Why do we give foreign aid? We give aid for humanitarian reasons: that is, we wish to relieve human suffering because of famines or natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, etc.; and we give aid for economic development. The crisis in Iraq has again raised the issue of how much aid and in what forms is appropriate for the U.S. Read More ›
Looking back on three weeks of Operation Iraqi Freedom, dozens of thoughts, vignettes really, about what has transpired create a mosaic that is nothing short of remarkable. And like at the end of the Cold War, one already hears rumblings from the chattering class as to the inevitability of it all — as if the months of uncertainty building up Read More ›
Critics of George Bush’s Iraq policy have bemused themselves with anti-war demonstrations and public opinion overseas, plus the pronouncements of France, Germany and Russia. They conclude that America has suffered diplomatic rejection by “the whole world.” The war is about to recruit new waves of terrorists, they say, and at last precipitate the downfall of the American “empire.” But while Read More ›
Americans either tend to hate to love it, or to love to hate it. But neither attitude toward the United Nations is appropriate to the situation today. Neither is the old, idealistic view on the far left that the UN eventually should develop into some kind of world government, nor the recent far right delusion that the UN is trying Read More ›
One might expect that the United States, which led a $50-billion Gulf War and then assigned the job of nuclear weapons searches in Iraq to the United Nations, would supply its share of funds to do the job. But, while inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are still in Iraq, the IAEA director general, Hans Blix, reports that Read More ›