(From Chapter 2 of America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama) In the period leading up to and following the Iraq war, an enormous amount of ink was spilled on the subject of neoconservatives and their alleged capture of the Bush administration. The story is endlessly fascinating because it appears
An essay adapted from Francis Fukuyama’s new book America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, was published by the New York Times Magazine this weekend. Fukuyama’s criticism of the Iraq war put him at odds with neoconservative friends both within and outside the Bush administration. Here, Fukuyama
In an article that appeared on the front page of today’s New York Times, it was reported that officers of the 10th Mountain Division, an elite unit of the U.S. Army to be deployed this month to Afghanistan, will be issued an item one would not immediately expect: in addition
Yale University Press understands the forthcoming publication of Paul Handley’s book has given cause for concern. The book is dispassionate in tone and temperament, and has been thoroughly vetted both by leading scholars in the field and by the Yale University Press Faculty Committee. The author stands behind this book
“If anyone still harbors the fantasy that the business scandals of the past few years were the handiwork of just a few bad apples, they should read John C. Bogle’s Battle for the Soul of Capitalism,” writes Jeff Madrick in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. Madrick’s review comes out
Ben Bernanke will take over next week as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for Alan Greenspan, who is stepping down on Tuesday after more than 18 years on the job. “An extraordinary act to follow,” says Princeton Professor Alan Blinder, the Fed’s Vice Chairman under Greenspan in the mid-1990s, on
Syrian President Bashar al-Asad has recently become the subject of intense international scrutiny. The United Nations probe into the assassination of Lebanese Premier Rafik al-Hariri has stepped up its investigation of the Syrian regime in recent weeks, after the former Syrian vice president, in an interview on al-‘Arabiyya television, claimed
This day marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin is perhaps the most remarkable figure in American history: the greatest statesman of his age, he played a pivotal role in the formation of the American republic. He was also a pioneering scientist, a bestselling author, the
Back when spies were spies, they spied by the rules—with the exception perhaps of those who did their spying for totalitarian regimes. The Constitution of the Soviet Union, for example, guaranteed the privacy of correspondence, but the government still read people’s private mail. By the end of the twentieth century,
In an Op-Ed piece for the Washington Post, Harold Meyerson writes about “the pervasive insecurity that is inextricably part of today’s capitalism.” Invoking Richard Sennett’s new book The Culture of the New Capitalism, Myerson writes: “In the absence of a more structured work life, what Sennett sees is a more