online archive

Foreign policy, religion and economics

Jack Snyder and Robert Shapiro (Columbia) and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon (Bar Ilan): Free Hand Abroad, Divide and Rule at Home: The Domestic Politics of Unipolarity. The Utter Uselessness of the Petraeus Report: If you think the White House-penned report on Iraq will be anything other than a validation of "the surge" and the Bush administration's larger strategy, you haven't been paying attention. This war is not like the others — or is it? The problem with using historical analogies to make foreign policy. The Decline and Fall of Declinism: Some people don’t want to admit it, but America is in great shape. The waning power of the War Myth: As Iraq dies, Bush is falling back on his old standby: Patriotic blackmail. But this time it won't work.

A review of The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy. A review of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite by D. Michael Lindsay. Evangelicals Turn Toward ... The Orthodox Church? What their flight says about the relationship between Evangelicals and the modern world. There is an angle to contemporary Christian progressivism which thus far has gotten too little attention: shareholder activism.

A review of Richistan: A Journey Through the 21st Century Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich and Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class, by Robert H Frank; The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture, by Brink Lindsey; and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, by Bill McKibben. How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves: A cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate, and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effects. Global capitalism will survive the current credit crisis. But in the long term, a system that depends on extracting every last cent from the poor cannot hope for a healthy prognosis.