Introduction
by Cullen Murphy
| Round Three [Apr 14] |
Robert D. Kaplan"Foreign policy can never be wholly consistent. If it were, it would be too constrained to be effective, and too predictable to contain any element of surprise." Read on...
Edward Luttwak"War destroys itself by exhausting or destroying the material and moral resources that sustain it -- unless outsiders intervene to halt the process or to offset its consequences, thus prolonging war." Read on...
David Rieff"Far from being some hobby-horse of Wilsonian internationalists, humanitarian intervention is important because it is central to the post-Cold War West's moral conception of itself." Read on...
Benjamin Schwarz"War is at best a defensive necessity; it is never a civilizing exercise. Even -- or perhaps especially -- a war in the name of morality brutalizes all." Read on...
Join the debate in a special conference of Post & Riposte. We'll highlight selected readers' remarks as the Roundtable progresses.
| Round Two [Apr 11] |
Robert D. Kaplan"Throughout history, hegemony has often been a benign and efficient form of maintaining a semblance of peace in the world -- and better hegemony based on our values than somebody else's." Read on...
Edward Luttwak"Lenin once accused Trotsky of being 'administrative minded' for interrupting a lofty discussion of Bolshevik war aims with prosaic remarks about the acute limitations of the Red Army. Evidently I am just as narrow minded." Read on...
David Rieff"In French law, it is a crime not to intervene when someone has been hit by a car or is otherwise in danger. In this age of CNN, translating what the French call the duty of interference to places like Rwanda, or Kosovo, or East Timor, seems, intuitively, the only right thing to do." Read on...
Benjamin Schwarz"The whole notion that the United States should intervene to prove its credibility and to deter future atrocities or acts of aggression should be laid to rest." Read on...
| Round One [Apr 6] |
Robert D. Kaplan"Power is not power unless it is periodically and lethally used as a demonstration not just of the power itself, but of the will to use it." Read on...
Edward Luttwak"'Intervention' and 'aggression' are differently loaded words for the same thing: a deliberate military attack on a sovereign power that initiates a war." Read on...
David Rieff"Humanitarian intervention is part of a new world system that is coming into being.... The real question is where this new doctrine will lead us, and whether there is any way of influencing its development." Read on...
Benjamin Schwarz"We didn't pick a good fight in Kosovo, we picked the KLA's fight. It remains to be seen whether Washington will be manipulated again." Read on...
Previous Roundtables.