Archive
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Articles
Crimes in the Name of Freedom
Of the several monks who taught us English, Father Allen was the easiest to relate to. Father P. was obviously gay—we used different terms in those days—which created a...
Man of the World
God’s Cold Warrior:The Life and Faith of John Foster Dullesby john d. wilsey eerdmans, 271 pages, $21.99 John Foster Dulles is a largely forgotten figure. Had he not served...
Mr. and Mrs. Fearmonger
The Cold World They Made:The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetterby ron robinharvard, 365 pages, $35 Today all but forgotten, Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter were once the First...
Limiting Moralism
A state is not a church. A state exists not to redeem humankind or to do God’s work but to provide for the security and well-being of the people...
Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
From the perspective of Israel and its (few remaining) friends, the Six Day War was—and remains—both just and necessary. Nothing in Michael Oren’s book calls this basic judgment into...
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power
Less than a year after the attack of September 11, Americans have just about succeeded in absorbing the war on terror into their daily routine. In the home, the...
The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism and The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria
Abdulaziz Sachedina is a man with a mission. He is determined to demonstrate that when it comes to the West’s relations with Islam, there need be no “clash of...
The Vietnam Wars
Like Israelis and Palestinians eyeing each other suspiciously from adjacent hilltops in the West Bank, Americans who were on opposing sides of the Vietnam War may share the same...
Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy
In 1996, Robert Kagan and William Kristol published a widely read article in Foreign Affairs advancing the case for unabashed American hegemony”benevolent, to be sure”on a globe“straddling scale. In...
Political Will and Personal Belief: The Decline and Fall of Soviet Communism
Throughout the Cold War, Sovietologists contended fiercely with one another over the nature of Communist regimes. Engrossed in that pursuit, they missed altogether the one development that really mattered....
The World According to Clinton
As part of its professed commitment to “complete the unfinished business of the Second World War,” the Clinton Administration last year released its second and final report on “Nazi...
Old Ghosts
Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America.By John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr.Yale University Press. 475 pp. $30. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America––The Stalin Era.By Allen Weinstein and...
The Irony of American Power
I The overarching theme of twentieth-century geopolitics has been America’s success in prevailing over its competitors for global power. A century ago, the United States was a continental power...
Memoirs of a Catholic Boyhood
The muddy Illinois River ranks among the least distinguished of the Mississippi’s tributaries, a brown expanse of water sliding past slippery banks strewn with refuse. From time to time,...
The Seed of the Church
Their Blood Cries Out: The Growing Worldwide Persecution of Christians by Paul Marshall. Word, 304 pages, $12.99. This book bears all the earmarks of being a loser. The title...