Column Archive

Does the United States have a special responsibility to manage international affairs? This question has come to inform much of the debate about the role that the U.S. is currently playing in military operations over Libya. Glenn Greenwald of Salon has argued that the idea that the United States has the right to intervene in the internal politics of other countries has its source in a widespread acceptance of American Exceptionalism, the notion that the United States is different, special and privileged compared to other nations. Writing from a realist perspective, Stephen Walt echoed this claim, arguing that both neoconservatives […]

On April 4, 2011, Kazakhstan’s Central Election Commission (CEC) announced the preliminary results of the presidential elections held the previous day. As expected, incumbent President Nursultan Nazarbayev won re-election by a wide margin, garnering 95.5 percent of the votes cast. The CEC will announce the final results in a few days, but these are not expected to change the outcome. Despite noting significant irregularities, most of the international observation teams confirmed the outcome’s validity. China, Russia, the United States and many other governments have already congratulated Nazarbayev on his victory. But the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) […]

The rampant globalization meme of the 1990s was that the state would wither away, leaving nonstate actors to rule — or ruin — the world. The terror attacks of Sept. 11 seemed to confirm this notion, triggering all manner of academic fantasies that a proliferation of super-empowered individuals would overwhelm the world’s declining and failing states. But when globalization’s alleged coup de grâce arrived in the form of the 2008 global financial crisis, not only did the world not slide into widespread conflict, as so many anti-globalization hysterics predicted, but the state made quite the comeback. Nowadays, if globalization suffers […]

The commencement of military operations in Libya has led to some unexpected reactions in Eastern European capitals. It was widely expected that Russia, whose uneasiness with the very principle of humanitarian intervention is well-known, would have used its veto at the U.N. Security Council to block the passage of Resolution 1973. After all, Russia’s firm opposition to the Kosovo intervention in 1999 led the United States to work through NATO rather than bring the matter to the Security Council. And Moscow has had a clear track record over the last decade of resisting Western calls for intervention on humanitarian grounds […]