<![CDATA[ - Articles - RealClearPolitics]]> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/rss/archive/14639.xml Author <![CDATA[America's Dangerous Aversion to Conflict]]> Sat, 06 Sep 2014 00:00:00 -0500 First it was the Europeans who sought an escape from the tragic realities of power that had bloodied their 20th century. At the end of the Cold War, they began to disarm themselves in the hopeful belief that arms and traditional measures of power no longer mattered. A new international system of laws and institutions would replace the old system of power; the world would model itself on the European Union—and if not, the U.S. would still be there to provide security the old-fashioned way.

]]> <![CDATA[Immigration Bill Can Prove U.S. Strength]]> Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Why the World Needs America]]> Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0600 History shows that world orders, including our own, are transient. They rise and fall, and the institutions they erect, the beliefs and "norms" that guide them, the economic systems they support—they rise and fall, too. The downfall of the Roman Empire brought an end not just to Roman rule but to Roman government and law and to an entire economic system stretching from Northern Europe to North Africa. Culture, the arts, even progress in science and technology, were set back for centuries.

 

]]> <![CDATA[The Importance of American Hard Power]]> Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0600 These days “soft” power and “smart” power are in vogue (who wants to make the case for “dumb” power?) while American “hard” power is on the chopping block. This is, in part, a symbolic sacrifice to the fiscal crisis — even though the looming defense cuts are a drop in the bucket compared with the ballooning entitlement spending that is not being cut. And partly this is the Obama administration’s election-year strategy of playing to a presumably war-weary nation.

]]> <![CDATA[The Myth of American Decline]]> Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0600 Is the United States in decline, as so many seem to believe these days? Or are Americans in danger of committing pre-emptive superpower suicide out of a misplaced fear of their own declining power? A great deal depends on the answer to these questions. The present world order—characterized by an unprecedented number of democratic nations; a greater global prosperity, even with the current crisis, than the world has ever known; and a long peace among great powers—reflects American principles and preferences, and was built and preserved by...]]> <![CDATA[Stirred, But Not Shaken in Colombia]]> Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600 There is plenty of pessimism about democracy these days, and autocrats seem to be on the march on every continent. So we should take note when democracy triumphs over autocratic temptations.

That's what happened in Colombia recently. President Álvaro Uribe had hinted for some time that he might run for a third consecutive term, despite the constitution's two-term limit. Last summer Colombia's House and Senate, controlled by allies of Uribe, passed a bill to change the constitution. The next and final step was a popular referendum in May to endorse Uribe's reelection. If that sounds familiar, it should. It was by popular referendum that Venezuela's Hugo Chávez installed himself...]]> <![CDATA[Obama's Year of Failed Diplomacy]]> Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600 <![CDATA[Obama's Nobel Speech: A More Muscular Moralism]]> Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600

For the best coverage of Copenhagen, see our Copenhagen Arena

]]> <![CDATA[Obama's Courageous Afghanistan Decision]]> Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600 So now two presidents in the space of less than three years have bucked overwhelming conventional wisdom, as well as public opinion, and decided that they did not want to lose a war. And what lonely decisions these have been. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the last few years has been the stunningly large number of American thinkers, strategists and pundits who have been perfectly prepared to lose wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. People talk about American decline these days, but it is not in the basic measurements of national power that American decline is to be found. It is in the willingness of the intellectual and foreign policy establishments to accept both decline and...]]> <![CDATA[Iran: Can Obama Play Hardball?]]> Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Watching the Obama administration launch its "new era of engagement" over the past 10 months, most seasoned observers have pondered two questions: First, if engagement fails, will the Obama team ever acknowledge that it has failed? And what then?

The first question is about to be answered. The main object of the "new era of engagement," Iran, has settled back into its old game-playing. The joint proposal agreed to by the United States, France and Russia, to have Iran ship 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia this year, was a compromise, as administration officials acknowledge. It might theoretically have delayed Iran's bomb program by a year or so...]]> <![CDATA[A Good Two Weeks for Tehran]]> Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Woodrow Wilson's Heir]]> Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[What Pakistan Won't Do, the World Should]]> Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 <![CDATA[The Danger of Today's Declinism]]> Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Bush's Legacy and America's Future]]> Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[The Bush Era in Perspective]]> Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Note: This essay appears in the September/October 2008 edition of Foreign Affairs.

The world does not look today the way most anticipated it would after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Great-power competition was supposed to give way to an era of geoeconomics. Ideological competition between democracy and autocracy was supposed to end with the "end of history." Few expected that the United States' unprecedented power would face so many challenges, not only from rising powers but also from old and...]]> <![CDATA[History Makes a Comeback]]> Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Putin Makes His Move]]> Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Europe's Slide Toward Irrelevance]]> Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[U.S. Foreign Policy: A Conversation]]> Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[The Case for a League of Democracies]]> Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Ideology's Rude Return]]> Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[The End of the End of History]]> Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776]]> Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Behind the 'Modern' China]]> Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500