Obama’s outreach and the hierarchy of ‘enlightened nations’
John Mearsheimer (of the University of Chicago, and co-author with Stephen Walt of the much-touted/much-reviled The Israel Lobby) has an important essay in the latest London Review of Books, in which he argues (as has Walt) that the Charles Freeman affair has exposed the Israel Lobby and created some new space for public debate about its excessive and harmful impact on the making of US foreign policy. Continue reading
Worried about apartheid? Too late, Mr Olmert, it’s already here
In one of her last acts as US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice had Nelson Mandela’s name removed from America’s terrorist watch list. Many Americans were shocked to learn that their favourite former political prisoner had ever been deemed a terrorist. That is because they had forgotten, or were too young to know, that the US under Ronald Reagan – like Britain under Margaret Thatcher – had backed the apartheid regime in South Africa as a Cold War ally. Continue reading