism

In Aesop’s famous fable, a shepherd boy amuses himself by crying out wolf just to watch his fellow villagers rush up to the pasture to defend the sheep. There’s no wolf; the villagers are furious. The boy does this several times until finally when the wolf really does appear, his cries for help go unheeded.… Continue reading Crying Terrorism

Heartthrob, Heartbeat

John McCain’s choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin for his vice-presidential candidate – an American heartthrob for the position one heartbeat away from the presidency – is the perfect expression of an anti-foreign policy. While Barack Obama was desperate to shore up his standing by pulling a foreign policy wonk onto his ticket, McCain was… Continue reading Heartthrob, Heartbeat

Hair of the Dog

I feel like I have a hangover when I’m reading the proceedings of international economic organizations. My hands start to tremble when I open a document from the G8 or the World Trade Organization. I start to read and my head hurts. My mouth is dry. I have an upset stomach. The language of the… Continue reading Hair of the Dog

Korea

Bush Gets One Right?

The vehemence of the hard-line opposition to the Bush administration’s North Korea policy suggests that, after seven years of blunders and miscues and outright war crimes, Washington has finally done the right thing on a foreign policy issue. I know: it’s really hard to keep the knee from jerking. Heck, I wrote a whole book… Continue reading Bush Gets One Right?

Detractors of Hillary

We were promised change, and when it comes to U.S. domestic policy we will likely get it. The Obama administration is readying a huge economic stimulus package. The president-elect recently announced that his nominee for secretary of labor is Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA), who is great on both labor and environmental issues. And maybe, just… Continue reading Detractors of Hillary

No More Axes

In Poland, in the first years after the fall of communism, the architects of its “shock therapy” economic reforms often compared their program to cutting the tail off a cat. If, for some reason, you were given the assignment of removing the unfortunate creature’s tail with an ax, it was best that you did it… Continue reading No More Axes

Book Reviews

Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic (Review)

The United States wasn’t the only country transformed by the social activism of the 1960s. Peace activists, Greens, and cultural hippies practically turned Germany upside down. And the man who has symbolized this thoroughgoing change more than any other German is Joschka Fischer. As Paul Hockenos details in Joschka Fischer and the Making of the… Continue reading Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic (Review)

Speak Memory

I wasn’t there to hear horror stories. The refugees that gathered in the living room of the house in this small village outside of Sarajevo were participants in a community garden project. In urban plots throughout Bosnia, families from different faiths and backgrounds coaxed vegetables from the ground and rebuilt relationships shattered by war. The… Continue reading Speak Memory

Bomb India?

After the attacks in Mumbai last week, should the United States bomb suspected terrorist cells in India? Send the Marines to Kashmir where one of the suspected groups behind the attacks — Lashkar-e-Taiba — originates? Or initiate regime change in Pakistan, which has provided support for several terrorist outfits operating in South Asia? These are,… Continue reading Bomb India?

Not-So-Pearly Gates

George Fernandes, the Indian socialist trade union leader and politician, was a prominent opponent of nuclear weapons. That is, until he became India’s Defense Minister in 1998. That year, India detonated its first nuclear bomb and officially entered the nuclear club. Fernandes, the former peacenik, had become the country’s number-one nukes booster. Do appointments shape… Continue reading Not-So-Pearly Gates

Asia

Aiming for Middle Power Status

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is nosediving in the polls, its gaffe-prone prime minister Taro Aso has acquired a reputation as his party’s funeral director, and a pivotal election may transform the Japanese political landscape before September. Particularly at stake is the country’s military and foreign policy. Currently, Japan is caught between its “peace… Continue reading Aiming for Middle Power Status

Korea

Engaging Pyongyang on Human Rights

(Editor’s note: The author presented a different version of this paper at the International Symposium on North Korean Human Rights, sponsored by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, in Seoul in October.) In the evolving U.S. policy toward North Korea, human rights considerations and national security concerns have competed for precedence. During President George… Continue reading Engaging Pyongyang on Human Rights

Group Grope

The world isn’t flat. When it comes to the global economy, the world slopes upward. The 190-odd countries in the world, roped together in various-sized groups, are groping their way toward the top of this mountain. The summit — and now you know why they are called “economic summits” — is shrouded in mist. The… Continue reading Group Grope

Korea

The North Korean Conundrum

As Barack Obama assembles his foreign policy team, he appears to be drawing from two primary sources: the Clinton faithful and Republican renegades. These old dogs might be up for some new tricks, but one risk of relying on such “experience” could be the triumph of conventional thinking in Washington — when the world expects,… Continue reading The North Korean Conundrum

Bombers without Borders

The United States, so obsessed with policing its own borders, shows precious little concern for those of other countries. When it comes to waging war, the Pentagon is like a little kid with crayons and a coloring book. It has great difficulty staying within the lines. Last week, for instance, Special Ops carried out a… Continue reading Bombers without Borders

The Religion of Guns

Americans worship guns. We stockpile nuclear weapons, we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on conventional weapons, and we keep handguns under our pillows. Not me, you might say: never touched a gun, never will. But you can still be part of the religion without visiting the church. Consider all the video games that involve… Continue reading The Religion of Guns

Art

Art of Torture

The pictures from Abu Ghraib have achieved iconic status. The hooded man on the box, his arms outstretched, has superceded the image of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue. The Bush administration will forever be remembered as “the administration that tortured.” Iconic images have a concentrated power. The Abu Ghraib pictures convey, in visual shorthand,… Continue reading Art of Torture

Art

Interview with Daniel Heyman

[Daniel Heyman, “They Put me in an Animal Cage,” gouache on nishinoushi paper, 2008.] Daniel Heyman is a visual artist from Philadelphia who has been capturing the images and words of Iraqi victims of torture from U.S. facilities like Abu Ghraib. Here he talks with Foreign Policy In Focus co-director John Feffer about how he… Continue reading Interview with Daniel Heyman

Bittersweet Economy

The breakfast that greeted me at my San Francisco hotel last week was bright, cheerful, and utterly appalling. The hotel management, with typical euphemism, called it a “continental breakfast.” But only the denizens of the great continent of sugar — which encompasses a large swath of America and some of its overseas dependencies — could… Continue reading Bittersweet Economy

Book Reviews

A Thousand Hills (Review)

A little over a decade after a terrifying genocide left a million people dead, Rwanda has recovered enough to become a tourist destination in central Africa. As veteran journalist Stephen Kinzer reports in his new book A Thousand Hills, Rwanda is an orderly, peaceful, and economically developing oasis in an otherwise strife-torn region. Kinzer points… Continue reading A Thousand Hills (Review)

What’s So Funny?

Comedian Boris Johnson is now the mayor of London. Comic Beppe Grillo has emerged as an important political force in Italy. Here in the United States, comedian Al Franken has moved into the lead for one of Minnesota’s Senate seats according to one recent poll. Inadvertent comic Arnold Schwarzenegger is still the governor of California.… Continue reading What’s So Funny?

Scorched-Earth Presidency

An army in retreat often destroys the land so that it can’t be used by the adversary. This scorched earth policy began in agricultural times when retreating armies burned the fields to deprive their opponents of food. Later, the militaries would level entire cities, as the Nazis did to Warsaw before they left it to… Continue reading Scorched-Earth Presidency

Of Coffee and Capitalism

Behind every great economic bubble lies what former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan once called “irrational exuberance.” Greenspan had in mind the tendency of people to pay more and more for the same thing: a tulip, real estate in the South Seas, a share in Widget.com, a one-bedroom apartment in downtown DC. This exuberance isn’t… Continue reading Of Coffee and Capitalism

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