Even in the best of times, corporate fraud, Nazi connections, hate groups and Eastern European drug rings were lurking beneath Sweden’s surface.
It’s True: Sweden Was Too Good to Be True
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Europe & Central Asia
Richard Holbrooke: A Statesman’s Statesman — if You Take Your Diplomacy Straight up Without Principles as a Chaser
If nothing else, Holbrooke’s career illustrates the continuity of American foreign policy over every administration for which he worked.
One November’s Dead: The American War Dead Disappear into the Darkness
Remember as the invasion of Iraq was about to begin, when the Bush administration decided to seriously enforce a Pentagon ban, in existence since the first Gulf War, on media coverage and images of the American dead arriving home at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware? In fact, the Bush-era ban did more than that. As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote then, it “ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers’ homecomings on all military bases.”
Is the Military Still in Charge in Pakistan?
This past summer, WikiLeaks, an on-line source of anonymous whistle-blower revelations, unveiled damning information about the war in Afghanistan and its “official portrayal.” Sidebar revelations also cast doubt on Pakistan’s alliance with the United States, charging Pakistani intelligence agencies with “aiding insurgents.” Pakistan and the United States forcefully denied any chink in their “strategic partnership.”
The Celtic Tiger Follows the Asian Tigers to Extinction
The financial collapse of Ireland, coming as the latest in a string of disasters, hardly shocks global public opinion. For people engaged in the development debate, however, it is resonant with meaning.
“Tory scum! Off with their heads!”
The reactions of British youth to university fee increases can serve, to a certain extent, as a lesson to American youth.
Postcard from…Albania
Albania’s communist regime was orthodox and extreme. When other East European countries liberalized slightly after Stalin’s death in 1953, the Albanian ruler Enver Hoxha held firm, calling the Soviet Union “revisionist.”
There’s Light at the End of the Tunnel — or, It’s Deja Vu All Over Again
Lowering the benchmark for COIN success.
Fireground Rules, Part 2: A Scheme is Not a Vision
As with wildfires, conflicts between states are the interplay of multiple factors which can generate manifestly different outcomes.
Disarmament and Nonproliferation: Which Is the Cart, Which Is the Horse?
Heretofore coexisting peacefully, the two are now juxtaposed.