Canada, Australia and New Zealand have apologised for their treatment of native peoples.
— Stephen Kinzer
In his tub-thumping speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Romney sounded like the hedge-fund tycoon he is.
Turkey and Brazil, though half a world apart geographically, have much in common. Both are large countries that spent long years under military dominance, but have broken with that history and made decisive steps towards full democracy.
Was Castro sincere when, during his guerrilla war, he swore that he was not a Communist? If so, when did he change, and why? Looking back, does he believe he might have chosen a better course?
Weapons systems the U.S. sold to the Shah of Iran wound up in the hands of Islamic militants who seized power there in 1979; a comparable scenario in Saudi Arabia is hardly impossible.
Human Rights Watch wants Rwandans to be able to speak freely about their ethnic hatreds, and to allow political parties connected with the defeated genocide army to campaign freely for power.
Want to depose the government of a poor country with resources? Want to bash Muslims? Want to build support for American military interventions around the world? Want to undermine governments that are raising their people up from poverty because they don't conform to the tastes of Upper West Side intellectuals? Use human rights as your excuse!
One of the immutable patterns of history is the rise and fall of great powers. Those that survive are the ones that adapt as the world changes.
No authoritarian leader cedes power easily or turns it over to bodies he cannot control.
Challenging orthodoxy is a death sentence in Washington.
Iran, in its former incarnation as Persia, created the world's first empire, produced titanic figures like Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, and is one of the great fonts of world culture.
Chechens are Muslim, and some share the belief that the West is engaged in a global campaign against Islam.
Other places are also generators of far-flung violence beyond their own borders - Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are obvious examples - but none has as long a history of war, resistance, and terror as Chechnya.
With the exception of China, and perhaps Turkey, no country in the world matters as much to the United States as Mexico.
In the 1980s, the U.S. Army invaded two Caribbean countries, Grenada and Panama, to depose leaders who had defied Washington.
Conflict with the United States is one of the overwhelming facts of Latin American history.
During the 19th century, Iranians lost vast territories in disastrous wars, and corrupt monarchs sold everything of value in the country to foreigners.
Every nation, like every individual, would like to believe it owes 'no apology' to anyone. Adults realise, however, that few among us are purely innocent or utterly blameless.
The key to Turkey's success has been its ability to reinvent itself as times change.
For decades, Turkey was widely viewed as a reliable NATO ally: prickly at times, but safely in America's corner.
Castro has lived almost his entire life as a clandestine revolutionary. To such figures, truth is always malleable, always subservient to political goals.
Saudi Arabia supplies much oil to the U.S. And it is the world's largest consumer of American weaponry.
Rebels in Darfur have learned the value of mobilizing western human rights groups to prolong wars, and this lesson is working gloriously for them.
Adroit geo-strategists take new realities into account as they try to imagine how global politics will unfold. In the foreign policy business, however, inertia is a powerful force and 'adroit' a little-known concept.
The dramatic rise of Turkey in the councils of world power was one of the main geopolitical developments of 2010.
Rwanda has emerged from the devastation of genocide and become more secure and prosperous than anyone had a right to expect.
Only one American has given his life for Iranian democracy. He was a young idealist from Nebraska named Howard Baskerville. In 1907, fresh out of Princeton, Baskerville went to Iran as a schoolteacher. He found himself in the midst of a revolution against tyranny, and was carried away with passion for the democratic cause.
It is truly vital for the United States to assure that it is not attacked with weapons of mass destruction; to prevent wars in other countries from spreading onto American soil; and to maintain access to global sea lanes on which our economy depends. Beyond that, there is little or nothing in the world that should draw the United States to war.
Chechens are not ethnically or culturally Russian, and have now been fighting for generations to free themselves from Russian rule.
Mexico needs schools, rural development, and an independent judiciary, not high-tech weaponry.
American strategic doctrine suggests that Mexico is of second-level importance to the United States. It ranks below Japan and Indonesia, Brazil and India, Egypt and Israel, and European powers including Britain, France, and Germany. This is a grave geopolitical miscalculation.
Any country that grants asylum to Snowden risks retaliation from the United States, including diplomatic isolation and costly trade sanctions. Several don't seem to care.
Iran's most formidable modern leader, Reza Shah Pahlavi, was obsessed with the idea of building a steel mill, but in 1941, soon after he assembled all the components, Allied armies invaded Iran, and the project had to be abandoned.
It is never wise to discourage youthful idealism.
Romney is a classic case of re-invention. As governor of Massachusetts, he supported government-sponsored healthcare, was sympathetic to gay rights, and opposed harsh restrictions on abortion. After measuring the difference between the Massachusetts electorate and the national one to which he must now appeal, he has reversed those positions.
During the Cold War, the non-aligned movement tried to become a 'third force' in world politics, but failed because it was too large and unwieldy.
Revolutionaries who come to power by force of arms usually have great crimes in their background. Leaders who survive campaigns by great powers to destroy them do not survive because they observe the niceties of law. Subversives who shape world events by covert action and violence work in shadows and detest the light of day.
Few living figures could contribute as much as Castro to our understanding of the second half of the 20th century.
Successive American presidents have turned a blind eye to piles of evidence that Saudi money is being used to foment holy war against America.
For many years as a foreign correspondent, I not only worked alongside human rights advocates, but considered myself one of them. To defend the rights of those who have none was the reason I became a journalist in the first place. Now, I see the human rights movement as opposing human rights.
Alliances and partnerships produce stability when they reflect realities and interests.
Guerrilla leaders win wars by being paranoid and ruthless. Once they take power, they are expected to abandon those qualities and embrace opposite ones: tolerance, compromise and humility. Almost none manages to do so.
Foreign interventions always end badly.
Nebraska was home to indigenous peoples for centuries. It became a state in 1867, and has produced an important literary figure, Willa Cather, as well as an investor said to be the world's second richest man, Warren Buffett.
If women are being oppressed in Egypt or children are being forced to join armies in the Congo, for example, it is not only acceptable but wonderful for Americans to be concerned, outraged, and active.
The history of Chechnya is one of imperialism gone terribly wrong. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Chechens were among the few peoples to fend off Mongol conquerors, but at a terrible cost. Turks, Persians, and Russians sought to seize Chechnya, and it was finally absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1859.
One day, Mexico will have a leader who is nationalist not simply in rhetoric, but also in fact.
During the 1990s the United States sought to impose the 'Washington Consensus' on Latin American governments. It embodied what Latin Americans call 'neo-liberal' principles: budget cuts, privatization, deregulation of business, and incentives for foreign companies. This campaign sparked bitter resistance and ultimately collapsed.
The United States has means to wound Latin American countries deeply, chiefly by altering trade policies to cut imports in ways that would throw thousands out of work.
In 1907, Britain and Russia signed a treaty dividing Iran between them; no Iranian was at the negotiations or even knew they were taking place.
