Walter Russell Mead
Remembering On this Memorial Day, as always, our thoughts and prayers are with those who’ve given their lives in the service of our country, those serving ... Last Greek Industry Takes A Hit Ever since the full extent of Greek financial deception was finally revealed three years ago, the Greek economy has developed a reputation as something of ... AQ Sypathizers Proclaim Islamic Republic in Northern Mali The fallout from the Libya mission continues; today the BBC announced that the two rebel groups who took over Mali last month have agreed to ... Game of Thrones: Indian PM Building Ties in Burma India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh is now making the first visit by an Indian leader to next-door Burma in 25 years, even as the pace ... Thinking Strategically When it comes to American foreign policy, Via Meadia roots for the home team. We want things to go well for the United States of ... Joint US-Russian Approach to Syria? Will the US and Russia get together to grease the skids for Assad? That’s the latest plan floating around Washington DC, according to the NYT. ...
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Religion Improbable Beliefs Adam Garfinkle It occurred to me recently that one somewhat glib way to define a religious believer is to say that he (or she) is a person who counts every other religion’s narrative as impossibly far-fetched, except his own. Talking to Peter Berger, I was informed that my insight was both new and as old as religion itself.
 
Retroview Our Hero? Ian Campbell "Men are grown mechanical in head and heart." Victorian fiction abounds in such characters, but the fear to which those characters spoke—of human life reduced to a chemistry set and clump of neurons—was mapped out long before, by the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle.
 
Religion & Other Curiosities The Mainstreaming of Pentecostalism? Peter Berger Precisely because of the “Protestant ethic” preached to and frequently practiced by Pentecostals, and the social mobility it engenders, there has now emerged a Pentecostal middle class in some places. Is Pentecostalism on the road to a less robust supernaturalism and a more sedate piety?
 
The Middle East and Beyond Obama Administration Spinning on Syria Adam Garfinkle This weekend's papers carried a story implying that the recent special forces exercise in Jordan, Eager Lion, was in part a contingency plan for securing chemical weapons in Syria as that country disintegrates. The implied linkage seems a little fishy.
What We're Reading

With routinely more deaths than births per year, Japan is now a “net mortality society.”

Did you get rejected by Stanford? Are you a liberal arts major, or what the techies would call a “fuzzy”? Then you might have what it takes to master CS221: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. Then again, you might not, but it costs nothing to try.

Andy Revkin of the New York Times‘s Dot Earth blog is O.K. with the processed beef scrap filler known as “pink slime”, and he thinks you should be O.K. with it too.

“Physics at the Fringe”, says Freeman Dyson, is what happens when imagination loses touch with observation.
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Ahead of the Curve
Editors' Choices from Previous Issues
September/October 2011 In the (Afghan) Army Now Alim Remtulla To whom are we planning to hand off the war against the Taliban? The G8 all seem to be talking about Afghanization. Alim Remtullah's report from inside the Afghan National Army will tell you just how likely this new strategy is of succeeding. (Hint: not very.)
 
January/February 2010 Endgame for Korea Symposium Kim Jong-il is dead. Does the succession of his son Kim Jong-un present a moment for tougher sanctions, hard containment, more robust engagement, or continued patience and caution? North Korea watchers from China, Japan and the U.S. State Department game out short- and long-term solutions to the DPRK conundrum.
Featured Reviews
Books, Film, Music & Other Cultural Artifacts
Books Nice Things About Detroit John G. Rodwan, Jr. Decades of decline have left Detroit in ruins, but it remains fertile ground for storytelling. Writers who capture the city’s grit and eccentricity speak to its peculiar appeal, and even spark hope for its renewal.
Books All That Money Can Be Damir Marusic For centuries, Philip Coggan writes, the world financial system has pitted debtors against creditors, with large shifts in indebtedness driving the rise and fall of world powers. While his broad history, Paper Promises, vindicates Tea Party fears, it shows that the United States is hobbled not just by massive debt, but by the misunderstanding of monetary economics that brought it about.
Books Our Polarizing Culture A Conversation with Charles Murray Charles Murray’s Coming Apart depicts the segregation of America into two mutually unintelligible cultures. Far from the received idea that the working class is more values-conscious, it is now the elite who benefit from virtues like industriousness and strong marriages. Will they heed Murray’s call to look beyond their rarified social bubbles and preach what they practice?
Retroview Our Hero? Ian Campbell Victorian-era historian and critic Thomas Carlyle worried about many of the social trends that concern Americans today: overweening ideologies, the dehumanizing effects of technology, the collapse of traditional faith, and the dearth of heroic leadership. His insights prove prescient for our own complex era.
Books The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted James Kirchick As the Arab Spring erupted last year, technophiles waxed triumphant about the transformative power of the internet and social networking to free oppressed peoples around the world. Evgeny Morozov’s The Net Delusion debunks their misplaced enthusiasm and shows how these technologies can even be a boon for authoritarian regimes.