Patrick Lawrence: Our World of Wars, Our War of Worlds
It is some years now since a lot of people began imagining the specter of World War III in the near or middle distance. This kind of thinking has been especially common since the U.S., with determination and purpose, provoked…
Sharmine Narwani on the end of the Syrian war and the “post-imperial Middle East”
Middle East correspondent Narwani sees a new era emerging in Asia, while Trump, Pompeo and Bolton bluster In part one of my exchange with Sharmine Narwani, the Beirut-based correspondent dissected the just-ended Syrian conflict as one of the very few journalists…
Reporter Sharmine Narwani on the secret history of America’s defeat in Syria
After years covering the “main battlefield in World War III,” Narwani says everything you think you know is wrong When the war in Syria was recently declared decisively over, there were few correspondents or witnesses to turn to for a…
David Hendrickson: We Need a ‘New Internationalism’
The author and professor in conversation. A friend recently told me about a book he was assigned to review and thought I should read. When he mentioned the title, Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition, I ordered it…
John Dower in Conversation: Part I
The groundbreaking historian of Japan talks about the challenges of scholarship during rapidly changing times. John Dower was “Dower the Tower” during my years as a correspondent in Japan. He was a giant in his field, one of the few…
Cold War Illusions: Losing Friends
Just before the November 2016 elections, I was invited to share lunch at a place called Packer’s Corner, a tiny hamlet in southeastern Vermont. I was instantly intrigued. If “faded glory” fairly describes the place now, Packer’s Corner et ses…
On Writers, the Media, and the Corruptions of Power
Joel Whitney, whose book Finks is about the CIA’s subversion of US culture, talks about the scars left by the Cold War. In Part 1 of my exchange with Joel Whitney, conducted shortly after OR Books published Finks: How the CIA Tricked the…
The Decay of American Media
Toward a Poor Journalism One evening a half-dozen years ago, I stayed at the house of Albert Maysles, the noted documentary filmmaker, in upper Manhattan. I had just flown in from Hong Kong, where I was living at the time….
Obama’s ISIS Strategy Will Be His Jimmy Carter Moment
The Obama administration is now so tongue-tied it can’t tell us what it is about to do in the Middle East. So let’s pitch in: The Obama administration is going to war in Iraq and Syria. Having settled that, the…
Iraq: We Broke It, but We Can’t Fix It
As Iraq descends into a sectarian war that could prove more gruesome than any other that has befallen its people, two questions face the Obama administration. When and why did the mistakes begin? What’s the smart choice now? Answer the…
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