Friday, October 06, 2006

Tic Tacs #2

* Forging A World Of Liberty Under Law: U.S. National Security In The 21st Century. Final Report of the Princeton Project on National Security. Co-Directors: G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter (pdf-file!)
Very impressive people behind this: sound conclusions, not all original but a very interesting continuation of the debate about what an American -- and by extension: Western -- security strategy should look like, with some concrete ideas for initiatives to take, and relevant questions about ranking challenges. Not least is it interesting for not being partisan -- cf. this post on the Democrat's problems with developing a coherent idea about a Democrat national security or foreign policy doctrine.

* No truces will be offered to us in the Long War (blogpost)
Another fine post by Tom Barnett countering the idea à la mode about extremism vanishing if the West stops meddling.

* Marine Gen. James L. Jones Interview with Associated Press Reporter Pauline Jelinik (interview transcript)
Openminded interview about the challenges of the Long War. Jones now heads the NATO force in Afghanistan -- and seems really smart. I'll probably post a bit about it later.

* "African fever" prevailing across the world (op/ed)
Opinion piece from China's People's Daily online, which sort of mirrors this April post about the fallout from China's African policy. That post was probably a little hard on the Chinese in the sense that at least they do go into Africa to spread some capitalism -- even if the basic point still holds: that Western engagement with the Chinese is necessary in order to convince them to further the good governance agenda, not work against it.

* "Classic Washington Pushoff" - Fmr. Counterrorism Advisor Rand Beers on Rice's Reported Dismissal of Pre-9/11 CIA Warnings (interview transcript)
Interview with Rand Beers who resigned shortly before the Iraq invasion from the NSC where he had been since Clinton: a look behind the scenes with comments on other top policy people's perspectives.

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