Foreign Affairs – With all the talk of Latin America’s turn to the left, few have noticed that there are really two lefts in the region. One has radical roots but is now open-minded and modern; the other is close-minded and stridently populist. Rather than fretting over the left’s rise in general, the rest of the world should focus on fostering the former rather than the latter — because it is exactly what Latin America needs.

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Defense and the National Interest – William Lind analyzes the situation in Afghanistan???
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Foreign Affairs – For four decades, relations among the major nuclear powers have been shaped by their common vulnerability, a condition known as mutual assured destruction. But with the U.S. arsenal growing rapidly while Russia’s decays and China’s stays small, the era of MAD is ending — and the era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun.

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US Naval War College Review – The security environment at the start of the twenty-first century is perhaps the most uncertain it has been in the history of the United States. What strategic realities are driving the transformation of American global defense posture to contend with that uncertainty, and what changes is the Department of Defense working to bring about in relationships and capabilities around the world?

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Washington Post – Robert Kaplan on the different types of dictators in the world.
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Foreign Affairs – During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community’s former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community’s expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.
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Washington Post – A review of General Zinni’s new book, The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America’s Power and Purpose.
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Naval War College Review – Iranís nuclear ambitions are worrisome, potentially dangerous, and obscure to the West. It may be possible, however, to influence the small circle of decision makers from the outside through the networks in which they act, and the links between these networks. In these informal contexts, agencies and individuals involved in nuclear issues are susceptible to public comment.

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Armed Forces Journal – Excellent article by Sean Naylor on the current state of affairs in Afghanistan.
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Defense and the National Interest – Part three in a series of articles about grand strategy in a 4GW Era. “Terrorism.” “Islamofascism” Iran. China. So many enemies – what’s a superpower to do?
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Defense and the National Interest – Part two in a series of articles about grand strategy in a 4GW Era. Demonstrating the difficulty of distinguishing strong from weak in 4GW, and that choosing the wrong grand strategy can be terminal for a state.
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Scotsman – A review of the current tensions surrounding the Falkland Islands.
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Naval War College Review – The United States is limited in its ability to effect change in Central Asia by geopolitics, the nature of the local regimes, and a lack of leverage. American policy must therefore use what leverage it has more effectively, through better understanding of regional dynamics.

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New York Times – Robert Kaplan writes that whatever the future holds for Iraq, within a year or two there will be far fewer American troops there, and the debate over whether our military is overstretched may subside. Yet because of a bloody counterinsurgency that no one in the military wants to repeat, Iraq has profoundly affected the Pentagon’s deployment strategies as it shifts toward a greater emphasis on the Pacific Rim while still facing a profusion of terrorist-related threats not just in the Middle East but also in Africa and elsewhere.
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Defense and the National Interest – Part one in a series of articles about grand strategy in a 4GW Era.
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New Yorker – An examination of the moment, in 2002, when India and Pakistan almost went to war – with the potential for the first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict since Nagasaki.
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Foreign Policy – Humans like to think that they are unique, but the study of other primates has called into question the exceptionalism of our species. So what does primatology have to say about war and peace? Contrary to what was believed just a few decades ago, humans are not “killer apes” destined for violent conflict, but can make their own history.

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Daily Telegraph – Niall Ferguson comments on current events in Russa.
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Esquire – Thomas P.M. Barnett says???despite everything you hear from the fearmongers at the Pentagon. Don’t listen to them. The Sino-American partnership will define the twenty-first century.
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Daily Telegraph – Military historian John Keegan’s reviews the current state of affairs in Iraq.
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Foreign Affairs – Professor Lawrence Freedman reviews The Assassins’ Gate, by George Packer – a searing account of the Bush administration’s failures in Iraq.

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Winnipeg Free Press – Gwynne Dyer ends the year on an interesting note, as always, summarizing the state of conflict in the world in the last year???
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Foreign Affairs – Foreign governments want control of the Internet transferred from an American NGO to an international institution. Washington has responded with a Monroe Doctrine for our times, setting the stage for further controversy.

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Foreign Affairs – The Bush administration contends that the push for democracy in the Muslim world will improve U.S. security. But this premise is faulty: there is no evidence that democracy reduces terrorism. Indeed, a democratic Middle East would probably result in Islamist governments unwilling to cooperate with Washington.

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Naval War College Review – Because of profoundly different understandings about both the nature and responsibility of federal authority, Washington and European capitals are talking past each other. The answer to the question, ìWhat are the threats to domestic security for which the federal authority is responsible?î sounds very different on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

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