There is a pervasive sense of unreality in Washington about the nature and scale of the economic crisis facing the United States and the world. The Obama Administration seems to be proceeding on the assumption that the problem in the US financial sector is still one of illiquidity rather than insolvency, and that the task […]

It is with great sadness that I note the passing on Christmas eve of Samuel Huntington, long-time teacher, friend, and editorial board member of The American Interest.  I knew Huntington from my final year in graduate school at Harvard, when he had just returned from service in the Carter administration to the Government Department.  He […]

Obama’s election last Tuesday marks an enormous opportunity for the United States to redefine itself, both with respect to its economic and social model, and in how it relates to the outside world. It is in this capacity for periodic reinvention that America’s greatness lies. The chief task of the president-elect is not merely to […]

Watching Vice President Cheney in Tbilisi today pledging US support for Georgia’s territorial integrity, it is impossible not to fear that the United States is, with total recklessness, repeating the same tragic mistake that it made with regard to Hungary in 1956. As Charles Gati pointed out in his recent book Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, […]

Francis Fukuyama and Robert Kagan discuss mostly China upon Bob’s return from Belgium.

The following is a transcript of a commencement address by Francis Fukuyama, delivered at the Pardee Rand Graduate School, Santa Monica, CA, June 21, 2008. I’m really deeply honored to be asked to be the commencement speaker for Pardee Rand Graduate School this year, and to able to serve on the boards of both the […]

The fiasco of the Olympic Torch Relay has focused attention on the condition of human rights in China.  What is the source of human rights abuses in that country today?  Many people assume the problem is that China remains a communist dictatorship, and that abuses occur because a strong centralized Chinese state ignores the rights […]

I find myself greatly saddened by the news of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. I met her for the first time when we took a class together on Middle Eastern Politics at Harvard, while she was still an undergraduate. I saw her twice since then, both occasions on visits to Dehli in December 2003 and then again […]

I was in Warsaw, Poland, and Aarhus, Denmark last week on the heels of recent elections in both countries. The victory of Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform party over the incumbent Law and Justice party in the Polish case was genuinely uplifting.Poland has been ruled for the past two years by a pair of identical twins, […]

Rabaul sits at the northern end of New Britain island, and is the capital of Papua New Guinea’s East New Britain Province. Physically, Rabaul looks like a South Pacific paradise. Its bay is actually the caldera of a volcano with subsidiary volcanos surrounding the water. They erupted last in 1994, destroying most of the town […]