Roundup: Media's Take

James Woolsey: Old Problems With New Start

[Mr. Woolsey served as an adviser to the Salt I negotiation (1969-70), a delegate-at-large to the Start and Defense and Space negotiations (1983-86), and ambassador and chief negotiator for the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe treaty (1989-91). He was director of Central Intelligence from 1993-95.] A number of years negotiating arms-control agreements with the Soviets taught me that, when dealing with Russian counterparts, don't appear eager—friendly yes, eager never. Regrettably

David Rothkopf: The perils of America’s Pacific presidency

[David Rothkopf is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and chief executive of Garten Rothkopf, LLC.] President Barack Obama hoped to find solace overseas following his “shellacking” in the US midterm elections. Instead, despite some progress, he has suffered a series of setbacks. Little meaningful was achieved at the Group of 20 leading nations summit. Trade talks with South Korea have stalled. Even his rather successful trade trip to India produced

Kevin R. Kosar: What the Tea Party Could Learn from the Whiskey Rebellion

[Kevin R. Kosar is a political scientist in Washington who blogs at www.kevinrkosar.com.] In my nascent examinations of the Tea Party movement, I have been astounded by the frequency with which Tea Partyers speak of rebellion, secession, and striking out against the government.  Thankfully, the data likely indicate only a minority of Tea Partyers hold such hostile sentiments.  B

John Podhoretz: The Liberal Crisis

[John Podhoretz is editor of Commentary.] The defeat of Russ Feingold in the November 2 election has unexpectedly provided the most uncompromisingly left-wing Democrat in the U.S. Senate with a new job opportunity—that of candidate for the presidency of the United States. Feingold hinted in his concession speech on election night that he might challenge Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. “It’s on to 2012,” Feingold said, “and it is on to our next adventure.” The

Chris Hedges: The Origin of America’s Intellectual Vacuum

[Chris Hedges writes a column for Truthdig.] The blacklisted mathematics instructor Chandler Davis, after serving six months in the Danbury federal penitentiary for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), warned the universities that ousted him and thousands of other professors that the purges would decimate the country’s intellectual life. “You must welcome dissent; you must welcome serious, systematic, proselytizing dissent—not on

Tim Shorrock: Postcard from...Havana

[Tim Shorrock is a Washington writer and longtime contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus. His articles about Korea have appeared in The Nation, The Progressive, and many other publications. His book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, was published in 2008.] Just about everything you hear about Cuba in the U.S. media is a lie. I learned that from the moment my TACA Airlines charter jet landed in Havana last Sunday. It was filled with Cuban-Americans return

Jonathan Chait: The Myth of Divided Government

[Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.] No sooner had Republicans swept into power, promising to repeal President Obama’s major initiatives and make his defeat their top priority, than a bevy of pundits declared that this was all just a prelude to a new era of moderation and compromise. What will bring about this outbreak of bipartisanship? Simple: divided government. All you need to do is give each party some stake in the success of government, and watch the cooper

Roland Kelts: Obama in Japan: What a Difference a Bad Year Makes

[Roland Kelts is the author of “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US,” and a guest scholar at the University of Tokyo. He divides his time between New York and Tokyo.] President Obama arrived in Tokyo today, exactly one year to the day of his first official trip to Japan as commander-in-chief. He is here to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Yokohama, but his itinerary includes a brief “personal” excursion to the Great Buddha, a 44-foot tall

Hilary Clinton and Robert M. Gates: Why the Senate Should Ratify New START

[The writers are, respectively, the U.S. secretary of state and secretary of defense.] For decades, American inspectors have monitored Russian nuclear forces, putting into practice President Ronald Reagan's favorite maxim, "Trust, but verify." But since the old START Treaty expired last December, we have relied on trust alone. Until a new treaty comes into force, our inspectors will not have access to Russian missile silos and the world's two largest nuclear arsenals will

Fareed Zakaria: A 'Hedge' Strategy Toward China

[Fareed Zakaria writes an occasional column for the WaPo.] Two years ago Barack Obama was superman. Now he can't do anything right. His trip to Asia has been reported as a failure because he didn't get a trade deal with South Korea or a currency devaluation from China. But the visit had broader purposes and was largely successful at those, though this is just the start of a complex set of foreign policies that should constitute the core of a new American grand strategy....

Robert Samuelson: How to Avoid Japan's Economic Mistakes

[Robert Samuelson is a columnist for the WaPo.] It's hard to remember now that in the 1980s Japan had the world's most-admired economy. It would, people widely believed, achieve the highest living standards and pioneer the niftiest technologies. Nowadays, all we hear are warnings not to repeat Japan's mistakes that resulted in a "lost decade" of economic growth. Japan's cardinal sins, we're told, were skimping on economic "stimulus" and permitting paralyzing &quo

Rajan Menon: China Needs to Lengthen Its Short Fuse

[Rajan Menon is a professor of political science at City College of New York/City University of New York.] China has generally handled its extraordinary global ascendance with finesse, assuring neighbors that it remains a developing country and is embarked on a "peaceful rise." This astute policy is informed by the past. Heirs of an ancient civilization, China's leaders have a keen sense of history, and Chinese strategists have studied the experiences of other rising power

Defending Einstein From the New Barbarians

[Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon] Paul Fishbane, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Virginia, is making a bit of a stretch when he compares a nascent right-wing attack on Einstein's theory of general relativity to the condemnation of so-called "Jewish Physics" organized by the Nazis. But that doesn't make "Time Warp," his essay on Einstein, relativity, science and politics any less fascinating. (Thanks to Steve Silberman for the tip.) Th

Robert J. Samuelson: Why Japan Fell ... and What It Teaches Us

[Robert J. Samuelson has been writing a bi-weekly column for Newsweek since 1984.] It’s hard to remember that in the 1980s Japan had the world’s most admired economy. It would, people widely believed, achieve the highest living standards and pioneer the niftiest technologies. Nowadays, all we hear are warnings not to repeat the mistakes that resulted in Japan’s “lost decade” of economic growth. Japan’s cardinal sins, we’re told, were skimping on economic “stimulus” and permitting pa

Colin Graham: Gorbachev, Solzhenitsyn, and Putin

[A British journalist based in Warsaw, Colin Graham writes on culture and politics in Eastern Europe. He has written on Real Estate Investment in the Montenegro Coastline, The European Union, the Polish satirical cartoonist Marek Raczkowski, the Stanislaw Wieglus scandal as well as Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan for Culturekiosque.] The two news items came out almost simultaneously and couldn’t have been more at odds with one an

Joshua Spivak: Will Obama Face a Primary Challenge in 2012?

[Joshua Spivak is a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York.] Republicans may think that their midterm triumph bodes ill for President Obama's reelection hopes, but such beliefs are not borne out by history. The incumbent president's party typically does poorly in a midterm election. This time, however, there was an ominous hint of a potential problem for Obama. In his concession speech, the media thought that Wisconsin Sen. R

Murray Seeger: Agee’s Archive: The Truth Unredacted?

[Murray Seeger, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1961, was a correspondent and bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. This is his first article for Washington Decoded.] Philip Agee, the most notorious defector from the covert service of the Central Intelligence Agency, is coming home after living without a country for three decades. Agee died in Havana in

Todd Zywicki: Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment

[Mr. Zywicki is a George Mason University Foundation professor of law and a senior scholar of the Mercatus Center. He has written several law-review articles examining the history and impact of the Seventeenth Amendment.] Joe Miller, Alaska’s Republican nominee for the United States Senate, recently expressed support for an idea that is rapidly gaining steam in Tea Party circles: the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment. Miller subsequently backtracked from his statement, but he shouldn’t have: Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment would go a long way toward restoring federalism and frustrating special-interest influence over Washington. Ratified in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment replaced the election of U.S. senators by state legislators with the current system of direct election by the people. By securing the Seventeenth Amendment’s ratification, progressives dealt a blow to the Framers’ vision of the Constitution from which we have yet to recover.

Dana Milbank: Nostalgic for George W. Bush

[Dana Milbank writes for the WaPo.] I miss George W. Bush.... ...I miss him because in the end he was willing to toss aside his ideological orthodoxy when the national interest required it - a trait conspicuously absent among his fellow conservatives these last two years. It was the final chapter of Bush's presidency, and is correspondingly the final chapter of his memoir, "Decision Points." As Bush describes it, he had just been told by Treasury

Dominic Tierney: Jefferson’s Army of Nation Builders

[Dominic Tierney, an assistant professor of political science at Swarthmore College, is the author of “How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires and the American Way of War.”] THIS Veterans Day, a great debate is going on in the American military. On one side are the traditionalists who believe that our armed forces should continue to maintain as their core mission waging conventional state-on-state wars, like the first Persian Gulf war. On the other side are the reformers, like Gen. David