http://peterscoblic.com/blog/ en Copyright 2008 Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:03:51 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss here.)]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/07/peter_scoblic_discusses_us_vs.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/07/peter_scoblic_discusses_us_vs.html Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:03:51 -0500 India nuclear deal (which The New Republic has opposed for these reasons) is that its value derives from us breaking the principles of the nonproliferation regime. That's because so much of the deal's value is psychological. Its architects have sold it as a paradigm-shifting gateway to a new strategic relationship, in which India will finally join the family of Westernized, Democratic great powers and ally with the United States. But how, one might ask, is a simple technology-sharing deal supposed to accomplish all this? Unless there's a fundamental change in their own interests, India's strategic goals will remain largely the same: They will not start containing China simply because they're using GE reactor parts; nor will they suddenly halt cooperation with Iran. And the development benefits of nuclear power are small, hype notwithstanding--they can't possibly reorient India on their own. No, the only paradigm-shifting aspect of the deal is related to India's belief that the Nonproliferation Treaty is a form of "nuclear apartheid," which has kept India a second-class citizen in a world of nuclear great powers. In that view, the United States is breaking the chains of bondage that have held India down for decades. As a Council on Foreign Relations primer puts it, the deal would "gut" the NPT--dismantling a system that India finds fundamentally unfair and granting it recognition it has always felt it deserves. Any U.S.-India "alliance" would be built on this interaction--and, as such, undoing America's commitment to the nonproliferation regime is the essence of the India deal, rather than an incidental result of it. Update: See more bad things about the India deal here. --Barron YoungSmith ]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/07/whats_so_bad_about_the_india_n.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/07/whats_so_bad_about_the_india_n.html Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:09:54 -0500 The Democrats & National Security By Samantha Power Us vs. Them: How a Half Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America’s Security by J. Peter Scoblic Viking, 350 pp., $25.95 Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats by Matthew Yglesias Wiley, 251 pp., $25.95 1. Since the Vietnam War the Republican Party has developed a reputation for having a superior approach to national security. Americans have long trusted the views of Democrats on the environment, the economy, education, and health care, but national security is the one matter about which Republicans have maintained what political scientists call "issue ownership." Partly, this is for particular historical reasons. President Eisenhower initiated US involvement in Vietnam, and President Nixon escalated the war in 1969 and kept US troops on the ground in a manifestly unwinnable mission until 1975. But John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were tagged as the primary culprits. President Carter was widely seen as having bungled the Iran hostage rescue mission and having responded ineffectually to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Although he substantially increased US military spending, he was never forgiven for his claim that Americans had "an inordinate fear of communism."]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/07/new_york_review_of_books_saman.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/07/new_york_review_of_books_saman.html Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:08:01 -0500 ridiculous policy, George W. Bush may have perversely increased America's long-run incentive to prop up the North Korean regime--since now, a coup or political meltdown would run the risk of putting those nukes in the hands of terrorists. --Barron YoungSmith]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/06/dancing_in_pyongyang.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/06/dancing_in_pyongyang.html Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:35:40 -0500 “Moral Clarity,” Ideological Rigidity, Strategic Myopia by Paul Boyer (Link.) Before I retired as a university professor, I would mentally calculate as each term began what public events that year’s freshmen were likely to remember. For today’s freshmen, born around 1990, the earliest such memory might well be Bill Clinton’s impeachment. As for national security issues, even the rare freshman attentive to such matters would be aware of little before the current Bush administration.]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/06/us_vs_them_reviewed_in_arms_co.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/06/us_vs_them_reviewed_in_arms_co.html Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:28:26 -0500 audio book talk about U.S. vs. Them, featuring Peter Scoblic, the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, and a cameo by John B. Judis.]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/06/us_vs_them_goes_multimedia.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/06/us_vs_them_goes_multimedia.html Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:10:38 -0500 Ben, Great news for Obama in the form of this Gallup poll: Large majorities of Democrats and independents, and even half of Republicans, believe the president of the United States should meet with the leaders of countries that are considered enemies of the United States. Overall, 67% of Americans say this kind of diplomacy is a good idea....]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/06/post.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/06/post.html Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:16:04 -0500 Never Mind the ‘Neo’ May 25, 2008 by Nicholas Confessore (link) As the occupation of Iraq grinds through its sixth year, many who view American involvement there as a disaster are content to blame the neoconservatives, those operatives and intellectuals inside and outside the Bush administration who once believed they could democratize the Middle East at the point of a gun. Even some right-leaning critics have declared that the neoconservative project in Iraq was both utopian and imprudent, and therefore at odds with basic conservative principles. Not so fast, says J. Peter Scoblic. In “U.S. vs. Them,” Scoblic, the executive editor of The New Republic, argues persuasively that neoconservatism isn’t the problem — plain old conservatism is. For Scoblic, the Bush administration’s habits of foreign affairs — its distrust of international institutions, its conviction that “good” and “evil” nations cannot coexist in the world — are part of an inglorious tradition of bad ideas that dates to the years of the cold war, when Barry Goldwater lobbied against building a Moscow-Washington hot line. ]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/us_vs_them_reviewed_in_the_new.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/us_vs_them_reviewed_in_the_new.html Mon, 26 May 2008 11:43:35 -0500 doesn't wear a moustache.]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/nyt_scoblic_is_the_antijohn_bo.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/nyt_scoblic_is_the_antijohn_bo.html Mon, 19 May 2008 21:19:50 -0500 Los Angeles Times, May 17, 2008 In a speech to the Israeli parliament Thursday, President Bush took a swipe at Barack Obama for his willingness to negotiate with evil regimes. "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." But if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler, that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. It is an argument that conservatives made throughout the Cold War, and, if the charge seemed overblown at the time, it seems positively ludicrous with the clarity of hindsight. ]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/negotiating_isnt_appeasement.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/negotiating_isnt_appeasement.html Mon, 19 May 2008 10:15:04 -0500 bit choppy, I'd have to say Obama's speech today was an epochal stride towards dismantling the conservative advantage on foreign policy--attacking its rhetorical substructure in way Democrats have not done before.]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/naive_and_irresponsible.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/naive_and_irresponsible.html Fri, 16 May 2008 15:18:43 -0500 slamming Phyllis Schlafly for her role in the culture wars, but she was arguably more destructive during the 1950s, '60s and '70s--decades she spent facilitating Barry Goldwater's rise (authoring A Choice, Not An Echo), while agitating against arms control and "appeasement" of China and the Soviet Union. ]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/phyllis_schlafly_and_appeaseme.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/phyllis_schlafly_and_appeaseme.html Fri, 16 May 2008 13:11:05 -0500 audio interview with Peter and find out how he really feels. --Staff]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/peter_scoblic_live.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/peter_scoblic_live.html Wed, 14 May 2008 12:07:54 -0500 piece began, "It is time to admit the truth: The Bush administration's attempt to halt Iran's nuclear program has failed. Utterly." Simply put, he's angry Bush hasn't overturned the Iranian regime with strong enough sanctions, nor hit Iran with air strikes. Because we've failed so disastrously on these counts, Krauthammer says, the only thing to do is adopt a "Holocaust Declaration" promising massive retaliation against Iran in response to any nuclear attack on Israel. I admire his determination to secure the United States and Israel, but I can't help but think his position utterly absurd. Why? Because Krauthammer has backed the Bush administration's position from the start--the very same 'utterly failed' approach that has resulted in Iran continuing to enrich uranium, unimpeded. ]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/who_lost_iran.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/who_lost_iran.html Tue, 06 May 2008 12:43:47 -0500 The New Republic. I'll be guest-blogging here, often cross-posting book related items from The Plank. Nice to meet you too. --Barron YoungSmith ]]> http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/barron_youngsmith_guest_blogs.html http://peterscoblic.com/blog/2008/05/barron_youngsmith_guest_blogs.html Tue, 06 May 2008 12:00:00 -0500