News Abroad

A Proper Royal Wedding

by Charles Carlton

This Friday perhaps a billion people across the globe will watch the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton.  Why?Well, for one thing, it’ll be a good show.  The British always do

Obama in Latin America: So Not Nixon

by Alan McPherson

President Obama is not the only high-profile U.S. official to have kicked around a soccer ball in Latin America, as he did in Brazil a few days ago. When Vice President

What Can Air Power Achieve? From Rolling Thunder to Odyssey Dawn

by Matt Jacobs

With his recent decision to launch Operation Odyssey Dawn, the code name for the airstrikes against Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, President Obama joined a long line of American leaders who have chosen air power as a tool of foreign policy.  But the use of air power without clear objectives has rarely proven an effective choice.  And, unfortunately, the lack of clear objectives is exactly what we are seeing today.  Obama has repeatedly stated that Gadhafi must go, but then he q

Libya's Century as a Target for Air Power

by Brett Holman

Libya now holds an unfortunate record. It is the country which has the longest experience of aerial bombardment. Libya was first bombed in 1911, by Italy; now, in 2011, it is being bombed by its own air force. That makes it just under a century from the first bomb to the latest. It helps that Libya was the very first country to experience aerial bombardment from aeroplanes and from airships. I'm using the word 'country' here in a loose sense, as it was then part of the Ottoman

A "No Fly" in the Ointment in Libya

by Daniel Martin Varisco

For days we have been watching the ebb and flow of frustration protests in Libya, echoing but not matching the overthrow of long-time despots in Tunis and Egypt, but seemingly less capable of driving the longest terminator of all into an exilic tent (though probably outside one of Berlusconi’s mansions rather than above a madrasa in Saudi Arabia). A week ago it looked like “rebel” forces might march on Tripoli; such was the rhetoric of liberation on the lips of those who took

How Japan Learned About "Nuclear Safety"

by Lawrence S. Wittner

Although people can be educated in a variety of ways, experience is a particularly effective teacher.  Consider the Japanese, who today are certainl

The Atomic Age After Fukushima—Time for an Epilogue?

by Frank Uekoetter

It is a common sport today to label recent events as historic turning points.  Rarely did we see this impulse as speedily at work as during the last weekend.

A Brief Recent History of Japanese Nuclear Power

by Andrew DeWit and Iida Tetsunari

On December 10, 2010, near the close of the “Conference of the Parties,&rdquo meeting in Cancun, (1) Mexico, the international press reported that twenty national leaders, including those of the UK and Mexico, were lined up to call Japanese Prime Minister Kan Naoto. (2)  They sought to persuade Kan and his government not to abandon the 2008 to 2012 Kyoto Protocol approach to securing carbon reductions via explicit and compulsory targets.  Their concern was well grounde

The Mythic Lure of the “No-Fly Zone”

by Ira Chernus

As Libyan rebels continue their struggle against the Qaddafi regime, the drumbeat here in the U.S. grows louder every day—not for war, or at least not for a good old-fashioned ground war, but for its modern-day equ

Back to the Shores of Tripoli?

by Daniel Pipes

The official hymn of the U.S. Marine Corps famously begins with"From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country's battles on the land as on the sea." The reference to Tripoli alludes to the Battle of Derna of 1805, the first overseas land combat fought by U.S. troops and a decisive American victory.

Old Secretaries of Defense Never Die, They Just Write Bestselling Memoirs

by Tom Engelhardt

Talking about secretaries of defense...Oh, we weren’t?Well, let’s.  After all, they’re in the news. Take former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who

Academic Plagarism Brings Down German Defense Minister

by Dónal O’Sullivan

Faced with mounting protests from legal scholars and the public about alleged plagiarized passages in his doctoral dissertation, German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has resigned.  The University of Bayreuth, where Guttenberg had graduated with top honors (summa cum laude) in 2007, had earlier stripped him of his title as more and more details about copied pages had come to light.  39-year-old Guttenberg, seen as a rising star in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet

My Optimism about the New Arab Revolt

by Daniel Pipes

Unprecedented convulsions across the Middle East, from Morocco to Iran, prompt three reflections:First, these rebellions fit into the context of a regional chessboard, what I call the Middle East cold war. On one side stands the"resistance" bloc led by Iran and including Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Qatar; it seeks to shake up the existing order with a new one, more piously Islamic and hostile to the West. O

The Arab World's Leadership Deficit

by Ibrahim Al-Marashi

There were underlying reasons for the Egyptian Revolution that created a perfect storm for Hosni Mubarak's overthrow: corruption, unemployment, frustration, humil

Egypt's Chance

by Daniel Pipes

If developments in Egypt have gone as well as one could hope for, future prospects remain unclear. The exciting part is over, now come the worries.Let's start with three pieces of good news: Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's strongman who appeared on the brink of fomenting disaster, fortunately resigned. The Islamists, who would push Egypt in the direction of Iran, had little role in recent events and remain distant from power. And the military, which has ruled Egypt from behind-the-scenes

The Challenges of 1848 Reprised in the Middle East Today

by Tim Roberts

Some pundits have compared the recent uprisings in the Middle East to the American Revolution or to the upheavals in Eastern Europe that ended the Cold War.  But the 1848 revolutions in Europe may actually provide a better perspective on the challenges that the advocates of democracy in the Middle East face today. Specifically, the 1848"springtime of the peoples" shows that overthrowing a government is just half a revolution.  The more difficult half is b

Don't Call Egyptian Protests a Revolution ... Yet

by Arthur E. Goldschmidt Jr.

The success of the Egyptian people’s demonstrations in persuading Hosni Mubarak to resign from the presidency is remarkable and unique in Egypt’s modern history.  But to call it a revolution is premature.

Quo Vadis Egypt? Reflections on the Egyptian Revolution

by Yoav Di-Capua

When asked this week what meaning could be derived from the revolutionary events in Egypt, `Abd al-Bari `Atwan, the outspoken editor of the international Arab newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, did not

The Meaning of the Egyptian People’s Revolution

by Deepak Tripathi

Day seventeen of the Egyptian people’s uprising (February 10, 2011) brought a new dangerous twist to the crisis at the heart of the Middle East.  Beleaguered President Hosni Mubarak gave a television ad

Egypt Again Shines Spotlight on Global Food Crisis

by William Lambers

The protests in Egypt show the debilitating effect of high food prices on a society.  The struggle for basic food though goes far beyond Egyptian