James Kirchick

John McCain loved vulnerable democracies. Will anyone else?

By any traditional standard, Israel won its 50-day war against Hamas in 2014. It incurred far fewer casualties than its Palestinian adversary. It rooted out much of the Gaza Strip’s terrorist infrastructure, including tunnels the militant group had burrowed to transport fighters into Israel. And it…

On January 12, 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivered a speech in Washington, the reverberations of which were felt on the other side of the world. Describing U.S. foreign policy objectives in Asia, a region where both China and the Soviet Union were seeking to spread Marxist-Leninist…

On January 12, 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivered a speech in Washington, the reverberations of which were felt on the other side of the world. Describing U.S. foreign policy objectives in Asia, a region where both China and the Soviet Union were seeking to spread Marxist-Leninist…

Cincinnati

Deutschland 83, a hit German television show, available on Sundance Channel, has been lauded for its authentic evocation of early-1980s Cold War-gripped Europe. That much is true, but as far as the nonaesthetic elements of the series go, it is derivative, hackneyed, and predictable. When, several…

Berlin

For over a year, Germans have expressed mounting outrage at revelations of American espionage in their country. The opportunity to shake one’s head and wag one’s finger, especially at uncouth Americans, is one that many Germans enjoy, and Washington’s eavesdropping on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s…

Edward Snowden’s revelations about the foreign and domestic surveillance practices of the National Security Agency have inspired a great deal of anger around the world, but nowhere has the fury been stronger than in Germany. “Goodbye, Friends!” read the front page of Die Zeit last November, when it…

I imagine a world in which the “international community” provides universal education for all girls. Or where countries that deploy children as soldiers cease to do so as a result of moral suasion. Or where the global scourge of malaria is stopped with the passing of a unanimous resolution. Indeed,…

On January 11 in Tehran, two men on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to the car carrying Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. Seconds later, the car exploded, killing both Roshan and his driver. The murder was the stuff of spy novels, and would have been a spectacular story regardless of the target. But…

In early May, a little over a week after President Barack Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, Texas congressman Ron Paul staked out his position on the man who plotted the murder of nearly 3,000 people on American soil: The operation to kill bin Laden, Paul said, was…

The Republican Jewish Coalition announced this month that congressman Ron Paul would not be among the six guests invited to participate in its Republican Presidential Candidates Forum. “He’s just so far outside of the mainstream of the Republican party and this organization,” said Matt Brooks,…

Cairo

Tripoli

In 1986, five-year-old Mazyar Kesh-vari and his family fled their native Tehran for Oslo. His parents were opponents of the Khomeini regime that took power following Iran’s 1979 revolution, and there came a point when “it was not possible to be in Iran without risking being killed or tortured and…

Monarchy Matters

When Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA operative was revealed in 2003, Bush administration critics were adamant that a serious crime had been committed, that American national security interests had been put into jeopardy, and that the exposure warranted nothing less than the prosecution of a wide…

Voodoo Histories

Vienna

Osh, Kyrgyzstan

The Next Founders

Last Wednesday, South Africans returned the African National Congress to power for the fourth consecutive time since the end of apartheid in 1994. This was not an unexpected outcome. For the past 15 years, the armed liberation movement turned governing party has dominated the country politics, and…

In the final days of his presidency, George W. Bush will face an avalanche of requests. Well-connected political hands will inquire if so-and-so could receive a coveted pardon, lobbyists will ask for that last-minute executive order, obscure foreign leaders will finally call in chits for having…

If you've recently taken a gander at the liberal foreign policy tomes, attended any think tank panels on America's supposed decline, or read the prolific output of today's fashionable foreign affairs thinkers, you've probably heard a lot about the virtues of "soft power." According to its main…

A major theme of this year's presidential campaign is that the United States has lost the respect of the world and that electing a Democrat, especially Barack Obama, is the way to fix it. "What if we could restore America's place in the world, and people's faith in our government?" asks one Obama…

London

In April 1979, 64 percent of the black citizens of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) lined up at the polls to vote in the first democratic election in the history of that southern African nation. Two-thirds of them supported Abel Muzorewa, a bishop in the United Methodist Church. He was the first black prime…

Americans are right to be worried about the prospects for democracy in the Middle East. In Egypt, elections have done little to loosen five-term president Hosni Mubarak's grip on power or to stop his plans for turning power over to his son Gamal upon retirement. Whatever degree of democracy exists…

Hu Jintao, president of China, has just completed an eight-nation tour of Africa--a visit that comes on the heels of a meeting in Beijing attended by some 40 African heads of state. Both the recent visit and the Beijing summit on China-Africa cooperation in November reflect China's determination to…

Whatever the wisdom of executing Saddam Hussein, it was a foregone conclusion that the man who had tyrannized Iraq for nearly three decades would eventually meet the fate he did. Once Coalition soldiers found Saddam cowering in that spider hole in December 2003, there was little thought that a new…

Harare and Johannesburg

SINCE JOURNEYING to Zimbabwe in August, the situation there seems to have gone from bad to worse. On September 13, police detained and allegedly tortured top union leaders planning to hold peaceful demonstrations in the country's major cities. The following week, the government denied entry to a…

Harare, Zimbabwe

Johannesburg