America’s decline could save it from destruction
Bearing less responsibility will have benefits for the country, even if that means wielding less power This article originally appeared on The Globalist. There are two key questions. The first: Do Americans want a future that is different from the…
Will the US Buy Obama’s Plan to end the War Machine?
It’s easy enough to say that President Barack Obama has just announced his intention to end the “war on terror.” This thought is welcome, but it is simply not enough.Obama’s speech at the National Defense University last week has implications…
Obama’s Red Line in Syria Was Drawn in Pencil
Suddenly, the Syria crisis has grown more complicated for the US—and notably for the Obama administration. After many months of staying scrupulously clear of a conflict that has now claimed 80,000 Syrian lives, it looks as though the White House…
Reengineering Defense: Good, but Not Good Enough
At last, Americans can now say, we have broken the habit of preparing for the last war. The strategic defense initiative President Obama unveiled late last week is every bit the departure from previous practice that Obama and Defense Secretary…
The Unwinnable Afghan War: Get Out Now to Save America
It’s supposed to be the dog days of August, but we find ourselves watching global markets on a frightening teeter-totter and waiting for Washington to cobble together a debt deal that may or may not hang together. More tragically, the…
The ‘Arab Spring’ Can Help Cut Defense Spending
If we want to bring our unconscionably wasteful defense spending under control, the place to start is with a fundamentally re-imagined foreign policy that does not require a trillion-dollar military. President Obama’s recent pledge of $2 billion in response to…
A Kiss in Java
INDONESIAN DESTINIES. By Theodore Friend. Belknap/Harvard. 628 pp. $35. INDONESIA: Peoples and Histories. By Jean Gelman Taylor. Yale. 420 pp. $39.50. In a broad square not far from the center of Jakarta, a large obelisk of concrete soars into the sky….
Harnessing the Rising Sun
EMBRACING DEFEAT: Japan in the Wake of World War II. By John W. Dower. Norton/New Press. 676 pp. $29.95. TOKYO UNDERWORLD: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan. By Robert Whiting. Pantheon. 372 pp. $27.50….
Japan: The enigma of American power
“The Japanese can neither love the Americans nor endure being loved by them.” —Ambassador Sir Oliver Morland to the British Foreign Office, 1963(1) The air station at Kadena is not merely the largest of the 39 U.S. military bases in…
Remembering Japan: A bilateral history
“But the essence of a nation is that all the individuals share a great many things in common, and also that they have forgotten some things.” —Ernest Renan, What is a Nation?, 1881 A little more than a year ago,…
Recent Comments