CIAO DATE: 05/2011
May 2011
Jacob Heilbrunn
The prophet armed, Samantha Power, has now drafted Obama into her crusade against mass slaughter. Liberal hawks and neocons, reunited. Make way for a profound foreign-policy transformation.
Jessica Stern
The threat of domestic Islamic terrorism grows. But the origin of the problem is neither mosques nor the Muslim community writ large—it is jihad cool.
Richard J. Evans
From Jason and the Golden Fleece to Napoleon and the Rosetta Stone it has been to the victor go the spoils. There may no longer be whole-scale pillaging of the Nazi era, but from Egypt to Iraq the...
Eugene Rogan
Contrary to so much conventional wisdom, the struggle for democracy in the Middle East is not new. The events of 2011 have deep roots in the nineteenth century. Islamic culture and self-governance are not mutually exclusive.
Rajan Menon
One fact is certain: foreign interventions end badly. Think the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan. Libya will be no different.
Hugo Chávez Gets a Twitter Account
Christian Caryl
According to cyberutopians like Clay Shirky, everything from Wikileaks to Twitter is making us better, kinder, gentler human beings. But technology is a tool that can be manipulated by both peaceful protesters and repressive governments.
Thomas de Waal
The typical vision of Chechnya: a violence-filled land of terrorists fighting for independence from the Kremlin’s iron grip. The reality is a land torn between nationalism and a Russian civic identity.
Margaret MacMillan
Our risk-averse culture regards the Great War with pity and horror. Adam Hochschild too adopts this war-is-hell view. But nationalism, patriotism and camaraderie motivated Europe’s citizens to take up arms.
Richard K. Betts
John Ikenberry's latest—Liberal Leviathan—offers a relentless mantra on the merits of the global liberal order while painting over the inherent tension between U.S. power and multilateral cooperation.