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The National Interest
Winter 1998/99—Number 54
The distinguished professor of political science at the University of Chicago makes the case that the three main unifying forces in the Euro-American partnership over the past forty years — the Soviet threat, America’s prime economic stake in Europe, and a strong political interest in the Atlantic community — are steadily eroding and along with them so, inevitably, must the partnership.
Simes, president of The Nixon Center, lays substantial responsibility for Russia’s current crisis at the doorstep of the White House. The Clinton administration wrongly supported economic reform over democracy, and Boris Yeltsin over the development of true political checks and balances.
“How could a policy assumption be wrong,” asks Malcolm, “when the foreign ministry of every major power in the West is agreed about it?” His answer: “Very easily.” Independence, not autonomy, he argues, is the only solution that will prevent a long-simmering conflict from catalyzing a major Balkan war — one thing the West definitely wants to avert.
Drawing on his experience in the National Security Council during the Nixon administration, Rodman assesses the dangers to foreign policy under badly damaged presidents. He demonstrates how domestic presidential crises distract, distort, and divert foreign policy decision-making mechanisms in potentially harmful ways.
One thing the world should never do, according to the Asia-Pacific editor of the Australian Financial Review, is underestimate Japan. Despite recent economic losses greater than those of the Second World War, and an abysmal near- and long-term economic forecast that the government has yet to address seriously, Hartcher reassures us that “Japan can and will rise again.”
Harris, a key policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, remarks on the emergence of a relatively new phenomenon, English nationalism, which has arisen in response to the devolutionary measures Blair has put in motion. With ever louder calls for Scottish and Irish separateness, a truncated Britain will bode ill for Britain’s continued role as a major international player and as America’s most reliable ally.
While it may be due to temporary and superficial conditions — the French victory in the World Cup, minor economic improvements, optimism about the euro — the French, for whom “pessimism is taken to be the only intellectually serious stance”, are actually content, notes International Herald Tribune columnist William Pfaff.
Bolton, former assistant secretary of state during the Bush administration, argues that the ICC poses unacceptable violations of American notions of law and the separation of powers. With its vague definitions of “crimes against humanity” and lack of clear jurisdictional limitations, the Court will be ineffective at best, and dangerous to peace and national sovereignty at worst.
Weaving together the recent “Asian values” debates with the dominant themes of Western scholarship on Asia over the past two centuries, McInnes draws on history and philosophy to show that Asians will continue to strike a balance between their own traditional values and the West’s embrace of utilitarian advantage.
Dismissing the intellectuals’ — and especially the conservatives’ — critical receipt of Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan as off the mark, Cohen praises the filmmaker for his realistic portrayal of the experience of war, and of how man fares when confronted with it.
Garfinkle, The National Interest’s executive editor, argues that the Wye Memorandum of October 23 is not a peace agreement, but rather an agreement about peace that may or may not advance that cause. The Memorandum’s real significance lies in three domains: it transcends the incrementalist logic of Oslo; it will serve as a detailed “red line” against future backsliding by Israelis and Palestinians alike; and it signals an unprecedented, and very risky, increase in direct U.S. management of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Book Reviews:
Kaplan praises Wakeman for her thorough sociological and historical research in portraying the Toulouse of les trentes gloriouses: France’s post-war period of growth, expansion, and optimism. In highlighting the merits of Wakeman’s book, Kaplan offers a lively portrait of a little-known city in a much commented-on country.
“How, then, did the United States of America stumble into the shadows of a secrecy system that still produces more than six million classified documents a year?” asks the Senator. Weinstein agrees that the outmoded classification system has had grave effects on the United States, including U.S. intelligence errors at the height of the Cold War and an increasing belief in conspiracy theories on the part of average citizens.
The great virtue of this volume, according to Bacevich, is that it places the Bay of Pigs incident in a deeper context than that in which historians have generally viewed it. Rather than constituting a hard lesson that steeled Kennedy for the Cuban Missile Crisis, the documents show that both JFK and his brother Robert continued well after the Bay of Pigs to let their obsession with Castro drive them to reckless, desperate, and unwise choices.
Ellsworth, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, hails Acheson and the men of his time as giants who walked the earth and who, as they did so — in Chace’s words — “created the American world.” Chace’s telling of the challenges these men faced and the extraordinary human qualities they exhibited in overcoming them, says Ellsworth, can inspire and guide us in our own time of disillusion.
Coleman states that Urban has written an “uncomfortable but invaluable” report of RFE’s Cold War trials. According to Urban, internal appeasers and sympathizers — “progressive” Western thinkers who failed to recognize the true evil of the Soviet system — were more successful than even the Soviets in undermining the mission of the organization.