Best of the Moment
foreign-policy-defence
russia-cis
Mark Mazower | World Affairs | March 2010
After Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, liberal interventionists rediscover value of legal norms, international stability, institutions in human welfare. Not just a matter of ousting bad leaders
Bernard Avishai | IHT | 17 March 2010
Country torn between pro-settler, pro-America. "There is a culture war in Israel now, and the only way the liberal side of it can mount an offensive is if America keeps the heat on"
David Albright | Foreign Policy | 17 March 2010
How Osama bin Laden tried to buy nuclear technology from Pakistan a decade ago—and how his associates may yet succeed. Book extract. Speculative but gripping
Kristina Božić | LRB | 17 March 2010
Long, wide-ranging conversation, lively throughout. Strong critiques of Israeli policy, political correctness, European integration. Recent cohort of world leaders "catastrophic"
Rex Brynen | Foreign Policy | 16 March 2010
More excellent reporting on Gaza's tunnels. Used for smuggling consumer goods, fiancés, livestock, automobiles—and a lion, sedated for the journey, that woke up half-way
Dexter Filkins & Mark Mazzetti | NYT | 14 March 2010
Straight out of a thriller novel. Pentagon official uses millions diverted from other projects to run private intelligence network targeting assassinations in Afghanistan, Pakistan. Allegedly
Mark Perry | Foreign Policy | 13 March 2010
US army commander says US has to stick up more visibly for Palestinians. Seemingly unconditional support for Israel endangers US troops in region
Thomas Friedman | NYT | 13 March 2010
Israel needs a wake-up call. US needs to show backbone. After East Jerusalem fiasco, Biden should have got straight back on his plane and flown home
Robert Kaplan | Atlantic | April 2010
Big think-piece. Enemy in Afghanistan is not just the Taliban, it is history, geography, economics. Can the US army change the fundamentals of a country? And at what cost to itself?
Michael Crowley | New Republic | 9 March 2010
Profile of brutal Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, radical Islamist who fought the Red Army with US support, then led the anti-US insurgency after 2001. US needs him as a friend again