Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
Security
A Unified Security Budget for the United States, 2007

A Unified Security Budget for the United States, 2007

by , | May 2, 2006

As it is portrayed in the Bush administration’s new National Security Strategy doctrine, our military is a co-equal partner with our diplomatic corps, our development agency and our homeland security department. The text speaks of pursuing national security by championing aspirations for human dignity, strengthening alliances, defusing regional conflicts, and expanding development. In the section on “key national security institutions,” the Department of Defense (DOD) is third on the list.

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Spying and Lying in 21st Century America

by , | Jan 25, 2006

This law, as has become more and more clear over the last three months, was but the initial move by the Bush administration in what has become an extended and coordinated attack on the civil liberties of U.S. persons in the name of national security and—ironically—in the name of bringing democracy and civil liberties to Iraq.

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The Arrogance of Power

by | Sep 1, 2002

Two years after the passage by a unanimous House of Representatives and all but two senators of the August 7, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and amid continuing escalation of the Vietnam War, then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright published The Arrogance of Power, in which he attacked the war’s justification, Congress’ failure to set limits on it, and the dangerous and delusional impulses that gave rise to it. Fulbright’s critique, to which he had already given voice in unprecedented hearings on the war, legitimized the growing anti-war movement in a way that had not been possible before the book’s publication and shattered what until then had been an elite consensus that U.S. military intervention in Indochina was necessitated by cold war geopolitics.

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The Prisoner as Message

by | Sep 1, 2002

The United States’ recent stance on the case of Saadeddin Ibrahim is the first time since the signing of the Camp David Accords 25 years ago that America has made its aid for Egypt conditional upon a human rights issue. This decision has raised many questions within both Arab and international circles. What position do human rights occupy in U.S.-Egyptian relations? Or in the policies of the United States itself? Is the attempt to link human rights to the case of Ibrahim a sincere decision, or some sort of fabrication? If the latter, what is its goal? And what is the impact of this move likely to be, both on the future of U.S.-Egyptian relations, and on the future of Ibrahim himself?

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No Thank You, Mr. President

by | Sep 1, 2002

Following the end of the 1967 Yom Kippur War, the Israeli government decided to knock down the barriers separating Eastern Jerusalem and annex the eastern Palestinian neighborhoods. Expecting immediate American pressure to withdraw from the conquered territories, the government rushed in and took control. The pressure never came. That expectation was based on past experience: In 1956 the U.S. forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Desert back to the international border, in three months. In 1967, though, surprisingly, no such demand was made. On the contrary–the Americans allowed Israel to start a construction lunge, building neighborhoods in Eastern Jerusalem, settlements in the West Bank, in Sinai, and in the Golan Heights. Not only was there no pressure to withdraw, but Israel received a generous three billion dollars of funding annually, which went mainly to subsidize the American weapons industry.

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WSSD Both Attacks and Abets “Global Apartheid”

by | Sep 1, 2002

Officials of the United Nations and the host South African government looking hard in the mirror this weekend will have to judge the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) a failure. The only remarkable step forward for human and environmental progress taken in the ultra-bourgeois Johannesburg suburb of Sandton was the widespread adoption of the idea of “global apartheid,” at President Thabo Mbeki’s suggestion.

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Afghanistan Quagmire

by | Sep 1, 2002

Afghanistan is beginning to look like a quagmire rather than a victory, with echoes of the confusion and uncertainty and persistent bloodshedding of Vietnam. Compounding the complications of the U.S. goal of hunting down the Taliban and Al Qaeda while stabilizing a fragile government is the swirl of ethnic tensions in Afghanistan fueled by competing warlords.

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Bush’s United Nations Speech Unconvincing

by | Sep 1, 2002

The last time–and only time–the United States came before the United Nations to accuse a radical Third World government of threatening the security of the United States through weapons of mass destruction was in October 1962. In the face of a skeptical world and Cuban and Soviet denials, U.S. ambassador Adlai Stevenson presented dramatic photos clearly showing the construction of nuclear missiles on Cuban soil. While the resulting U.S. military blockade and brinksmanship was not universally supported, there was little question that the United States had the evidence and that the threat was real.

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