Lee Ruddin is Roundup Editor at HNN. He lives in England.

Readers of the Guardian may be forgiven for thinking that its editors were now big advocates of the Anglo-American “special relationship” after the newspaper ran a fascinating feature on Emma Sky, ‘the British peacenik who became the key to the US military.’ Granted, its chief political correspondent (Nicholas Watt) derided Mitt Romney on his recent trip to London and scolded the Republican presidential challenger for an advisor’s comment relating to his ‘Anglo-Saxon heritage.’ Yet it sounded almost proud of the fact that a civilian (one opposed to the war in Iraq) advised an American commander (namely General Raymond T. Odierno) on the dusty plains of Mesopotamia and that her ideas were later reflected in General David Petraeus’s successful counter-insurgency doctrine.

Fiercely opposed to the “occupation,” the broadsheet – again, proudly, it must be noted – illuminated how Sky, an Englishwoman, represented the US military during negotiations on the “Status of Forces Agreement” concerning the continued presence of coalition personnel. The UN resolution was due to expire at the end of 2008 and Sky, as part of a small team under the US Ambassador Ryan Crocker, worked tirelessly to prevent a power vacuum. Sky’s diplomatic skills impressed Americans and Iraqis to such an extent that she was deployed on a key ambassadorial assignment. We cannot say for certain whether Prime Minister Maliki would not have traveled to Camp Victory – the seat of the “occupation” – had Sky not woke him upon hearing the news that President Obama could not travel to the Green Zone. But what we do know is that a British “Arabist” helped to inject a bit of “specialness” into the burgeoning American-Iraqi relationship by arranging for the two leaders to meet.

Such an influence is nothing new, though, as Richard Aldous illustrates in his latest book, Reagan and Thatcher:The Difficult Relationship. The ‘Soviets seemed to have calculated that [Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher was’, her private secretary, Charles Powell recalled, “somebody who could both persuade President [Ronald] Reagan to deal with them and in a sense help explain them to [the Commander-in-Chief].”’ The above referenced quote is not, rest assured, an isolated one. Indeed, while some reviewers may (rightly) question Norton publishers’ decision to bill Aldous’s work as one of historical revisionism (since it will fail to supplant Geoffrey Smith’s 1991 pioneering study, Reagan and Thatcher – a text also published by Norton), the Eugene Meyer Professor of British History and Literature at Bard College, New York, intelligently (if indirectly) revises the “poodle” thesis.

Denis Healey once remarked that “When President Reagan says, ‘Jump,’ Mrs. Thatcher asks, ‘How high?’” The then-Shadow Foreign Secretary’s comment, and referral to the PM as the C-in-C’s “obedient poodle”, never became tomorrow’s chip paper after hitting the headlines because he continued to peddle the one-liners in symposia reflecting upon the Cold War Years. But as Aldous now illuminates to – for want of a better word – the poodle peddlers, what Neil Kinnock said about Thatcher being “supine in her support for the American President” was anything but the case. Indeed, Aldous’s account of Thatcher (in the words of reviewer John O’Sullivan) ‘blowing into Washington, blowing up, and blowing out again’ destroys any credibility of the then-Leader of the Opposition when it comes to the process(es) of foreign-policy decision-making.

Thatcher, unlike Kinnock, had authority – all of it in her relationship with Reagan. She was also more of an attack dog than a poodle, as evidenced by her actions at the G-7 summit (at Montebello, Ottawa, in 1981) when she confronted France’s Francois Mitterrand and Canada’s Pierre Trudeau as they endeavored to corner the recently-inaugurated 40th President of the United States to “discuss” his economic policies. Administration officials never forgot this incident and principals utilized Thatcher to great effect for eight years during the Eighties. Two examples of a principal-like, poodle-lite Thatcher – in 1982 and 1984 – stick out and warrant further discussion.

The American policy of sanctions against the Siberian pipeline (in response to the Communist government in Poland imposing martial law in December 1981) did not garner much allied support; Thatcher was livid with Reagan and his unilateral approach (in June 1982), believing that the US declaration of economic war on the USSR would have dire consequences for European allies. ‘[A]t a time when she was often accused of being Reagan’s poodle, this was an occasion when she seemed determined to show both bark and bite,’ Aldous records. So much so, the author asserts, it explains ‘why immediately after losing the debate, [Secretary of State Alexander] Haig wanted to get Thatcher into the Oval Office – and why [National Security Advisor William P.] Clark tried to keep her out. For within the western alliance there was no more robust opponent of these sanctions than Thatcher.’

Policy debates surrounding the Strategic Defense Initiative followed a similar pattern. Reagan had rejected Mutually Assured Destruction but Thatcher believed that the SDI (comprising the weaponization of space and commonly referred to as “Star Wars”) was, well, MAD. Despite the realist PM believing that the idealist C-in-C’s dream of a nuclear-free world was an unattainable one, she agreed to publicly support his Administration’s research initiative. In private, however, like at Camp David (in December 1984), Thatcher launched into a tirade, distinguishing between SDI as a research initiative and as a deployed system. ‘“Nuclear weapons,” she reminded Reagan when emphasizing détente over defense, “have served not only to prevent a nuclear war, but they have also given us forty years of unprecedented peace in Europe. It would be unwise to abandon a deterrence system that had prevented both nuclear and conventional war.”’

Secretary of State George Shultz shared Thatcher’s concerns but he was outnumbered in the Administration and thus not confident that such reservations would be raised in the coming disarmament talks at Geneva. Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, meanwhile, was in agreement with the C-in-C and both were extremely confident that SDI would not form part of the negotiations with the Soviets. ‘Thatcher’s visit’, however, Aldous informs the reader, ‘had offered [Shultz] an opportunity to ensure that his view prevailed’ and that SDI would ‘at least be on the table.’ As the author concludes, ‘State Department officials had worked directly with the British to produce the document that emerged from Camp David. “It was an excellent statement,” the Secretary judged; “it differentiated between research and deployment of space-based defense and gave me some running room in Geneva.”’

Richard Perle, a principal arms negotiator for Reagan at Reykjavik, similarly took took heart from Thatcher challenging Reagan’s ‘non-nuclear creed’. “Some of us, learning that Mrs. Thatcher was coming,” David Dimbleby and David Reynolds, authors of An Ocean Apart: The Relationship Between Britain and America in the Twentieth Century, quote Perle as saying, “were rather pleased at the prospect that some of the more intemperate and visionary views of the President might be modified, as indeed they were. So many of us regarded her as a voice of calm reason, and a much needed one, in particular on this issue of a world without nuclear weapons, which is dangerous nonsense. The President gives expression to it too frequently, but never in close proximity with a visit from Mrs. Thatcher. So we get a brief respite from that rubbish when she comes.”

The aforementioned examples are classic instances of how members of the Reagan Administration used Thatcher as one of the President’s principals to gain leverage during internal policy disputes. Given what transatlantic expert Ritchie Ovendale, author of Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century, says about Thatcher’s role in the making of ‘American foreign policy’ and ‘the way a telephone call from her could lead to Reagan discarding State Department recommendations,’ you can understand why Jeane Kirkpatrick, former US ambassador to the UN, asked: “Why not disband the State Department and have the British Foreign Office make our policy?”

Rami G. Khouri is published twice-weekly by The Daily Star.

This has been a bad publicity week for the Baath Party that ruled Iraq and Syria for much of the past half-century. Consider the two following lead paragraphs from two news stories from the Associated Press Tuesday.The first was datelined Damascus: "After a bloody, weeklong siege in the Syrian capital, residents who stayed behind are facing hourslong lines for gasoline and bread, stinking piles of garbage in the streets and scenes of destruction unimaginable in a city that had long been spared the worst ravages of the country’s uprising. It’s a gruesome turn for the distinguished Middle Eastern city of Damascus, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and a sign that Syria’s civil war appears doomed to escalate."

The second was datelined Baghdad: "A startling spasm of violence shook more than a dozen Iraqi cities Monday, killing over 100 people in coordinated bombings and shootings and wounding twice as many in the country’s deadliest day in more than two years. The attacks came only days after Al-Qaeda announced it would attempt a comeback with a new offensive against Iraq’s weakened government."

What should we make of the fact that the two countries where the Arab Socialist Baath Party ruled for many decades are now poster children for wrecks of modern Arab statehood that have descended into urban warfare? Syria and Iraq are not only sad places today for the suffering their people endure in conditions of rampant violence. They are sad also for their modern legacy as police states that demeaned their people so grievously that they provoked several popular uprisings the regimes tried to put down with brute force...

Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think tank.

John McCain may have called Barack Obama the biggest celebrity in the world, but the place that has held the U.S. president closest to its collective heart has always been Europe. When he took to the stage in Berlin on July 24, 2008, a crowd of 200,000 Germans abandoned their usual reserve to flood screaming and cheering into the Tiergarten.

They came to see an aspiring American president give flesh to all of Europe's fantasies about American leadership: multiethnic and multilateral; pragmatic and peacefully minded; social democratic in his goals and so eloquent in their expression. Obama promised to purge the sins of George W. Bush and give new impetus to the alliance for a new century. "America has no better partner than Europe" he said.

The paradox is that while Obama successfully healed the transatlantic rift, he may also be the American president who presided over the end of the West as a political community.

Four years on from Berlin, Obama would still trade his approval ratings in any European country with those in his native United States. In June, the Pew Global Attitudes Survey showed that nine out of 10 voters in France (92 percent) and Germany (89 percent) would like to see him reelected, as would large majorities in Britain (73 percent), Spain (71 percent), Italy (69 percent) and the Czech Republic (67 percent). And at a tactical level, Europeans and Americans are cooperating more closely -- on a range of issues from Iran to Syria -- than they have for many years. Even when they disagree, they do so with civility and a surprising absence of rancor.

But Obama's stellar personal ratings in Europe hide the fact that the Western alliance has never loomed smaller in the imagination of policymakers on either side of the Atlantic...

William A. Galston is a contributing editor for The New Republic.

The emerging conventional wisdom among many Democrats takes the form of two equations: 2012 = 2004, and Bain = Swift Boats. There’s also a supporting narrative: The negative campaign against John Kerry fatally weakened his candidacy, securing the victory of an incumbent who could not have won based on his own record. And so, the idea goes, a president whose performance the public doesn’t much like can power his way to a narrow, less than pretty win by eviscerating his challenger.

But the evidence in favor of all of these propositions is remarkably thin. The basic structure of the 2004 campaign differed fundamentally from the one we’re now enduring. The available evidence suggests that even in the short-term, the attacks on Romney have been measurably less successful than were those on Kerry. And Obama’s supporters seem to have forgotten that the reason Bush prevailed was because enough Americans ended up approving of his record and leadership in the areas they cared about the most.

In 2012, there is a single dominant issue—the economy. The people are trying to decide whether Obama has managed our economic challenges well enough to deserve another four years and, if not, whether Romney’s economic experience and plans make him an acceptable alternative.

In 2004, by contrast, there was no single dominant issue...

Gary Alan Fine is a professor of sociology at Northwestern University and the author of “Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept and Controversial.”

On Monday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association made a remarkable — and disturbing — decision. As one of the sanctions against Pennsylvania State University, it determined that all of Penn State’s football victories from 1998 to 2011 were to be “vacated.” Whoosh! As a result, Joe Paterno no longer holds the major college coaching record for career wins. Someone else now has that honor. George Orwell would be amused.

In his magnificent dystopia, “1984,” Orwell understood well the dangers of “history clerks.” Those given authority to write history can change the past. Those sweat-and-mud victories of the Nittany Lions — more points on the scoreboard — no longer exist. The winners are now the losers.

One might wonder whether the N.C.A.A.’s rush to judgment — a rush that ignored its own procedures of examining each case through the sanctions committee — was truly necessary. And one might question a set of sanctions whose human victims were not involved in the crimes. But let us put aside these niceties. Surely Penn State the institution deserves sanctions for the deplorable actions of authorities. Sometimes organizations are treated as people....

Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor at The Atlantic. He's the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.

[O]ne might have expected great movement when Valentina Tereshkova left the Earth's atmosphere on June 16, 1963 to become the first woman in space. After all, Tereshkova spent three days in space, completed 48 orbits around Earth, and logged more time in orbit than all the Americans (three) who had been in space to that point. She'd proven that a woman was physically capable of withstanding the rigors of spaceflight. Surely, the Americans would rush to get a woman into space! Rosie the Riveter, perhaps, dusting herself off after her stint as a factory laborer in the successful war effort? But no, there was no Tereshkova moment. In fact, one NASA official who declined to give his name to a reporter, said it made him "sick to his stomach" to think of women in space. Another called Tereshkova's flight "a publicity stunt."...

The truth is: the sexism of the day overwhelmed the science of the day. Because NASA already knew that women were capable of spaceflight, and Tereshkova's success confirmed that. A later space-agency review of possible physiological problems in spaceflight admitted that women appeared to be great candidates for flight....

The participants of the Women in Space Program experienced tremendous success. "Nineteen women enrolled in WISP, undergoing the same grueling tests administered to the male Mercury astronauts," Brandon Keim wrote in 2009. "Thirteen of them -- later dubbed the Mercury 13 -- passed 'with no medical reservations,' a higher graduation rate than the first male class. The top four women scored as highly as any of the men."...

The writer is a political commentator and a two-time candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

Daniel Pipes is President of the Middle East Forum and Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by The Daily Star.