Gary Schmitt

Washington shouldn’t neglect Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Donald Trump made a lot of promises when campaigning for president. To name just a few, he was going to build a wall along the border with Mexico (and have Mexico pay for it), end Obamacare, rebuild the nation’s bridges and airports, and deep-six the nuclear deal with Iran. He also promised to…

As President Macron and President Trump stood side by side during the Bastille Day ceremonies in Paris, it was not difficult for commentators to point out the differences between the two men. Neither in personal style nor substantive policies do they have much in common. Indeed, Macron’s victory in…

As President Macron and President Trump stood side by side during the Bastille Day ceremonies in Paris, it was not difficult for commentators to point out the differences between the two men. Neither in personal style nor substantive policies do they have much in common. Indeed, Macron’s victory in…

When it comes to understanding America’s place in the world, prospective presidential candidates could do much worse than read just three pieces of writing: Charles Krauthammer’s Weekly Standard essay “Decline Is a Choice” (Oct. 19, 2009); Robert Kagan’s New Republic article “Superpowers Don’t Get…

Watching the White House these days is like driving down an interstate, but every two miles you have to slow to a crawl as you pass yet another car crash. More than likely, the cause of the wreck is a reckless driver, but, of course, there are the innocent occupants in the other car. Trump's…

Tony Smith, political science professor at Tufts, is a man on a mission. His mission: save Wilsonianism from its perversions by post-Cold War social scientists, military strategists like General David Petraeus, the RAND Corporation—and especially the neocons and neoliberals of the Bush and Obama…

There were plenty of worries that President Trump’s "America First" campaigning signaled a further retreat of American power and leadership abroad—a worry not mitigated either by his Inaugural Address or his speech before Congress, in which foreign and defense policy were given short shrift. Those…

Time will tell whether the American cruise missile strike against the Syrian air base will deter future Syrian government use of chemical weapons or even whether it was sufficient punishment for Assad's gross and continuing violation of international norms against their use. But it's clear that…

As Donald Trump tries to transform himself from reality TV star and King of Twitter into something more substantive and presidential, his principal argument is that he’s fulfilling his campaign promises. For several weeks now, the White House has been boasting that he is "already achieving results…

At times, the dispute between the Trump administration and the federal courts over the president’s executive order on immigration feels more like a WWE SmackDown than a considered statutory and constitutional dispute. Partisan critics of both branches leave one to imagine a sign over the entrance…

More than a few commentators have analogized Donald Trump's election to that of Andrew Jackson: anti-establishment, populist, and rooted in a grassroots anger against existing Washington ways and policies. And more than a few commentators have called Donald Trump's tweets and media blasts a…

More than a few commentators have analogized Donald Trump’s election to that of Andrew Jackson: anti-establishment, populist, and rooted in a grassroots anger against existing Washington ways and policies. And more than a few commentators have called Donald Trump's tweets and media blasts a…

LAST WEDNESDAY, in testimony before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld fired the latest salvo in his campaign to recast American defense strategy and to rescue the fading hopes for this year’s Pentagon budget. But Rumsfeld’s campaign is less blitzkrieg…

The election of Donald Trump initially seemed to be a lifeline to an American military suffering from unrelenting budget cuts—a loss of more than $250 billion in spending power from the 2009 budget alone—and an equally punishing pace of operations. The morning after the election, Forbes magazine…

The election of Donald Trump initially seemed to be a lifeline to an American military suffering from unrelenting budget cuts—a loss of more than $250 billion in spending power from the 2009 budget alone—and an equally punishing pace of operations. The morning after the election, Forbes magazine…

A good historian is inevitably a revisionist. Why write if you have nothing new to offer? But of course, not all revisionists are good historians. Whole forests have been cut down in the name of publishing some novel insight that obscures the past rather than enlightens. John Bew, a professor in…

Within weeks of announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in June, Donald Trump seized the lead in virtually every national poll of GOP voters and has held that lead ever since. The Real Clear Politics average has Trump polling at 35.6 percent, with a 17-point spread…

It's said that hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. At first blush, that's Ukraine. On a recent visit to Kiev, we heard account after account of the problems facing Ukraine, the two most serious being corruption and the ongoing conflict with Russia. Two doozies, to be sure.

When Britain's Tory-led coalition government issued the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), the signal sent to Washington and the rest of the world was that London was in full-scale strategic retreat. The government's priorities were domestic. Getting the country's finances under…

The latest episode of Conversations With Bill Kristol features Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt:

With the new fiscal year for the federal government rapidly approaching, the irresponsible and dangerous game of chicken being played with national defense continues. For most of the year, the White House and Democrats have made it clear that they will block passage of defense authorization and…

"Russia is a friendly, European country,” said President Vladimir Putin in a 2001 address to the Bundestag in Berlin. Putin told German lawmakers he applauded European integration, believed in the unity of European culture, and was convinced that no one had benefited from Europe’s divisions in the…

The Unraveling is a love story. Like many love stories, it starts with two seemingly irreconcilable personalities forming a bond they never anticipated. But, true to form, the ending is tragic. In this instance, the main character is author Emma Sky, the British, Oxford-educated, lefty…

While the country slept Friday night and into Saturday morning, the U.S. Senate debated and voted on whether to alter substantially the NSA’s bulk telephone meta-data collection program, extend it for a short period, or simply let it die on June 1 when the “sunset” provision governing the relevant…

What does the likely victory of Iraqi forces retaking Tikrit from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria tell us about the current U.S. military strategy in Iraq?

At what point do we—the institution and our nation—lose our soldiers’ trust? The trust that we will provide them the right resources—the training and equipment—to properly prepare them and lead them into harm’s way. Trust that we will appropriately take care of our soldiers, our civilians, and…

The Islamist terrorist attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which, so far, has resulted in 12 deaths and many more wounded, should come as no surprise. The satirical weekly has been the target before, having been fire-bombed back in late 2011 after running a…

Growing up in Dallas, there is nothing better than living in Washington, D.C., on “Misery Monday”—the Monday after the Dallas Cowboys have whipped the Washington Redskins.  And believe me, yesterday was a whipping with the Cowboys defeating the Redskins 44-17. 

Anger among conservatives over President Obama’s decision to grant amnesty to four or five million illegal immigrants has focused not only on the substance of the decision but also on the constitutionality of his exercise of executive power. And while that debate is important, the separation of…

For years, China’s friends in the U.S. have argued that it was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened: Taiwan would unify with China under the formula of “one country, two systems.”  Given the mainland’s advantages economically, demographically and militarily, it seemed improbable to…

Yesterday, the Washington Post’s top story was another leak from NSA contractor Edward Snowden.  Unlike many of the Post’s other Snowden stories, where sensationalism has greatly outweighed the reported facts about this or that NSA program, this one had more substance and less breathless analysis.

American strategists are taken with the idea of India’s strategic potential: a large democracy with a blue-water navy and the world’s third-largest armed forces that happens to be jammed between an imploding Pakistan and an expansionist China. But a deeply dysfunctional Indian defense community has…

Today in the Rose Garden, President Obama announced that he’s going to keep a little under 10,000 troops in Afghanistan through 2014, half that number by the end of 2015, and will have all those forces out by the end of 2016. Putting aside the fact that this is the lowest number military advisors…

In little over a year, close to 60 Chinese officials have died of unnatural causes, with most being suicides. The strong suspicion is that this epidemic of mysterious deaths among China’s elite is likely tied to the anticorruption campaign being led by Chinese president and party general secretary…

America’s chattering classes seem at last to have awoken to the fact that the U.S. military ain’t what it used to be. Even the New York Times allows that “the Pentagon’s proposals to reduce the Army to pre-World War II levels” could “seem unsettling to a nation that prides itself on having the…

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a front-page story (“Spying by NSA Ally Entangled US Law Firm”) by James Risen (a Times reporter) and Laura Poitras (a freelancer who has had the "good fortune" of being a recipient of material stolen from NSA by Edward Snowden). The opening line of…

In the immediate days leading up to President Obama’s January 17 speech on the National Security Agency, news stories and leaks from the White House suggested the president would largely ignore the set of overhauls that had been put forward by his own presidential review panel—Peter Baker’s New…

In the wake of all the “leaks” by Edward Snowden of the National Security Agency’s collection programs and the resulting debate over those programs, one constantly hears from elected officials and the commentariat about the need to strike the right balance between privacy and security. More often…

Thankfully, President Obama is not a doctor.  If he was and you happened to visit him in his office and mentioned that you were worried about the potential for lung cancer, he’d immediately put you under, open you up, and pull out a lung—or, at least, that’s the logic that seems to be guiding his…

Not that long ago, one could assume that a judge with an activist approach to interpreting the Constitution was probably left-of-center politically and, accordingly, believed that overturning precedents was often necessary in order to make the Constitution relevant to present issues and alive to…

For all those civil libertarians of both the left and the right who think we ought to thank Edward Snowden for his actions in revealing NSA’s secret metadata collection program—or, at a minimum, believe the U.S. government should show leniency toward him should he ever come back to these…

When the “President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology” issued its report (Liberty and Security in a Changing World) this past week, an honest and objective newspaper headline the next day would have read: “Rogue Panel Reports on Non-Rogue NSA Program.”

While Washington and the world have been focused on the nuclear agreement reached with Iran last week in Geneva, on the other side of the globe, one of the parties to that deal, China, was at the very same time making the peaceful resolution of its dispute with Japan over a group of small islands…

Absolute coherence when it comes foreign policy is a rare thing.  International relations will forever be a mix of principles, interests, circumstances, and necessities.  But recognition of that fact doesn’t mean one has to jump to the opposite conclusion that foreign policy is simply a grab bag of…

November 19 marks the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—rightly judged to be the greatest speech in America’s history. And while there have been innumerable books and articles written about the content, language, and rhetorical sophistication of Lincoln’s remarks,…

Who's really to blame for the federal government’s shutdown? According to President Obama, it’s those ideologically obstinate congressional Republicans who will do anything to undermine the Affordable Care Act, the signature achievement of his presidency. For those same Republicans, it’s the…

Sophisticated folks like to tell themselves that history doesn’t repeat itself.  Life, politics, and diplomacy are all driven by a multitude of circumstances that make every moment different and every judgment so much different … except of course when they aren’t.  But as Maya Kandel, an analyst at…

There is little reason to believe that President Obama’s decision to ask Congress for authorization to engage in military action in Syria is the result of a newfound fastidiousness when it comes to the Constitution and his constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully…

Edward Snowden has given the country and the world an unprecedented look into the National Security Agency’s post-9/11 efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. Ignoring the success of those efforts, critics from the left and right have rained down opprobrium on the agency. But the criticism has not…

In 2012, the Department of Defense spent a total of $651 billion, including the costs of fighting in Afghanistan. According to the budget plan submitted by the White House a few months ago, projected 2014 spending will be $547 billion. If, as seems nearly inevitable, the “sequestration” provision…

To hear various commentators speak about politicians today, the overwhelming impression one gets is that politicians fall into one of two camps—ideologues or modern day Machiavellians. Either they are hidebound in what they believe and, hence, unwilling to take seriously the other side (or even…

If you lived in the decade following World War II in the American Southwest or a goodly portion of the South and were a baseball fan, there is a good chance you were a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals. And if you were a Cardinals fan during this period, you almost certainly thought that Stan “the…

When Senator Barack Obama was running for president back in 2008, he accused the Bush administration, his opponent Senator John McCain, and their supporters of taking their eyes off the ball by fighting a war in Iraq and ignoring the “necessary war”—the war in Afghanistan. Well, four short years…

Does Alexis de Tocqueville have anything to say to the current generation of Chinese leaders?

Much has been made of President Obama’s considerable use of the pronoun “I” on the night he announced to the nation the killing of Osama bin Laden. As Mark Bowden notes in his recently published account of the killing and the decision-making that led up to the operation, The Finish, the president…

Why hasn’t President Obama intervened militarily in Syria? After all, this is a president who issued a directive last year stating that a “core” national security interest of the United States would be to prevent mass atrocities of precisely the kind Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is now…

When he was director of central intelligence, Leon Panetta earned a reputation as an energetic advocate for his agency. When he replaced Robert Gates at the Pentagon, it was reasonable to hope that Panetta would continue to play the role of a senior statesman. And to some extent he has—explaining…

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey is getting an appetite for political controversy. 

Earlier this week we wrote that the chairman of the Joints of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, had “provoked a public confrontation” with House Budget Committee leader Rep. Paul Ryan. It appeared that Dempsey had made a grievous error by claiming that Ryan had “called [the JCS], collectively, liars.” 

Rep. Paul Ryan calls his budget plan the “Path to Prosperity,” but it could be termed as well a “Path to Security.” In reclaiming more than $200 billion of the nearly $500 billion in military cuts made in last year’s Budget Control Act (BCA), the House Budget Committee chairman takes national…

The country of Georgia has been sending troops to Afghanistan to support the NATO-led mission since 2004. Over the past year, over 900 Georgian soldiers have been serving in Helmand province, deployed alongside American, British, and Danish troops in one of the most conflict-laden and contested…

The left has not been happy with the Obama administration’s handling of the war on terror for some time now. In addition to leaving Guantánamo open, the administration has maintained Bush-era practices such as open-ended detention for terrorist suspects, reaffirming the “state secrets” privilege,…

With the end of the Cold War in sight, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell in the George H. W. Bush administration was asked how big the U.S. military should be. He replied, “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here.’ ”

Marines are known for their bluntness, so it was not surprising to see the matter-of-fact honesty of General James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, on display when interviewed by the Associated Press during a recent trip to visit Marines in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. Asked about the…

For those hoping to get a confirmable job in some future Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney administration, today’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing is a good reminder of why it’s best to get that job earlier rather than later. Attempting to get confirmed for a position in an area that already has…

Yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey on Iraqi security issues in light of the fact that, come January, there will be virtually no U.S. troops stationed there. In what can only be described as…

The scene was one of jubilation, as British prime minister David Cameron and French president Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Libya’s capital on September 15 to cheering throngs waving British and French flags. The two men basked in the glow of victory, as well they should. Both had advocated armed…

Among the many shortcomings of the Budget Control Act and its spawn, the “Super Committee,” is that the threat of a sequestration “nuclear option”—in which some $600 billion would be cut automatically from national security accounts if congressmen do not find savings elsewhere—diverts attention…

There have been two major books published this summer on relations between the United States and China: Henry Kissinger’s On China and this one. And while Kissinger himself has had an immense impact on how those relations have unfolded over the past four decades, Aaron L. Friedberg’s volume will …

Now that the Great Debt Ceiling Deal has become the law of the land, it’s time to consider what just happened to America, and in particular to America’s armed forces. On the one hand, it’s complicated. On the other hand, it’s ugly.

In the next month, after more than four decades of distinguished public service including almost five extraordinary years at the Pentagon supervising the successful surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates will retire. He departs as the very model of a Washington “wise man,”…

The crisis in Libya provides a useful reminder that the world’s demand for American power is rising. This is clearly the case in the Muslim world, which was in turmoil long before the current “Arab spring.” As Senator Richard Lugar recently fretted, “Libya might not be the last of these cases.”…

One of the oddities of “the realist” school of international relations in America is how profoundly unrealistic its proponents’ policy prescriptions typically are. The latest example of this phenomenon is found in the new issue of Foreign Affairs in an article written by Charles Glaser of George…

Perhaps it was inevitable. After ten years of contentious wrangling and with tens of billions of dollars going to the winner of the competition to build the U.S. Air Force's next fleet of tankers, no matter who won there would be recriminations and charges that the fix was in. If the European…

President Obama’s apparent frustration that he and his senior policymakers were taken by surprise with recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, reminds us of Yogi Berra’s famous line, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Some momentous event occurs on the world scene—whether it’s the Soviets putting…

Now begins the great business for which the voters recalled the Republican party to power in Washington: reestablishing the habits of limited government. Starting with the debate on the 2011 continuing resolution—last year’s Democratic majorities having failed to fund the government for the full…

When it comes to homeland security, President Obama’s first year in office was a nightmare. In September, Nidal Malik Hasan, a radicalized Army major, murdered 13 defense department employees at Ft. Hood, Texas. Shortly thereafter, Najibullah Zazi was arrested before he and compatriots were able to…

A new study out of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, “Muslim-American Terrorism Since 9/11: An Accounting,” appears to offer up some good news when it comes to Islamist-inspired terrorism originating in the United States. In 2009, nearly 50 individuals were identified as…

With the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, elite colleges now have a chance to make good on their promises and bring the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) back to campus.

For those of us who have been arguing against cutting the U.S. defense budget and, indeed, arguing instead that it’s too low as is, we’re used to our critics saying that we never have met a defense expenditure we don’t like, that we have no ideas for how defense monies can be better utilized, or…

With the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, elite colleges now have a chance to make good on their promises and bring the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) back to campus.

Do conservatives want a smaller and better government than we now have—properly limited and governed by the rule of law, but also energetically capable of accomplishing its appropriate ends? Or do conservatives just want to cut government willy-nilly, not only reducing its overall size but…

“It could have been much worse.”  That’s the line many of my British friends are putting forward about the cuts to the British defense budget announced by the new Tory government this past week.  And they’re right. Early on, word both inside Whitehall and on the streets of London was that the new…

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, famously said in 2007 that “in Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.” That strategic view was supposed to change when Barack Obama was elected president. It was candidate Obama, after all, who argued that the war in…

If Bob Woodward’s newest book, Obama’s Wars, is anything like his prior inside accounts of previous administrations, there will be plenty of quotations without sources, lengthy accounts of private conversations that seem too detailed to be believed as totally accurate, and an untold number of…

In an effort to clarify ambiguous language in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Obama administration is asking Congress to pass a measure that would allow the FBI to gain access to an individual’s web browsing history and email traffic record (not the messages themselves, but the list…

The controversy over the Ground Zero mosque has breathed new life into Samuel P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis. In the early 1990s, Huntington argued that:

Yesterday, both the New York Times and Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy’s “The Cable” posted pieces on the growing pressure within Congress to cut defense spending.  And, indeed, both the House and Senate appropriators are well on their way to doing precisely that to the Obama administration’s FY 2011…

On the 65th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe in early May, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas. His speech was not about America’s unprecedented, massive marshalling of resources, men, and materiel to defeat the forces of fascism that…

Necessary Secrets

So, let’s get this straight: On a visit to Israel by Vice President Biden, a lower-level, Israeli government agency announces its intent to build more housing units in East Jerusalem and the Obama administration goes nuclear, condemning the announcement as though it was a violation of some sacred…

You could probably count on one hand the number of conservatives who expected President Obama to give the address he did in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. After all, up until then, his major speeches had been built around such themes as nuclear disarmament, Muslim-American relations,…

There are a lot of positive things to be said about President Obama's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. As others have pointed out, it makes sound arguments about the need to use force at times for the purpose of maintaining peace, the limits of non-violence for dealing with the world's worst…

Dennis Blair was confirmed by the Senate to be Obama's director of national intelligence (DNI) within days of the inauguration. Other than his failed attempt to appoint Charles Freeman to head up the office which produces national intelligence estimates, Blair's only other newsworthy achievement…

One of the best kept secrets in Washington is the continuing valuable service provided by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The commission, established by Congress in late 2000, reports to Congress annually "on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and…

In little over a week, a modern French warship is scheduled to visit St. Petersburg. If the Russians like what they see, and a deal can be reached, the French government has signaled that it is willing to sell Moscow a ship of its own. Should the sale go through, it will be the first ever arms sale…

The Essential Herman Kahn

Talking to Terrorists

One of Barack Obama's most politically adept decisions upon winning the White House was to ask Robert Gates to remain in place as the nation's secretary of defense. By choosing Gates--who had served with distinction at the CIA, the National Security Council, and most recently at the Pentagon under…

President Obama is headed to Moscow in early July for his first ever U.S.-Russia summit. The administration, in an effort to "hit the reset button" when it comes to relations between the two countries, has in fact hit the delete button when it comes to ties with friends and allies in the region.

Reading tea leaves is a dangerous business when it comes to a new administration. There is always a fair amount of floundering around that comes from having too few senior people in place, unsettled policymaking processes, and indecision over which campaign promises to keep and which to toss…

On Friday, October 3, all eyes were on Washington, as the House passed the $700 billion bailout bill designed to head off an economic 9/11. Lost in the news that day was the Bush administration's decision to release a new set of attorney general guidelines for the FBI's domestic operations. This…

"The first order of business should not be some sort of punishment," said Dan Fried, the Bush administration's assistant secretary of state for European affairs, in an interview this past week about U.S. policy toward Russia in the wake of its invasion of Georgia.

America Between the Wars

In the old TV commercials for the E.F. Hutton brokerage firm, conversations would come to a screeching halt when someone dropped the Hutton name, and everyone would lean in to hear what E.F. Hutton was advising. The tagline: "When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen." The Washington version of this is…

On an early November day in the skies over southern Indiana, Maj. Steve Stilwell of the Missouri Air National Guard's 131st Fighter Wing was honing his air-to-air combat skills. As he threw his F-15 into a turn, he stressed his big Eagle at two to three times the force of gravity, a relatively…

THERE ARE A LOT of words one could use to describe former congressman Charles Wilson--drunkard, sleazy, womanizer, patriot--but the one that most comes to mind in my dealings with him was simply "persistent."

For one who recently returned from Europe, where a colleague and I interviewed an array of domestic security officials in key European democracies, it is a bit of an out-of-body experience to examine the various bills now pending on Capitol Hill that aim to govern how the U.S. government conducts…

When General David Petraeus reports to Washington next week, the most important question he'll have to answer is, What happens in Iraq after the surge? With all but the most die-hard defeatists--that is, the congressional Democratic leadership--convinced that the surge has improved the security…

Membership in the United Nations is supposed to be "open to all . . . peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained" in the U.N. Charter, as the selfsame charter puts it. In a rational world, a country with the world's 18th largest economy, which is formally and diplomatically…

After months of internal wrangling, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its latest report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. This new report covers assessments of what we should have expected, both inside and outside of Iraq, once Saddam was removed from power. To call the committee's…

THE U.S.-TAIWAN relationship is on life support. Over nearly seven years of concurrent presidencies under George W. Bush and Chen Shui-bian, the bilateral relationship has deteriorated to the point that Bush has repeatedly rebuked Chen, either publicly or through emissaries, over perceived broken…

American Empire

The Bush administration, which once pledged to do "whatever it takes" to defend Taiwan, is increasingly distancing itself from the prosperous and democratic island. This has been going on since August 3, 2002, when Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, first declared that "each side [of the Taiwan…

A BIT OF HISTORY COMES to mind in the wake of South Korean president Roh's refusal delivered at the recent APEC summit in Hanoi to sign up as a full participant in the Proliferation Security Initiative, the U.S.-led effort to prevent North Korea from trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM is that the ascension of Japan's Shinzo Abe to the prime minister's post is bad news for Japan and, by extension, the United States. Abe is an ardent nationalist who, the thinking goes, will unleash the country's lurking militarism, thus isolating Japan and, indirectly,…

ALTHOUGH U.S. POLICY toward North Korea is ostensibly about "keeping the most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous regimes," the reality is that we haven't even come close to doing that. North Korea almost certainly has nuclear weapons, and it is slowly developing the missiles…

EARLY LAST MONTH, the accounting firm of Ernst and Young released a report concluding that the "nonperforming" loans of China's banks totaled $911 billion (40 percent of China's GDP)--a figure that far exceeds the Chinese government's own estimate of $164 billion. Beijing's response to the report…

ON JULY 7, 2005, in London, shortly before 9 a.m., three suicide bombers blew themselves up and destroyed the subway cars they were riding in, killing 39 and injuring nearly 700 commuters. About an hour later, another suicide bomber got on a double-decker bus--crowded with men, women, and children…

THE CHINESE ARE BIG ON SLOGANS: "Four Modernizations," the "Three Represents," "One Country, Two Systems," and more recently, the "Three Transcends," "Building a Harmonious Society," and "Peaceful Rise." While they don't trip off the American tongue, they serve the same basic purpose as slogans…

The American Era

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is a chronic problem. The controversy over President Bush's decision to bypass FISA warrants in the electronic surveillance of al Qaeda operatives has highlighted the act's limitations. But FISA has been a problem ever since it became law in 1978.

A U.S. president has just received word that American counterterrorist operatives have captured a senior al Qaeda operative in Pakistan. Among his possessions are a couple of cell phones--phones that contain several American phone numbers. In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, what's a president to do?

WHEN I WAS A KID growing up in Dallas, our summer evenings were punctuated with electronic pops and screeches from my dad's bedroom radio, as he struggled to tune in the St. Louis Cardinals baseball games from St. Louis mega-station KMOX. We were serious Cardinals fans.

MONTHS OVERDUE, THE PENTAGON'S annual report to Congress on China's military power is a mix of happy talk, flabby strategic musings, and sobering facts. No doubt this analytic confusion explains the quite divergent news accounts of the report when it was released on July 19. The New York Times, for…

THE HEADLINE for the lead story in yesterday's Washington Post was "Iran Is Judged 10 Years from Nuclear Bomb." The story itself is based on leaked portions of a January 2005 national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Iran, whose annex apparently contains a revised assessment by American intelligence…

ON SATURDAY, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson gave the Democratic party's weekly radio address and excoriated President Bush for not having fired Karl Rove and others in connection with the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's name to the press. This followed Johnson's appearance before a panel of…

TODAY'S FRONT PAGE of the Washington Post carries a story about a classified memo from Britain's defense minister to Prime Minister Tony Blair detailing "emerging U.S. plans" to reduce by half the number of soldiers in Iraq by next summer. This would leave American troop levels at around 66,000.…

THIS WEEK both John Kerry and his senior foreign policy advisor, Susan Rice, have argued that the Bush administration was wrong about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. He was not a danger before the war; his contacts with Saddam's Iraq non-existent; and his relationship to al Qaeda only now…

YESTERDAY, German defense minister Peter Struck told interviewers from the Financial Times that Germany had not ruled out sending troops to Iraq. "At present I rule out the deployment of German troops in Iraq. In general, however, there is no one who can predict developments in Iraq in such a way…

ON MONDAY, in Brussels, Republican strategist Charles Black debated Kerry campaign adviser and fundraiser R. Scott Pastrick on the implications for Europe of the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. As reported from Europe, Pastrick stated that a Kerry administration would be "culturally…

ON MONDAY, speaking in Wilmington, North Carolina, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards gave a major foreign policy address that insulted America's allies in the war on terror, and suggested giving France and Germany a virtual veto over American security policy.

THE MORE DEMOCRATIC presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry talks about how he would wage the war on terror, the more he appears to be planning a retreat from an offensive to a defensive strategy. Last Friday, Kerry told a Kansas City audience that: "I know I can run a more effective, smarter, more…

WHEN THE SENATE Intelligence Committee released its report on prewar assessments of Iraq's WMD programs and Iraq's ties to terrorism, it generated a host of front-page stories, news commentaries, and political debate--as it should have. Even in its heavily redacted form, the report is well worth…

Allies at War

TODAY'S Financial Times carries a front-page story ("US Approaches Insurgents to Help Control Najaf") in which Major General Martin Dempsey, commanding officer of the 1st Armored Division, indicates that he has begun talks with various militia groups, including components of Moqtada al-Sadr's…

ON JANUARY 16, Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, announced the wording of the referendums he intends to put on the ballot in March, when the people of Taiwan go to the polls to elect a president. The referendums will ask whether, in the face of the missile threat from the mainland, Taiwan should…

IF DAVID KAY is right about what his weapons inspection teams have found--or rather not found--in Iraq, it's clear the Bush administration was wrong about Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, says there are no large chemical…

U.S.-CHINA-TAIWAN POLICY contains a host of formulations, complications, and nuances, all of which (at least most of which!) we are happy to discuss. But let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees.

SENIOR BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS may be engineering a dramatic and dangerous shift in American policy toward Taiwan as a gift to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who is visiting the United States next week. There are two elements of this proposed policy change, both of which favor Beijing at the…

AMERICANS HAVE DEBATED a lot about Iraq: whether the war was justified, whether the administration lied about Iraq's weapons programs, whether sufficient postwar planning was done, and whether the coalition, the United Nations or the Iraqis themselves should be put in charge of reconstruction. In…

The New Chinese Empire

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE Donald Rumsfeld can study the issue of active-duty troop strength all he wants but it won't change the obvious: U.S. land forces are two divisions short of being able to carry out effectively its present responsibilities. Winning wars is not enough. We must also be able to…

LAST WEEK, the White House announced that North Korea has admitted what critics of the Clinton "engagement" ruefully predicted eight years ago: Pyongyang retains a secret nuclear weapons program, in defiance of its 1994 pledge to forswear nukes. Since the disclosure became public, the Bush…

The Ideas That Conquered the World Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century by Michael Mandelbaum Public Affairs, 512 pp., $30 DID SEPTEMBER 11 change anything? Do the terrorist attacks and our response mark a new strategic era, or are they merely a temporary detour from a far…

IN A FLURRY of recent articles speculating on the nature of a potential U.S. invasion of Iraq, reporters and commentators have raised a "nightmare" scenario: that a battle for Baghdad would turn into a second Mogadishu. With virtually no chance to survive--let alone win--a force-on-force conflict…

SEPTEMBER 11 has affected American policy far beyond the Middle East. In the Asia-Pacific theater, in particular, the attacks and their aftermath have created a new dynamic that may work to the advantage of the United States in its competition with China for regional leadership. What remains to be…

PRESIDENT BUSH has made plain from the start that the war on terrorism will be long and large. What he seems reluctant to admit is that it will also be expensive. Since September 11, the United States has routed the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, committed thousands of troops to assist in the…

THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE'S stunning recent victories in Afghanistan have created an opportunity to destroy the Taliban much more rapidly than seemed possible just a few days ago. If additional American military force can be brought to bear in a timely fashion--including the introduction of mobile…

SHORTLY BEFORE getting on a plane to fly to New Jersey from Europe in June 2000, Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker of the first jet airliner to slam into the World Trade Center and, apparently, the lead conspirator in the attacks of September 11, met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official. This…

IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE TERRORIST ATTACKS on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Bush administration has proposed a number of legal changes to improve the government's ability to investigate terrorists. The largest number of these changes involve the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,…

PRESIDENT BUSH was right Wednesday morning when he looked up from his cabinet meeting to announce: "The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war." But war to what end? What do the initiators of this war…

TWO WEEKS AGO, Alvin Bernstein, a close friend, died. Al had been sick and had been recently diagnosed with cancer. Even so, his friends all expected him to wage a battle with the disease and, given his will, win it. But an infection took him suddenly, and many of us were left with the miserable…

TO HIS CREDIT, George W. Bush made national defense an issue in his campaign. By raising the problem of military preparedness and, now, choosing a forceful defense secretary in Donald Rumsfeld, the incoming president has put himself in a strong position to follow through on an important policy…

Study of Revenge

Winning Ugly

Way Out There in the Blue

Modern political analysis tends to transform principles to ideologies and to reduce subtle acts of prudence to mere political calculations. What gets shoved aside in the process is the possibility of statesmanship -- the possibility of applying genuine principle to new times, new peoples, and new…

THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSED $ 12.6 billion increase in defense spending is an illusion. To start, the increase amounts to little over $ 4 billion in new budget authority. The remaining $ 8 billion is a product of Defense Department accounting adjustments, delayed spending on other military programs,…

AT THE END OF SEPTEMBER, BILL CLINTON told PBS's Jim Lehrer the following three things: First, he claimed special prosecutor Kenneth Starr was engaged in a partisan effort to "get" him and his wife; second, he practically accused Starr of suborning perjury; third, he refused to rule out giving…