BACK TO UNDERGRAD COURSES BACK T

Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order," Foreign Affairs (March/April 2004), by G. John Ikenberry. From Washington to Baghdad, the debate over American empire is back. Five new books weigh in, some celebrating the imperial project as the last best hope of humankind, others attacking it as cause for worry. According to Ikenberry, what they all fail to understand is that U.S. power is neither as great as most claim nor as dangerous as others fear.

ADDITIONAL POSSIBLE READINGS (See also POLI 111 & POLI 340):
ARTICLES that I have found to be particularly interesting and informative about the foreign policy and policymaking process during the Bush Administration (notice that most are from relatively mainstream sources).

Michael R. Gordon, “Army of Some,” New York Times Magazine (August 20, 2006).

Ladan Boroumand and Roya Boroumand, “Terror, Islam, and Democracy,” Journal of Democracy (April 2002).

Sidney Blumenthal, “The Neocons’ Next War,” Salon (August 3, 2006).

Max Rodenbeck, “The Time of the Shia,” New York Review of Books (August 16, 2006).

"THE GRAY ZONE: How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib," by SEYMOUR M. HERSH The New Yorker (May 24, 2004). Beginning paragraph: "The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focused on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror."

George Packer, “The Lesson of Tal Afar: Is It too Late for the Administration to Correct Its Course in Iraq?” The New Yorker (April 10, 2006).

Robert Kagan, “What Korea Teaches: Models, Principles, and the Future of Democracy in Asia,” The New Republic (March 9, 1998), pp. 38-47

"Dreams of Empire," New York Review of Books (November 4, 2004), by Tony Judt. Another excellent review of nine books.

"Identity Crisis: Neocon v. Neocon in Iran," The New Republic (December 20, 2004), by Franklin Foer. "Iraq united the two types of neoconservatives--idealists and realists. Now Iran is pulling them apart."

David Masci and Marc Ferris, “Trouble in South America,” Congressional Quarterly Researcher (November 2005).

"Blind Into Baghdad:The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge. The inside story of a historic failure.. The Atlantic Monthly (January/February 2004) by James Fallows. More insightful, informative, eye-opening, illustrative and devastating than the first or second Woodward books, the Clarke book, the Oneil Book or any other book or article that I am aware of (in my humble opinion). From one of the truly top American journalists, comes a fabulous and disturbing article, presented in Fallows' typically well-written and professional way. Fallows demonstrates how little we know and how much we should know. It sheds light on the administration, it's foreign policy process, it's general approach and attitude, and why post-war Iraq is turning into a quagmire. To give you a little preview, as Fallows states: "The Administration will be admired in retrospect for how much knowledge it created about the challenge it was taking on. . . . But the Administration will be condemned for what it did with what was known. The problems the United States has encountered are precisely the ones its own expert agencies warned against. . . . What David Halberstam said of Robert McNamara in The Best and the Brightest is true of those at OSD (the Office of Secretary of Defense, such as Rumsfeld, Wolfowitze, and including others civilians such as Cheney) as well: they were brilliant, and they were fools." The article also has some links to some interesting relevant articles and cartoons.
See also "Bluebrint for a Mess," New York Times Magazine (November 2, 2003), by David Rieff. An excellent earlier overview of the policymaking process that contributed to the postwar reconstruction mess. Similar to Fallows but has some additional information.

"The Vanishing Case for War," New York Review of Books (December 4, 2003), by Thomas Powers. One of the most prominent and respected experts on intelligence makes it clear that the case for war with Iraq was based on politicized and selective intelligence at the highest levels of government. As Powers states, "The invasion and conquest of Iraq by the United States last spring was the result of what is probably the least ambiguous case of the misreading of secret intelligence in American history." Powers explains what happened and why.

"World of Difference: The Secrets of John Bolton's Success," The New Republic (March 29, 2004), by Lawrence Kaplan. An inside look at the influence and ideas of John Bolton, the powerful Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Kaplan, who tends to be rather conservative himself, makes an interesting distinction between "neo-conservatives" (like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz) and a "nationalistic realist" (like Bolton). Both conservative internationalist orientations, but also quite different.

"The Mess in Afghanistan," New York Review of Books (February 12, 2004), by Ahmed Rashid. The title says it all. It's pretty sad how quickly Afghanistan has been forgotten, or held up as a (false) model of a successful invasion, overthrow, and illustration of nation-building for political purposes, even though the U.S./NATO backed regime barely controls Kabul the capitol.

"War Stories" Newsweek (February 23, 2004), by Evan Thomas. Solid overview of the impact of background, education, and Vietnam on Bush and Kerry--two graduates from Yale two years apart and both members of "Skull and Bones." Kind of eerie and weird that American's two viable nominees have so much in common given their past, and are also so different.