Section: The Atlantic (USA)
Russia and the Menace of Unreality
At the NATO summit in Wales last week, General Philip Breedlove, the military alliance’s top commander, made a bold declaration. Russia, he said, is waging “the most amazing information warfare blitzkrieg we have ever seen in the history of information warfare.” It was something of an underestimation. The new Russia doesn’t just deal...
Oy Vey: Yiddish Has a Problem
Ai-yi-yi! Let’s kvetch about the fact that you have to schlep all the way to Brooklyn to schmooze in Yiddish nowadays. Chances are you understood that above paragraph perfectly, despite it being littered with Yiddish vocabulary. “Yinglish”—the marriage of Yiddish and English—is a pop-cultural standard: Girls’ Shoshanna...
When a Digital Country Is in NATO
Does a virtual country still need real military protection? And if so, who provides it? Short answer: Yes, and the United States. Last Wednesday, President Barack Obama made a visit to Estonia, where he praised the country’s government in unsubtle terms as a core NATO ally. “As a high-tech leader, Estonia is also playing a leading role in...
2014 Is Not 1931
Everyone has—or should have—a list of the commentators they disagree with fundamentally but nonetheless admire. When it comes to foreign policy, Robert Kagan tops mine. First, because Kagan knows the difference between being a hawk and being a Republican. His worldview is consistent but his view of the two parties is not. In the mid-1990s, for...
Pursuing ISIS to the Gates of Hell
Over the past two weeks, the American foreign-policy debate has dramatically changed. The key to understanding why lies in a book. The book is called Special Providence. Published 13 years ago by Walter Russell Mead, it remains, for my money, the best analysis of American foreign policy written in our time. Mead argues that America has four...
Obama Just Made the Ultimate Commitment to Eastern Europe
Presidents give a lot of speeches, and most of them don’t mean very much. They “urge,” they “call on,” and they “challenge”—and, for the most part, their messages bounce off their intended audiences. Congress doesn’t fund the program or balance the budget; the American people carry on wasting energy and dropping out of school. But...
How a Famous Soviet Dissident Foreshadowed Putin’s Plan—in 1990
During an informal question-and-answer session at the pro-Kremlin Seliger youth camp on August 29, a young woman expressed concern about the “growth of nationalism” in Kazakhstan. The woman wondered if a “Ukraine scenario” was possible there if longtime Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev left office—and asked what the...
‘A Ukraine Peace Plan That Excludes Ukrainians Is Unacceptable’
Last week, The Atlantic published a 24-point plan for ending the conflict between Russia and Ukraine—the product of a meeting between Russian and American experts and former officials on the Finnish island of Boistö. Now, a group of American and European experts and former officials, coordinated by David Kramer of Freedom House, has written a...
Russia’s Slow-Motion Invasion of Ukraine
Is Russia invading Ukraine? Ask Ukraine, and the answer is yes. Ask Russia, and the answer is no … ish. Ask the United States, and you’ll learn that Russia, since annexing Crimea from Ukraine in March, has been demonstrating a “pattern” of “escalation of aggression.” U.S. officials have avoided labeling...
Acting French
I spent the majority of this summer at Middlebury College, studying at l’École Française. I had never been to Vermont. I have not been many places at all. I did not have an adult passport until I was 37 years old. Sometimes I regret this. And then sometimes not. Learning to travel when you’re older allows you to be young again, to...
