Paul Starobin
Recent articles by Paul Starobin
China’s Copper Road
Beijing is courting Santiago. Will Chileans come to like Chairman Mao more than Uncle Sam?
My Lunch With Litvinenko
In 2002, Atlantic contributing editor Paul Starobin sat down with Alexander Litvinenko for an interview over lunch. They talked about Litvinenko's defection, his relationship with notorious Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, and his suspicions about Putin and the FSB. Following Litvinenko's recent poisoning, Starobin dug out his notes.
The Man With the Golden Phone
Before Mark Warner was a politician, he was a wildly successful entrepreneur—and his success as a huckster shows why he may be a formidable challenger for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
Murder in Kazakhstan
Two of the men Paul Starobin interviewed for his December Atlantic piece have since been killed. Starobin comments.
Misfit America
Is our evolving national character a liability in our foreign relations?
Sultan of the Steppes
Kazakhstan's Soviet-schooled dictator—part economic modernizer, part Muslim progressive, part vainglorious despot—has enough oil to make himself into anything he wants.
The Accidental Autocrat
Vladimir Putin is not a democrat. Nor is he a czar like Alexander III, a paranoid like Stalin, or a religious nationalist like Dostoyevsky. But he is a little of all these—which is just what Russians seem to want.
Dawn of the Daddy State
If terrorism has made a global trend toward greater state power inevitable, then it's important to get authoritarianism right. Here's how.
The Angry American
Social rage as a measure of the country's moral and political well-being.