Roundup: Media's Take

Adam Daniel Rotfeld: Resetting NATO-Russian Relations

[Adam Daniel Rotfeld is former foreign minister of Poland.] Earlier this year, a group led by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, which included myself, issued a report on a new strategic concept called “NATO 2020.” The report recommended that NATO open its doors to new members while seeking a more constructive relationship with Russia. We outlined a dual strategy of reassuring the NATO allies that their interests would be defended while engaging with the Kremlin in a

Aliza Marcus: The Historical Blindness of Turkey's Detractors

[Aliza Marcus is a writer in Washington, D.C. and author of Blood and Belief: the PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence.] Thirty years ago this month, Ilhan Erdost, a leftist Turkish publisher, was beaten to death by soldiers in Ankara's Mamak military prison. He had been detained by the military regime, which had just taken power in a coup d'état. His crime was publishing a book by communist theorist Friedrich Engels. He was 35 years old. Erdost's widow, Gul Erdo

John Bolton: Decision Time for Barack Obama

[John R. Bolton is the former US ambassador to the United Nations. He is now senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations.] America's system of separated powers is wondrous to behold. Even considering just the two elected branches, Congress and the Presidency, its complications and intricacies baffle foreigners and Americans alike. Moreover, the 50 states remain politically pivotal, especiall

Gian Gentile: Do We Have Any Idea How to Deal with North Korea?

[Colonel Gian Gentile commanded a combat battalion in West Baghdad in 2006. Currently, he is a Visiting Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.] According to the tenets of current American military thought and practice—that is, “wars amongst the people” fought to win the hearts and minds of local populations—the capacity to have three cups of tea with a local sheik equals the ability to counter and coordinate artillery fires. Indeed, America’s conventional war-fighting capacity

Jimmy Carter: North Korea's Consistent Message to the U.S.

[The writer was the 39th president of the United States.] No one can completely understand the motivations of the North Koreans, but it is entirely possible that their recent revelation of their uranium enrichment centrifuges and Pyongyang's shelling of a South Korean island Tuesday are designed to remind the world that they deserve respect in negotiations that will shape their future. Ultimately, the choice for the United States may be between diplomatic niceties and avoiding a cat

Roger Cohen: As U.S. Mumbles, Britain Speaks Out

[Roger Cohen writes a column in the NYT.] LONDON — Back in the 1940s a young Foreign Office recruit was asked what he thought were the most important things in the world. “Love and Anglo-American relations,” he responded. That was the decade in which Churchill and Roosevelt defended the free world, combined British and American talent to develop the nuclear bomb, and arranged the burden-passing that Macmillan later described as Britain becoming Greece to America’s Rome

Pat Buchanan: GOP Risks a New Cold War

[Pat Buchanan has been a senior adviser to three presidents, twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.] Before Republican senators vote down the strategic arms reduction treaty negotiated by the Obama administration, they should think long and hard about the consequences. In substance, New START has none of the historic significance of Richard Nixon’s SALT I or ABM treaty, or Jimmy Carter’s SAL

Peter M. Beck: What Is Kim Jong Il Up to Now?

[Mr. Beck is the Council on Foreign Relations-Hitachi research fellow at Keio University in Tokyo.] North Korea's leaders demonstrated yesterday that they are the masters of brinksmanship, with an artillery barrage on a South Korean island that killed or wounded more than a dozen soldiers and civilians. Even by North Korean standards it was an audacious attack. South Korean civilians had not been targeted in this way since the North blew up a Southern airliner in 1987, killing 115.

Miguel-Anxo Murado: Do Flamenco and the Mediterranean Diet Really Deserve Special UN status?

[Miguel-Anxo Murado is a Spanish writer and journalist.] Rising unemployment, national debt, the markets; this has not been a good year for things material in Spain. But in the non-material sphere we've been much better off. At least if we are to judge by the standards set by the Unesco intangible heritage list. Spain got five items on this year's list, from Andalucian flamenco to the Catalan castells. Falconry and the Mediterranean diet have also gained recognition. They share this

Adam Bessie: Let's Bury Hitler

[Adam Bessie is an assistant professor of English at Diablo Valley College and a writer/researcher for dailycensored.com. He co-wrote a chapter on metaphor and political language in "Project Censored 2011."] In 1946, a year after the end of World War II, George Orwell had already buried Hitler, at least linguistically, in his famous essay "Politics and the English Language": "Fascism has no meaning now except so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'

Matthew Cooper: When it Comes to North Korea, Obama Is as Hamstrung as His Predecessors

[Matthew Cooper is Managing Editor of White House coverage for National Journal.] Harry Truman faced a political firestorm over firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur after disagreements prosecuting the Korean War. Historians have widely saluted Truman’s triumph of civilian over military authority, but at the time MacArthur was revered and even addressed a joint session of Congress. After his firing, MacArthur was considered a strong potential challenger to Truman in 1952. (MacArthur never r

Richard Cohen: Attack on Michelle Obama Shows Palin's Ignorance of History

[Richard Cohen is a columnist for the WaPo.] When I was 11, my father thought it was time to show my sister and me the nation's capital. I have only vague memories of that trip - the heat, the expanse of the White House's grounds, the Jefferson Memorial. I do remember we took Route 1 through Baltimore (no I-95 yet) and it was there that I saw my first sign with the word "colored" on it - a rooming house, I think. This was 1952, and the United States was an apartheid nation

Anne Applebaum: A NATO for the 21st century

[Anne Applebaum writes a column for the WaPo.] ...Not that future historians will call NATO's Afghan mission an unqualified success: NATO wasn't prepared to fight in Afghanistan and at first had no leadership and thus no clear objectives in Afghanistan, either. Some countries put large numbers of troops on the ground and fought hard. Others hid behind national "caveats," which dictated where, when and how their soldiers were allowed to fight. Almost all of the alliance gov

Tom Scocca and Choire Sicha: Miracle on 33rd Street

[Tom Scocca is the author of the blog Scocca on Slate and the forthcoming “Beijing Welcomes You.” Choire Sicha is the co-editor of the Web site The Awl.] MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG and other dignitaries took up ceremonial sledgehammers and knocked over a ceremonial wall of blocks. This was last month, across Eighth Avenue from Pennsylvania Station, and the little drama was meant to symbolize the beginning of its end. Behind them were the wide stairs and Corinthian colonnade of the Farl

Bob Herbert: A Gift From Long Ago

It was a half-century ago this month that John F. Kennedy won the presidency in a thrilling and heart-stoppingly close election against Richard Nixon. You’d probably be surprised at the number of Americans who are clueless about when Kennedy ran: “It was 1970, right?” “Wasn’t it in the ’40s, soon after the war?” Or whom he ran against: “Eisenhower?”... Kennedy’s great gift was his capacity to inspire. His message as he traveled the country was that Americans could do better, that gr

Tammy S. Schultz: Why Are the Marines the Military's Biggest Backers of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'?

[Tammy S. Schultz is director of national security and joint warfare at the U.S. Marine Corps War College. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Marine Corps University.] ...There's one part of the military where resistance [to repealing DADT] is greater than in any other: the United States Marine Corps. What is it about the Marines? Compared with the other services, why do a disproportionate number of them overtly resist endi

James P. Rubin: Farewell to the Age of the Treaty

[James P. Rubin, who teaches at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, was an assistant secretary of state for public affairs during the Clinton administration.] DESPITE months of negotiations on Capitol Hill, Senate approval of President Obama’s New Start arms control treaty is in serious jeopardy. And it raises the question: Are treaties, and in particular arms control treaties, even worth the trouble anymore?... Treaties on arms control, with elaborat

Jackson Diehl: Obama's foreign policy would have made sense in 1983

[Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor of The Post.] For help understanding the foreign policy headlines of the past week, let's return, briefly, to the spring of 1983, when Barack Obama was a student at Columbia University. What were the burning international issues of that time? Well, first was the "nuclear freeze" movement, which was prompting mass demonstrations around the world by people worried about the standoff between the Soviet Union and the

David Swanson: The New War Congress

[David Swanson is the author of the just published book War Is A Lie and Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. He blogs at Let’s Try Democracy and War Is a Crime.]To understand just how bad the 112th Congress, elected on November 2nd and taking office on January 3rd, is likely to be for peace on Earth, one has to understand how incredibly awful the 110th and 111th Congresses have been during the past four years and then measure the ways in whic

Peter Duffy: Actually, Glenn Beck Is Not Father Coughlin

[Peter Duffy is an author and journalist in New York.] You haven’t truly arrived as a right-wing demagogue on the American airwaves until you’ve been compared to Reverend Charles E. Coughlin, the undisputed “Father of Hate Radio,” as one biographer described him. Those pegged as modern-day Coughlins have been, at various points in our recent history, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Sean Hannity, and Andrew Breitbart (who LA Observed described as “L.A.’s Fath