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I guess we should all be thankful that President Bush’s “freedom agenda” failed, right? This is Turkey – a NATO ally and prospective (although increasingly less likely) candidate for EU membership. Now imagine democracy taking root in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iran and elsewhere – would it surprise anyone if the regional atmosphere got a [...]
Filed under: democracy, hegemonism, politics
The argument for Middle East democracy that Hamid sketches above sees political participation as a release-valve for Arab grievances. But what are those grievances? As they relate to the United States they are: the basing of U.S. combat forces in the region and support for Israel. So the idea that democratic participation would actually give [...]
Filed under: democracy, foreign policy, hegemonism, politics
Michael Auslin does his best to paint a picture of the dire “dimming of our age” (via Scoblete) that will come with gradual reduction in U.S. military presence overseas, and the future he predicts does not seem very gloomy at all: The upshot of these three trends will likely be a series of decisions to [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, hegemonism, politics
Via Scoblete, Democracy in America has links to a new Economist/YouGov poll that has several interesting results. This is a poll of “general population respondents” rather than one of likely voters, so we should bear in mind that these results do not give us a clear picture of what midterm voters will do. Nonetheless, this [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, hegemonism, politics
Reihan: I’m sensitive to this in part because I remember when pro-war conservatives spent huge amounts of time taking on the notion that President Bush wanted to invade Iraq to seize its oil wealth, to expand America’s empire, or to serve Israeli interests. It was a lot of fun to tackle these arguments because they [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, hegemonism, politics
Richard Spencer makes a fair point that the 19th century saw an impressive degree of global economic integration at the same time that modern nation-states were gaining strength. By the end of the “long 19th century” in 1914, the world was as interconnected economically as it would be until the post-Cold War drive for integration [...]
Filed under: economics, hegemonism, politics
Freddy notes Andrew Roberts’ strange review of The Post-American World, but Freddy missed what was by far the strangest remark when he talks about Zakaria’s supposed gloominess: It’s a pretty gloomy analysis from the man who is advising John McCain on foreign policy [bold mine-DL]… This CFR page, which is a copy of this Newsweek article, includes a [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, hegemonism, politics
One of Sullivan’s readers whines about the use of the word empire: This is not the British in Malaysia. Quite true. Unlike the British, our government seems to have no intention of leaving Iraq under any circumstances. One wonders if these people understand how British rule, or Roman rule for that matter, was extended to [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, hegemonism, history, politics
Scott relates a worrisome, but unfortunately very predictable, remark by Robert Kagan: The most alarming thing he said in a generally fluid presentation concerned Georgia and the Ukraine. “Would the United States really want to live in a world where Russia held sway over Georgia and the Ukraine?” (I’m not sure the quote is verbatim, [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, hegemonism, politics
In the next issue of TAC (2/25), Brendan O’Neill provides an excellent summary of the case against Obama, focusing on his hyper-ambitious interventionism. Here’s a short excerpt: Obama’s stress on how everything is interconnected not only sets up the United States to intervene everywhere, but it makes any coherent strategy impossible. If every problem is an [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, hegemonism, politics