The conventional wisdom says Sayyid Qutb is the forefather of modern-day Islamic fundamentalism. What is less known is how the thinker's intense anti-Semitism and contempt for female sexuality contributed to this vulgar worldview.
Is there anything the United States can learn from this ancient, sordid affair that put an empire on the path to destruction?
Peter Beinart's books represent the intellectual equivalent of what nutritionists call the empty-calorie principle.
Anti-interventionists allege our leaders traded a strong, austere republic for a weak and sprawling empire predicated on a military might that could not match our own ambitions. This narrative negates real threats and real victories.
Counterinsurgency is not a cure-all. Local allegiances will always trump the might of the invader. Washington’s insistence that the troops turn Kabul into a functioning democracy will only erode the military's fighting spirit.
Beyond the latest rows, institutional paralysis and financial incompetence, the scars of war have plainly not all been healed. Is there a deeper collapse of European self-confidence?
Martin Jacques’s just-released tome breathlessly informs us that China will soon rule the world. Its culture will dominate the West. Its military will threaten our own. Its authoritarian system will become an alternative to liberal democracy.
As Europe secularized and the global South becomes the new market for potential converts, Christianity is undergoing a painful evolution.
From the bikini to the doomsday clock, with the advent of nuclear weapons everything around us seemed to change. Contrarian political scientist John Mueller takes issue with this conventional view of the Atomic Age.
Iraq has a long and tortured history. Home to the tyrant, the origins of despotism lie in the primordial ooze of the Mesopotamian swamp. Yet for a brief moment fifty years ago, the land of two rivers experienced democracy.