Roundup: Media's Take

Praveen Swami: Tyrants Will Learn from Libya

[Praveen Swami is the Daily Telegraph's Diplomatic Editor. He has reported on Asian security issues for almost two decades, and is the author of two books on the India-Pakistan conflict in Kashmir.] Every war is, among other things, a medium. Britain and France, who are spearheading the intervention in Libya, hope their bombs are sending a message not just to Muammar Gaddafi but to other tyrannical regimes across the region. For a decade after 9/11, Western warfare was

Amira Nowaira: Egypt is still Mubarakstan

[Amira Nowaira obtained her PhD in English from Birmingham University. She is former chairperson of the department of English at Alexandria University and is currently professor of English literature in the same department.] More than two months after the start of the popular uprising that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians are increasingly fearful that although he is gone, his regime is still alive and kicking. Egyptians now realise that Mubarakstan, the virt

Gideon Rachman: Libya ... The End of Western Intervention

The war in Libya is about a lot more than Muammer Gaddafi. Its outcome will reverberate around the Middle East and will affect international politics for decades. A vital principle is at stake. The supporters of outside intervention believe that they are battling not just to stop atrocities in Libya itself, but to lay down a marker for the future. They want to show that the age when a dictator could massacre his own citizens is coming to a close. Bernard Henri-Lévy, a French philoso

Hubert Védrine: Dawn of a new Arab nationalism

[The writer is former foreign minister of France.] How events in the Arab world will evolve is of course uncertain. What is certain, however, is that we in the west have to adjust to a new reality: an Arab world that will be more nationalistic. For now, the west is frightening itself with the spectre of political Islam. It is premature to say a solution has been found to avoid moving from the overthrow of authoritarian regimes to sinking into Islamism, but no expert on

Anne Applebaum: The French & British Go to War Again

[Anne Applebaum is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing on foreign affairs.] ‘Freedom fries,’ served instead of French fries back in 2003, are no longer on the menu in Washington DC. French wine, out of fashion after Jacques Chirac refused to join our ‘coalition of the willing’ in Iraq, is no longer shunned. Au contraire. In one Washington restaurant last Saturday night, someone at my table raised a toast to the new leaders of the free world: ‘Vive la France!’ What else could we

Richard Haass: Bleak history lessons for Libya's future

[The writer is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.] This year sees the 25th anniversary of the publication of Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers, a text on how best to use lessons of the past. It provides a corollary to the aphorism that those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it. This is especially relevant in Libya, where history has been enlisted to make t

George Weigel: How Democrats View the World

[George Weigel is distinguished senior fellow at Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.] Criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the current Libyan crisis, following hard on the heels of similar criticisms of its approach to the dramas of Tunisia and Egypt, has tended to focus on the president’s personality and his alleged incapacity for global leadership. There’s doubtless an element of truth in this,

Tom Malinowski: Why Isn't Obama Getting Credit for Stopping an Atrocity?

[Tom Malinowski is the Washington director of Human Rights Watch.] Here is one lesson we can draw from the mostly negative media commentary about the Obama administration’s actions in Libya: Presidents get more credit for stopping atrocities after they begin than for preventing them before they get out of hand. The U.S.-led NATO intervention that stopped mass killing in Bosnia in 1995, for example, came only after 200,000 people had already been killed. But because we h

Ronald Brownstein: How Obama is Like Ike

[Ronald Brownstein is the political director of Atlantic Media.] In 2008, many of Barack Obama's supporters thought they might be electing another John F. Kennedy. But his recent maneuvers increasingly suggest that they selected another Dwight Eisenhower. That's not a comment on President Obama's effectiveness or ideology, but rather on his conception of presidential leadership. Whether he is confronting the turmoil reshaping the Middle East or the escalating budget war

Micah Zenko: Debating the Lessons of History in Libya

[Micah Zenko is a Fellow at the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World.] When considering how the United States should deal with persistent foreign policy problems, history can be instructive. Distorted or misremembered history, however, is dangerous. Unfortunately, in the recent debate over U.S. intervention in Libya, journalists and analysts have pro

Robert Haddick: The Latest Temptation of Air Power

[Robert Haddick is managing editor of Small Wars Journal.] After one week, Odyssey Dawn, the operation aimed at protecting Libya's civilians from Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's forces, seems to be bumping up against the limitations of its U.N. Security Council mandate. Coalition military officials believe they have demolished Qaddafi's air force and have suppressed his air-defense systems. But in spite of increasing airstrikes against Qaddafi's tanks and artillery, his ground forces are

Stephen R. Weissman: Why is the U.S. Withholding Old Documents on Covert Ops in Congo, Iran?

[Stephen R. Weissman, former staff director of the House of Representatives’ Africa Subcommittee, is the author of “American Foreign Policy in the Congo 1960-1964” and “A Culture of Deference: Congress’s Failure of Leadership in Foreign Policy.”] The US government has reacted strongly to Pfc. Bradley Manning’s alleged disclosure of recent diplomatic cables via Wikileaks. We have heard State Department officials make their good case that indiscriminate leaks of contemporary communica

Ray D. Madoff: The New Grave Robbers

[Ray D. Madoff, a professor at Boston College Law School, is the author of “Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead.”] CAN a wild wig and a bushy mustache be packaged and called an Albert Einstein costume? According to Hebrew University of Jerusalem and its American marketing agent, the answer is no — at least not without permission. The university says that when it inherited Einstein’s estate, the bequest included ownership of Einstein’s very identity, giving

Joan Walsh: Obama, Al Smith and the Triangle Fire

[Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large] I wrote Wednesday about the unexpected widespread attention to the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. It has a lot to do with post-Wisconsin agitation on the left and beyond. The tragedy is also genuine American history: No less an expert than Franklin Delano Roosevelt's labor secretary called March 25, 1911, "the day the New Deal began," and as the mother of the New Deal, Frances Perkins would know.

Congressonal Research Service: No-Fly Zones: Strategic, Operational, and Legal Considerations for Congress

[The Congressional Research Service (CRS) works exclusively for the United States Congress, providing policy and legal analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of party affiliation. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS has been a valued and respected resource on Capitol Hill for nearly a century.]Editor's Note: This is the summary of a longer policy report issued by the CRS.The ongoing uprising in

Michael Lind: The False Defenders of Obama's War in Libya

[Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of"The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."]Did the U.S. Congress delegate the power to compel America to go to war to the United Nations in 1945? That is t

Clifford D. May: An Arab Spring?

[Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.] Readers of tea leaves, tarot cards, and goat entrails may be able to predict the future. But prognostication is an ability that few journalists, politicians, diplomats, and intelligence officials have demonstrated consistently over time. So while it’s clear that the Muslim world is in the throes of a major transformation, let’s not pretend we know how t

Fred Kaplan: Is Libya Like Kosovo?

[Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book, 1959: The Year Everything Changed, is now out in paperback. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.] It's worth noting, four days into the air campaign against Libya, that we're just four days into the air campaign against Libya.... The hand-wringing from all sides is reminiscent of NAT

Frank N. von Hippel: A Nuclear Meltdown Could Happen Here

[Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist, is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton and co-chairman of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. From 1993 to 1994 he was responsible for national security issues in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.] IT will be years before we know the full consequences of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. But the public attention raised by the problems there provides

Bruce Anderson: Palmerston proves an inspiration for David Cameron

[Bruce Anderson is a British conservative political columnist.] Politicians propose, history disposes. Many heads of government come to office believing that they can write their own agenda. They quickly learn the error of their ways. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan always knew that foreign affairs would be crucial; they were governing in the shadow of the Cold War. Once that was won, largely thanks to them, their successors could dream of greater latitude. Francis