Soft Power

By Matthew Yglesias
Via Garance Franke-Ruta, a fitting rejoinder to Mahmoud Ahmadenijad: See web-only content:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/10/soft-power/46524/ Meanwhile, Roger Cohen turned sensible all of a sudden: "nonproliferation must prevail. It has prevailed in the past — in South Africa, Libya, South America. It must be made to work in Iran." Quite so (NB: in the business "nonproliferation" means diplomacy as opposed to "counterproliferation" which means blowing things up) and we should keep in mind that these real issues on the US-Iranian diplomatic agenda have, at the end of the day, nothing to do with Ahmadenijad's cartoonish antics.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/10/soft-power/46524/