Foreign Affairs

 

November/December 2003

 

Comments

• That Was Then: Allen W. Dulles on the Occupation of Germany by Allen W. Dulles

  U.S. troops on conquered territory, infrastructure in ruins, international squabbling over reconstruction: a window onto occupied Germany seven months after V-E Day, when progress was still unsteady and Europe’s future hung in the balance.

• The Privatization of Foreign Aid: Reassessing National Largesse by Carol C. Adelman

  Critics have long derided the U.S. government for stinginess in international giving. But such charges miss the point. Today, it is private funds that make the difference in poor countries, and here the United States leads the pack.

• The Case for Cultural Diplomacy: Engaging Foreign Audiences by Helena K. Finn

  To fight foreign extremism, Washington must remember that winning hearts and minds is just as important as battlefield victories. Military force will not do it alone: the United States must offer desperate youth abroad a compelling ideological alternative.
  [500-word preview]

Essays

• China’s New Diplomacy by Evan S. Medeiros and M. Taylor Fravel

  The recent crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons has had at least one unexpected aspect: the crucial — and highly effective — intervention of Beijing. China's steady diplomacy is a sign of how much things have changed in the country, which has long avoided most international affairs. Recently, China has begun to embrace regional and global institutions it once shunned and take on the responsibilities that come with great-power status. Just what the results of Beijing's new sophistication will be remains to be seen; but Asia, and the world, will never be the same.

• China Takes Off by David Hale and Lyric Hughes Hale

  China has achieved stunning economic progress since the 1970s, thanks to aggressive liberalization, a commitment to exporting high-tech goods, and a massive injection of foreign investment. Although this unprecedented success is understandably unnerving to China's neighbors and trading partners, it should not be cause for worry; China, the United States, and the rest of the world still have lots of business to do.
  [500-word preview]

• Should Hezbollah Be Next? by Daniel Byman

  The radical Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah is fomenting violence in post-war Iraq and fanning the flames of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its bloody track record makes it a natural target in the war on terror. But Washington's only option is to confront Hezbollah indirectly: by getting its backers, Syria and Iran, to help change its focus from militancy to politics.
  [500-word preview]

• Reinventing the West by Dominique Moïsi

  During the Cold War, the ever-present Soviet threat helped keep the West united. More recently, however, attempts to mend the transatlantic rift by pointing to present dangers have only deepened the cultural divide. Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic must accept that "the West" has now split into European and American halves. But both sides still need each other — now more than ever.
  [500-word preview]

• Japan's New Nationalism by Eugene A. Matthews

  Ever since World War II, the slightest sign of nationalism in Japan has been widely denounced, at home and abroad. Recently, however, discussions that were once taboo — including whether to rearm or even develop nuclear weapons — have moved into the Japanese mainstream. Yet the country's critics need not be alarmed; a little healthy nationalism may be just what Japan, with its faltering economy, needs most.
  [500-word preview]

• America's Imperial Dilemma by Dimitri K. Simes

  The United States increasingly looks, walks, and talks like an empire. It should therefore heed the lessons of its predecessors, exercising strong and determined global leadership. At the same time, it must avoid the temptation to meddle when American interests are not at stake. This means, among other things, dropping the doctrine of universal democracy promotion.
  [500-word preview]

• The Next Prize by Daniel Yergin and Michael Stoppard

  The emerging global market in natural gas has the potential to meet rising demand for electricity worldwide. The United States' own gas supplies are dwindling, but elsewhere vast, unexploited resources are becoming ever more accessible now that gas can be liquefied, shipped, and used efficiently. New energy linkages will create new risks, but none that cannot be managed through proper diversification.
  [500-word preview]

• The Baby Trade by Ethan B. Kapstein

  The international adoption trade is booming, as more families in the West adopt more babies from developing countries. But it has spawned a sordid black market as well, in which children are bought or abducted and sold. The best way to stop the trafficking is not to ban adoptions from countries that tolerate corrupt rings, but to strengthen the underdeveloped multilateral legal regime that regulates adoptions around the planet.
  [500-word preview]

• Clinton's Strong Defense Legacy by Michael O'Hanlon

  Conventional wisdom holds that Bill Clinton presided over a disastrous downsizing of the U.S. military. But this claim is wrong. In fact, Clinton's Pentagon maintained high levels of readiness and enacted a bold military modernization program that bore fruit in Bosnia and Kosovo — and in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  [500-word preview]

 

Reviews & Responses

• Being Yasir Arafat: A Portrait of Palestine's President by Glenn E. Robinson

  Two Israeli studies of the polarizing Palestinian leader don't shed much light on their subject. But they do make clear why his time may be past.

• Remaking the World: Bush and the Neoconservatives by Joshua Micah Marshall

  Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay take stock of the Bush revolution in foreign affairs. The neocons have been running the show — and we're all now paying the price.
  

• The Other 9/11: The United States and Chile, 1973 by Kenneth Maxwell

  Thirty years after the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, The Pinochet File, a "dossier" of declassified documents, lays out the true U.S. role.