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". . . a go-to destination for journalists trying to The Background on the News feature of Foreign Affairs makes available the full text of past essays that are newly relevant today, plus occasional postscripts newly written by the authors. Also visit the Background on the News archives.
Posted June 4, 2008 More than one month after a devastating cyclone struck Burma on May 2, foreign governments and international aid organizations are still struggling to provide desperately needed assistance to millions of homeless survivors. The Orwellian military regime has granted only limited access to humanitarian workers. Meanwhile, monks have taken it upon themselves to provide food and shelter to displaced citizens. In the November/December 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, Michael Green and Derek Mitchell argued that Burma was not only an antidemocratic embarrassment and humanitarian disaster, but a serious threat to its neighbors' security. In the wake of Cyclone Nargis, the question of how to deal with Burma's ruling junta has taken on even greater urgency. Posted May 28, 2008 Food prices are rising rapidly across the globe, threatening many of the world's poor with starvation. In this update to their May/June 2007 article, "How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor," C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer argue that the heavily subsidized ethanol industry is exacerbating the food crisis and harming the environment. Posted May 8, 2008 On March 29, Zimbabweans voted in presidential and parliamentary elections. More than a month later, the government of Robert Mugabe released results of a "recount," showing a narrow opposition victory that fell short of the 50 percent required to avoid a runoff. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claims that it won an outright majority and that the government had ample time to distort the election results. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has not yet announced whether he will participate in a runoff. Meanwhile, there have been widespread reports of violent government crackdowns on MDC supporters, creating a climate of intimidation throughout the country and raising doubts about the possibility of a free and fair second round of elections. All of this is a far cry from the vision Robert Mugabe laid out in his Winter 1987/1988 Foreign Affairs article, "The Struggle for Southern Africa." At the time, Mugabe denounced the violence of South Africa's apartheid regime and called upon the United States to place greater pressure on Pretoria. Today, the tables have turned. With 165,000 percent inflation and 80 percent unemployment paralyzing the Zimbabwean economy, the West is calling for South African president Thabo Mbeki and other African leaders to pressure Mugabe to step down. Posted April 9, 2008 Sebastian Mallaby's Foreign Affairs article defending hedge funds appeared in January 2007, before the onslaught of credit market turmoil. More than a year later, hedge funds still appear to need allies wherever they can get them. Posted March 26, 2008 On March 14, anti-Chinese riots erupted in Lhasa, Tibet. Chinese security forces suppressed crowds with teargas and bullets in what has become the most violent confrontation there in two decades. The Tibetan government-in-exile claimed Chinese forces killed over 100 people, while Beijing claims only 19 have died. Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, urged his followers and the Chinese to refrain from violence while the Chinese government blamed him directly for fomenting the unrest. In a 1998 Foreign Affairs essay, Melvyn Goldstein argued that the Dalai Lama would have to acquiesce in violence by militants or compromise in order to preserve a Tibetan homeland. Goldstein predicted that the Dalai Lama would resist both options and urged the United States to facilitate negotiations. On March 24, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for direct talks between Chinese leaders and the Dalai Lama as the only solution to the current impasse. Posted March 12, 2008 Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence on February 17 was welcomed in Washington and many European capitals, but it drew protests in Moscow and Belgrade. In this update to his November/December 2005 essay "Independence for Kosovo," CFR Senior Fellow Charles A. Kupchan considers the consequences of Kosovo's secession for the Balkans and the world. Posted February 6, 2008 Last week Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al Qaeda leader responsible for military operations inside Afghanistan, was killed by a U.S. missile strike in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. In the May/June 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, longtime CIA official Bruce Riedel explained how al Qaeda has managed to reconstitute itself as a dangerous force after nearly being destroyed during the winter of 2001-2. If Laith al-Libi's survival was an example of the continuing challenge the terrorist group posed, his elimination is a small step toward dealing with it — a step that needs to be followed up not only by further combat, but also further struggle in the war of ideas. Posted January 23, 2008 As Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf tours Europe, violence along the border with Afghanistan continues and many observers doubt whether the elections scheduled for February 18 will be free and fair. In the January/February 2002 issue of Foreign Affairs, Anatol Lieven considered the consequences for Pakistan and the world if Musharraf's government were to fall. In the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, widespread violence and instability has brought this question to the fore once again. Posted January 9, 2008 Violence has engulfed Kenya in the wake of a disputed December 27 election, calling into question the country's reputation as an island of stability and prosperity in an otherwise unstable region. In this update to his January/February 2004 Foreign Affairs essay "Kenya After Moi," CSIS Senior Associate Joel D. Barkan analyzes the flawed election process and proposes a federalist solution to remedy the ethnic tensions that lie beneath Kenya's current political crisis. Posted December 5, 2007 On November 28, General Pervez Musharraf gave up his military uniform and began to govern as a civilian. In this update to his November/December 2002 Foreign Affairs article "Pakistan's Slide into Misery," Sumit Ganguly warns that continued U.S. support for Musharraf is misguided and may ultimately harm U.S. interests in the region. Posted November 21, 2007 On November 7, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili—the hero of Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution and a darling of the West—declared a state of emergency and sent riot police into the streets of Tbilisi. In the March/April 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs, Georgetown Professor Charles King assessed Georgia's democratic prospects, and in an August 2004 postscript he discussed clashes between Tbilisi and separatist regions supported by Moscow. Saakashvili has blamed Russia for fomenting the latest civil unrest, but his suppression of antigovernment protests and the forcible shutdown of an opposition television station (owned by Rupert Murdoch) have led to charges from opposition leaders that the president is reneging on his democratic promises. Posted November 7, 2007 Despite soaring oil prices, Hugo Chávez's "Bolivarian revolution" in Venezuela appears to be encountering some turbulence. Oil production is declining and crime, corruption, and inflation are on the rise. Michael Shifter's article "In Search of Hugo Chávez" (May/June 2006) offered a critical appraisal of Chávez's reforms. In this web-exclusive essay, Shifter argues that Chávez may be overreaching by seeking constitutional amendments that would consolidate his power and allow him to be president for life. Posted October 17, 2007 Last week, the House Foreign Affairs committee voted 27-21 to characterize the deaths of more than one million Armenians during World War I as "genocide." The resolution has sent Turks to the streets in protest and prompted Ankara to warn that passage of the resolution by the House at large would severely damage U.S.-Turkish relations. This is not the first debate over what should be called "genocide," and won't be the last. A January/February 2005 Foreign Affairs article, "Darfur and the Genocide Debate," by the University of Wisconsin's Scott Straus, explored whether the tragedy in Darfur merited the term. His conclusion: stop talking about words, start thinking about action. Posted October 3, 2007 The private security firm Blackwater has come under intense scrutiny after a September 16 shootout that left at least 11 Iraqi civilians dead. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has demanded that Blackwater cease operating in Iraq and Congress is raising questions about the accountability of the 160,000 private military contractors working in Iraq, a force that exceeds the number of uniformed soldiers in the country. In his article "Outsourcing War" (March/April 2005) Peter W. Singer argued that the privatization of war without oversight may be expedient but it is not good for democracy. In a new Brookings Institution study Singer concludes that the use of private military contractors appears to have harmed, rather than helped, U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq. Posted September 20, 2007 Pakistan has seen its share of crises over the past four months, from the storming of Islamabad's Red Mosque to clashes with militants along Afghanistan's border, the dismissal and reinstatement of Pakistan's chief justice, and the recent deportation of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. In the July/August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, Daniel Markey argued that the United States should balance demands for political reform with continued support for President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani military. Now, as rumors of a power-sharing deal between Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto circulate in Washington and Islamabad, Markey assesses the situation and offers recommendations for U.S. policy toward Pakistan in this web-exclusive essay. Posted September 5, 2007 The debate on Iraq is reaching a crucial juncture as the nation prepares for next week's congressional testimony by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the possibility of troop reductions looms on the horizon. Over the past three years, Foreign Affairs has convened two roundtables featuring expert discussion of what should be done in Iraq. In addition, several Foreign Affairs articles have had a profound influence on this debate. In 2005, Andrew Krepinevich's "How to Win in Iraq" proposed a radically different approach to counterinsurgency and warned that success would require a decade-long commitment. In 2006, Stephen Biddle's "Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon" urged policymakers to abandon the Vietnam analogy and recognize the war in Iraq for the communal civil war that it is. And most recently, James Fearon's March/April 2007 article, "Iraq's Civil War," warned that Washington's efforts to stop this civil war were futile. Posted August 15, 2007 Last week, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) celebrated its fortieth anniversary. Critics have argued that the organization is becoming increasingly irrelevant due to its ironclad commitment to national sovereignty and a longstanding policy of noninterference. But ASEAN is reinventing itself, argues Bristol University Professor Amitav Acharya, and it will continue to play an influential role in the region. Despite its shortcomings, ASEAN remains the most successful regional organization in the developing world and the hub of multilateral diplomacy in Southeast Asia. Posted August 1, 2007 This past weekend Japan's Liberal Democratic Party suffered a crushing defeat in elections for the upper house of Japan's Diet. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has resisted calls for his resignation, but it seems only a matter of time before he is forced out regardless. How did he fall so far so fast, and what lies ahead for Japanese domestic politics and foreign policy? Richard Katz and Peter Ennis reported on Abe's situation in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs; in this exclusive online postscript they update the story and analyze the consequences of his changing political fortunes. Posted July 18, 2007 Gordon Brown's arrival at 10 Downing Street has led to speculation that the very special relationship between George W. Bush's United States and Tony Blair's United Kingdom may be coming to an end. But as Lawrence D. Freedman argued in the May/June 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, the special relationship between London and Washington has always been remarkably resilient and it has endured disagreements about war before. Even if Prime Minister Brown and his Foreign Secretary David Miliband differ with Bush on issues such as the war in Iraq and use of the term "war on terror," Anglo-American relations are not likely to suffer as a result. Posted June 27, 2007 The advent of a two-headed Palestinian authority — with Hamas firmly in power in the Gaza Strip and Fatah in control of the West Bank — threatens to complicate efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Back in the May/June 2003 issue of Foreign Affairs, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk argued that the only way to ensure a durable peace was to grant the international community a temporary trusteeship over the Palestinian territories. In an exclusive postscript, Indyk argues that in light of recent events an updated version of this idea may be the only way to reinvigorate the peace process today. Posted June 13, 2007 Despite wide bipartisan support, comprehensive immigration reform has just been derailed in the Senate. In the November/December 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute argued that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe immigration is good for the U.S. economy. Rather than pandering to a small minority of hardliners, Jacoby urged Washington to seize the moment and implement meaningful reform by offering earned citizenship to 12 million illegal immigrants. Yet, after Thursday's vote, immigration reform has been moved to the backburner once again and seems unlikely to pass anytime soon. Posted May 16, 2007 French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy brings the promise of reform and renewal to a country often described as the new sick man of Europe. But he faces a profound challenge in reconciling France's strong tradition of Gaullist independence with the imperatives of globalization. In the July/August 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs, Sophie Meunier explored the complex mix of cultural, economic, and political reasons for France's resistance to "Anglo-Saxon global capitalism." Will Sarkozy be forced to drink new bottles of old wine? Posted May 2, 2007 The passing of Boris Yeltsin last week renewed debates about his tenure as Russia's first post-Soviet leader and the impact that his presidency — for better or worse — continues to have on Russia today. Writing in Foreign Affairs over a decade ago, Russia expert Stephen Sestanovich argued that Yeltsin had made headway in securing Russia against the three challenges that threatened its survival as a democratic republic: the military and the KGB, the old regime's all-powerful managers of the economy, and ultranationalism. In a new exclusive postscript, Sestanovich now concludes that history's judgment of Yeltsin will ultimately depend on the Russian people's ability to finish what he had imperfectly begun. Posted April 18, 2007 Paul Wolfowitz's current travails are hardly the only difficulties he has had to face since becoming president of the World Bank in March 2005. As Sebastian Mallaby then wrote in Foreign Affairs, the World Bank's tenth president was bound to inherit the unenviable task of saving the organization from the attacks of those both on the left and the right who questioned its purpose, effectiveness, and relevance. But save it we must, argued Mallaby, because the World Bank remains the best international tool for channeling globalization to positive ends for the sake of the world's poor. Posted April 4, 2007 Public anguish over Iraq is spilling into other areas of U.S. foreign policy, according to the latest results from the Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index. Specifically, the vast majority of the U.S. public now rejects a military response to the problems posed by Iran. Posted March 21, 2007 As the Democrats approach their 100th day in control of Congress, one thing has already set them apart from their Republican predecessors: the large number of oversight hearings on issues relating to foreign and national security policy. Last November in Foreign Affairs, Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann lamented the collapse of Congressional oversight over the executive — and the policy mistakes that had resulted from that failure. In this Web-exclusive postscript, Orenstein and Mann rate the new Congress' performance to date in keeping the White House in check. Posted March 7, 2007 During his Latin American tour this week, President George W. Bush will be championing the United States' long-held belief that liberal democracy and market economics are the keys to improving the lot of the region's poor masses. But he will find himself on the defensive on a continent where many question the merits of Washington's pro-market logic and Venezuelan-style economic populism is gaining ground. As Peter Hakim argued over a year ago in Foreign Affairs, the White House has a lot of work to do if it is to restore its influence in the region and regain Latin Americans' trust. Posted February 21, 2007 Only time will tell whether last week's nuclear deal with North Korea represents an ephemeral diplomatic victory or a real breakthrough on the Cold War's last frontier. Some critics of the agreement have assailed the Bush administration for giving Pyongyang too little, too late, and at too great a cost; others have accused it of rewarding the Kim Jong Il regime's misdeeds with an accord full of loopholes. But over three years ago, James Laney and Jason Shaplen argued in Foreign Affairs that breaking the deadlock on the North Korean nuclear issue was possible within a six-party framework similar to the one that led to the recent agreement. In a Web-exclusive postscript, they argue that the deal could not only resolve the nuclear conundrum but also catalyze a broader renaissance in Northeast Asian security. Posted February 7, 2007 In the past month, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has announced the nationalization of his country's electricity and telecommunication industries, seized control of the central bank, barred the renewal of the license of the nation's oldest independent television station, and assumed the power to rule by presidential decree. But as Chávez consolidates his economic and political power and Venezuela hurtles down the road toward Cuban-style socialism, he continues to lack a viable strategy for development, as Michael Shifter reminded Foreign Affairs readers last summer. Washington can thus best confront him indirectly in the realm of ideas — and ultimately prevail. Posted January 24, 2007 President Bush's announcement of the deployment of more troops to Iraq has come under fire from several quarters. Nevertheless, the White House is confident that the troop "surge" together with new generals and a new strategy can help quell the violence in Iraq and buy time for political progress to be made. Some of the key elements of the new approach were recommended by Andrew Krepinevich in his influential Foreign Affairs article "How to Win in Iraq" a year and a half ago. The war in Iraq is not a lost cause, he argued, but even a successful counterinsurgency campaign will be long, difficult, and costly. Posted January 10, 2007 In December, President George W. Bush signed a law that allows the United States to trade civilian nuclear material and technology with India, reversing decades of U.S. protestations over India's flouting of the global nonproliferation regime in a bid for a new strategic partnership. At the signing, Bush called the deal "an important move for the whole world." Last summer, Ashton Carter defended the agreement in the pages of Foreign Affairs, even as he conceded that it was somewhat premature and tilted in India's favor. Now, in a new postscript, he asks who will be proved right: the critics fearing the deal's impact on proliferation or the advocates hoping for a U.S.-Indian rapprochement? Posted December 20, 2006 As violence escalated last week among factions competing for power in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suddenly announced early elections. Whether Abbas' Fatah party can unseat the radical Hamas remains unclear, as does the future of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Last winter, Michael Herzog predicted in Foreign Affairs that Hamas was unlikely to be tamed by its participation in mainstream politics. As for the peace process, David Makovsky explained a year earlier why a quick return to final-status negotiations would not be a panacea for the region's troubles. Posted December 6, 2006 China has just overtaken Japan as the world's second-largest spender on research and development, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports — and its efforts are furrowing brows abroad. Yet spending alone might not be enough to overcome China's deep structural problems in this area. As George Gilboy pointed out in Foreign Affairs two years ago, China has traditionally imported technological processes wholesale, without investing in long-term capabilities of its own, and it has yet to develop a domestic R&D network linking innovative local firms, universities, and research centers. In other words, China is extremely dependent on technology from industrialized states and that could limit the country's growth down the road. Posted November 22, 2006 This has been a good month for Vietnam: on November 7, after a decade of negotiations, it finally secured a seat at the World Trade Organization, and this past weekend it hosted the annual APEC summit and earned lavish praise from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In fact, the country has had a good year in general: with an annual growth rate hovering at 8 percent, its economy is one of the fastest expanding in Asia. How has Hanoi worked its wonders? Thanks to creative domestic reforms rather than preferential trade agreements, argued Nancy Birdsall, Dani Rodrik, and Arvind Subramanian in Foreign Affairs two years ago — evidence that the key to successful development lies not in the stars but in "poor countries themselves." Posted November 8, 2006 Early results from Sunday's election show the former Sandinista guerilla leader Daniel Ortega as the likely next president of Nicaragua. The return to power of Ronald Reagan's foe is a symbolic blow for U.S. foreign policy and further evidence that Latin America is swerving to the left. But does it really bode ill? As Jorge Castañeda argued in Foreign Affairs last spring, the Latin American left is deeply divided within itself and includes a number of reform-minded pragmatists who have traveled far from their ideological beginnings. Posted October 11, 2006 Last week, NATO assumed command over some 32,000 peacekeeping troops from 37 countries in Afghanistan, including 12,000 U.S. forces in the eastern part of the country. The move confirmed that the half-century-old organization has entered a new era — and is now facing unprecedented challenges. As Ivo Daalder and James Goldgeier point out in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, NATO is going global, expanding both its geographical reach and the scope of its operations. But, warned Strobe Talbott four years ago, to succeed, the U.S.-dominated organization will have to remain cohesive despite growing rifts between the United States and its other members. Posted September 27, 2006 Elected in a landslide just last year, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was deposed last week in a bloodless overthrow organized by the military. Over the year his fall from grace had been steady and swift, thanks to his abuse of power, repression of the opposition and Muslim minorities, and allegations of corruption. Still, argues Duncan McCargo of the University of Leeds, even if Thaksin deserved to go, the manner of his passing will endanger the country's democracy and stability. Posted September 11, 2006 Five years after 9/11, there have been no further terrorist attacks in the United States. Many claim that the threat nevertheless remains very high. In this special Web-only feature, an all-star cast of experts assess the state of the "war on terror" at five. Posted September 7, 2006 Five years after 9/11, there have been no further terrorist attacks in the United States, but many claim that the danger remains real and that another might be just around the corner. John Mueller argues in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs that the "fear-mongerers" are wrong and that the threat is much less dire than most people think. In this special Web exclusive, Foreign Affairs has assembled and all-star panel — James Fallows, Fawaz Gerges, Jessica Stern, and Paul R. Pillar — to assess Mueller's claim and the general state of the "war on terror" at five. Posted August 9, 2006 With Fidel Castro ill and the reins of power in Havana passed, at least temporarily, to his brother Raul, attention has turned to what a post-Castro Cuba will look like. Theresa Bond's 2003 article "The Crackdown in Cuba," an account of the Cuban government's repression, portrays some of the island's little-known dissenters and suggests what might happen if the current opposition were given the opportunity to rule. Posted July 26, 2006 The battle between Israel and Hezbollah continues to escalate, as Israel seeks to eliminate the terrorist organization. Despite Israel's military strength, the asymmetric nature of the conflict in some respects favors Hezbollah. In 2003 and again in 2005, Daniel Byman examined the options facing the United States as it considered what to do about the group and concluded that the only way to defeat Hezbollah was to move indirectly — by taking action against Syria and Iran, Hezbollah's backers. Posted July 17, 2006 In this special web-only feature, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, Kevin Drum, and Marc Lynch respond to "What to Do in Iraq: A Roundtable," from the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs. Posted July 12, 2006 In this special web-only feature, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, Kevin Drum, and Marc Lynch respond to "What to Do in Iraq: A Roundtable," from the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs. Posted June 28, 2006 Whomever Mexicans vote for in Sunday's presidential election, the man they choose could become either a statesman who consolidates the country's democracy or a demagogue who returns the country to an era of crises. In the January/February 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, noted Mexican writer Enrique Krauze described the candidates and the issues that will determine Mexico's future course. Posted June 7, 2006 Given Tehran's defiant pursuit of its nuclear program and its influence among Shiites in Iraq, how to manage relations with Iran has become a critical — and vexing — issue for Washington. To succeed, negotiations require knowing one's interlocutor, and distinguishing the posturing from the policy and the ideologues from the pragmatists in Iran is far from easy. The belligerent comments of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have sometimes been dismissed as the rantings of an extremist with limited power. But nerves were frayed this weekend when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's most powerful cleric, warned that if Washington made a "wrong move," Iran would have no qualms disrupting "energy flow" in the Middle East. For an insight into the complicated balance of power within Tehran's ruling elite, religious and political, and how Washington might be able to sway it in its direction, consider a Foreign Affairs article by Ray Takeyh and Kenneth Pollack from last year. Posted May 17, 2006 On Monday, President George W. Bush announced that in an effort to address illegal immigration into the United States he has proposed deploying thousands of National Guard troops along the Mexican border while initiating a guest worker program and a path toward legalization for some undocumented workers already in the country. The White House's plan could pit the Bush administration against Mexico and is also divisive at home, where activists on both extremes criticize its attempt to chart a middle course. Alan Wolfe and Samuel Huntington have debated some of the broader issues of immigration and American identity in Foreign Affairs, revealing the deep currents of feeling surrounding these questions. Posted May 3, 2006 After a month of daring demonstrations, Nepalese protesters, with the help of Maoist rebels, have brought King Gyanendra to his knees. Since just last week, Gyanendra has already abdicated much of his authority, agreeing to restore parliament, which has not met in four years. And the insurgents, who have been fighting a savage resistance for a decade, have declared a unilateral ceasefire, offering Nepal its first opportunity for peace and serious political reform in a long while. In his Foreign Affairs article last fall, "Nepal at the Precipice," Human Rights Watch's Brad Adams explained how Nepal might be saved from the grip of both the Maoists and the royal army. In a new postcript, he explains why the latest developments are only a first step in the right direction. Posted April 5, 2006 A proposed change to French law that would make it easier for employers to fire (and thus hire) young employees has brought students into the streets and onto the barricades while causing political trouble for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Princeton's Sophie Meunier dissected French ambivalence about globalization in Foreign Affairs several years ago. She argued that the French resisted economic liberalization because they feared it would jeopardize the country's unique culture and traditions; add a national penchant for theatrical public protest and the stories almost write themselves. Posted March 22, 2006 Last week, the UN General Assembly voted to replace the controversial Human Rights Commission with a smaller Human Rights Council. Among the myriad criticisms of the now-defunct commission was that many member states, such as Libya and Sudan, served on the panel only in order to stifle debate about their own atrocious human-rights records. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan argued in Foreign Affairs last summer that the new council, whose members are subject to greater scrutiny, would be an essential part of reforms that taken together would fulfill Franklin Roosevelt's hopes for the UN. Posted March 8, 2006 President George W. Bush's announcement last week that Washington will tolerate India's nuclear status has drawn fire from analysts who fear the move could undermine nonproliferation efforts everywhere. But such concerns might be overblown or misplaced, according to Indiana University's Sumit Ganguly, who defended an earlier version of the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal on www.foreignaffairs.org last summer. On the other hand, a 2004 article by former Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, which offered a broad critique of U.S. nonproliferation policy, suggests there still is much to be concerned about. Posted February 22, 2006 Seven years after the end of the war in Kosovo, the terrority's final status is still up in the air. Formal negotiations about independence for the semi-autonomous province of the federation known as Serbia and Montenegro resume this week, but it is unclear where the talks (among representatives of Serbia, Kosovo, the United States, NATO, and the UN) will lead. The Albanian Kosovars have just lost their long-time leader Ibrahim Rugova, who died last month. But as Charles Kupchan noted in Foreign Affairs last fall, given the atrocities they have suffered at the hands of the Serbs, they will not accept anything short of full independence from Belgrade, and other alternatives seem less promising. Posted February 8, 2006 Although in his State of the Union address President Bush reiterated his commitment to spreading democracy in the Middle East, recent elections in the region have benefited Islamist radicals most of all. In a new postscript to his Foreign Affairs article from last fall, F. Gregory Gause III from the University of Vermont argues that there continues to be little reason to expect democratization in the region to reduce terrorism — and much reason to expect it to undermine U.S. interests. Posted January 25, 2006 Since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted the world oil market a few months ago, the industry has continued to experience hiccups. Fears over security at oil facilities in Nigeria linger; President Hugo Chávez is still threatening to halt the flow of Venezuelan oil to the United States; and recently both Ukraine and Georgia have experienced disruptions of gas supplies from Russia. To restore some degree of calm, Saudi Arabia has just promised to offset any shortages by boosting its own production. The move revives the question of how central the kingdom still is to the world energy market—an issue that the oil experts Edward Morse and James Richard hotly debated with Shibley Telhami and others in Foreign Affairs in 2002. Posted January 11, 2006 With Palestinian parliamentary elections scheduled for January 25, the Gaza Strip slipping into chaos, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fighting for his life, the Palestinians' future is once again up for grabs. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has tried to keep all internal and external factions happy simultaneously, but his balancing act has satisfied none of them and his mainstream Fatah movement might well lose electoral ground to Hamas as a result. Fatah itself is riven between an old guard of corrupt cronies and a new guard of reformist militants, a gap that has been papered over in name only for the sake of a unified campaign. There is no better guide to the players than the leading Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, whose article "The Future of Palestine" appeared in Foreign Affairs just over a year ago. Posted December 28, 2005 Earlier this month, the government of Kazakhstan removed a British comedian's Web site hosted on the country's .kz domain claiming that the comic's material was derogatory to the Kazakh people. The move gave credence to the U.S. government's reluctance to give up control of the Internet's domain name system to the United Nations, which The Economist's Kenneth Neil Cukier described in a recent Foreign Affairs article about the history of Internet governance. In a new postscript, Cukier explains why the Kazakh government's action highlights the danger of entrusting Internet management to an international body: such a transfer could help governments that repress speech at home do so online. Posted November 23, 2005 With the historic withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza under his belt, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made another bold move this week: he announced that he will quit the conservative Likud party he helped found to start a new, centrist party and called for the dissolution of Knesset to precipitate general elections ahead of schedule. Sharon hopes that, bolstered by the popularity of the Gaza disengagement, he will be able to maintain his leadership while freeing himself of constraints from Likud hard-liners. If the move pays off, Sharon will have demonstrated once again his pragmatism and political finesse — qualities that Haaretz's Aluf Benn discussed in his 2002 profile of Sharon for Foreign Affairs and in his postscript last spring. Posted November 9, 2005 The riots of disaffected Muslim youth in France stem from domestic socioeconomic divisions rather than a global clash of civilizations, and thus have more in common with the periodic eruptions in South Central Los Angeles than the recent subway bombings in London. That said, the difficulties Muslim immigrants and their descendants have encountered in making their way into the mainstream of European society have contributed to a generalized discontent that finds expression in many forms, the terrorism of a radical fringe among them. Robert Leiken explored this issue last summer in his Foreign Affairs article "Europe's Angry Muslims," shining a spotlight on the challenges these communities present — for governments and societies on both sides of the Atlantic. Posted October 26, 2005 Germany's recent elections have resulted in a changing of the political guard in Berlin, with one of the casualties being the charismatic foreign minister Joschka Fischer. As Andrei Markovits pointed out in Foreign Affairs in 2001, Fischer's career has tracked that of his generation: from radical activist in the 1960s, to the Green Party in the 1970s and 1980s, to full inclusion in the Establishment as cabinet member in the 1990s. Fischer's journey is of more than biographical interest, Markovits argued, for it represents "the Westernization of [Germany's] culture and the normalization of its politics." Posted October 12, 2005 Last week's announcement that the 1918 influenza pandemic was caused by a virus that jumped from birds to humans has increased fears that another avian flu crisis might be looming. The odds that the H5N1 virus that has already killed countless birds and several humans in Southeast Asia recently will mutate into a global destroyer are unknown. What is known — as Michael Osterholm pointed out in Foreign Affairs a few months ago — is how unprepared the world actually is for handling such a disaster, and what governments need to do now to improve their populations' chances for survival. Posted September 28, 2005 The recent dissolution of the government in Ukraine has prompted fears that President Viktor Yushchenko might be straying from the precepts of the Orange Revolution he helped lead last year. But Adrian Karatnycky, who reported on that revolution in Foreign Affairs a few months ago, explains in a new postscript why there's little cause for concern. If anything, he argues, Yushchenko's recent moves are intended to recapture the spirit of last year's unprecedented democratic moment. Posted September 14, 2005 Hurricane Katrina's ravages in the Gulf Coast earlier this month have left many foreign policy experts questioning the Department of Homeland Security's capacity to prevent or limit the damages of a large-scale terrorist attack on the United States. Given the apparent failures of the federal government's response, it is worth revisiting "The Neglected Home Front," an essay by Stephen Flynn in Foreign Affairs last year, in which he identified some of the U.S. infrastructure's many soft spots and suggested how, if the private sector and civil society mobilized together, the nation might better be able to protect itself. Posted August 31, 2005 If Iraq's elections last January were inspiring, the wrangling over the drafting of its constitution has been disquieting. After months of negotiations, Sunni leaders rejected the charter last week and are now calling on their followers throughout the country to vote against it in a planned mid-October referendum. One of their concerns is that the federal system the draft proposes would divide the country into a Kurdish north and a Shiite south, leaving the Sunnis with little control over Iraq's oil resources. Writing two years ago in Foreign Affairs, Adeed and Karen Dawisha argued that a properly conceived constitution could dull Iraq's sectarian divisions instead of sharpening them. Like other unofficial planning for the postwar era, their proposal stands as a forlorn signpost to a road not taken. Posted August 17, 2005 Last month the Bush administration announced plans to sell India civilian nuclear technology, prompting a firestorm of criticism from nonproliferation advocates charging that the move would reward irresponsible behavior and spur proliferation elsewhere. Indiana University's Sumit Ganguly argued in Foreign Affairs back in 2001 that Washington's approach to nuclear issues on the subcontinent was outdated. In this postscript, he explains why the Bush administration's new policy makes eminent sense and why the criticisms of it are specious. August 3, 2005 When Americans were asked to name the most important global problems facing the United States, Iraq and terrorism were the two top concerns. Foreign nations' negative image of this country ranked number three. These and other findings, released jointly by Public Agenda and Foreign Affairs magazine, are part of the new Public Agenda Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index. The survey also reveals that American thinking about U.S. relations with the Islamic world is a disquieting mix of high anxiety, growing uncertainly about current policy, and virtually no consensus about what else the country might do. Posted July 20, 2005 In the opening months of its second term, the Bush administration has only intensified its rhetoric on the importance of bringing democracy to authoritarian states, not least as a way of improving American security. In practice, however, strategic realities have inevitably made it difficult for Washington to set democracy promotion as its chief priority, wrote the Carnegie Endowment's Thomas Carothers in Foreign Affairs in early 2003. Nonsense, responded Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky; ideals do not have to be traded off for interests, as the so-called realists imply. Failure to acknowledge what everybody already knows is the case, shot back Carothers, undermines the administration's credibility and blocks an honest discussion of the costs and benefits of different policies. Posted July 06, 2005 As the insurgency drags on and casualties mount, American public support for the Iraq operation has begun to decline. Lawmakers from both parties have started demanding if not immediate withdrawal then at least an "exit strategy"—some plan to extricate the United States soon from what has become an increasingly burdensome commitment. But despite what is commonly believed, the exit strategy concept is neither venerable nor wise. As Gideon Rose pointed out in his 1998 Foreign Affairs article "The Exit Strategy Delusion," it has a political rather than an intellectual origin and emerged in the mid-1990s as a Somalia corollary to the Vietnam syndrome. In Iraq as with other interventions, what policymakers should focus on is not developing exit strategies but articulating precise U.S. interests and figuring out how to advance them.
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