person:stephen m. walt

Top 10 warning signs of ’liberal imperialism’ - by Stephen M. Walt | Stephen M. Walt
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/20/top_ten_warning_signs_of_liberal_imperialism

#1: You frequently find yourself advocating that the United States send troops, drones, weapons, Special Forces, or combat air patrols to some country that you have never visited, whose language(s) you don’t speak, and that you never paid much attention to until bad things started happening there.

#2: ...

#3: You think globally and speak, um, globally. You are quick to condemn human rights violations by other governments, but American abuses (e.g., torture, rendition, targeted assassinations, Guantánamo, etc.) and those of America’s allies get a pass. You worry privately (and correctly) that aiming your critique homeward might get in the way of a future job.

#4: You are a strong proponent of international law, except when it gets in the way of Doing the Right Thing. Then you emphasize its limitations and explain why the United States doesn’t need to be bound by it in this case.

#5: You belong to the respectful chorus of those who publicly praise the service of anyone in the U.S. military, but you would probably discourage your own progeny from pursuing a military career.

#6. Even if you don’t know very much about military history, logistics, or modern military operations, you are still convinced that military power can achieve complex political objectives at relatively low cost.

#7: To your credit, you have powerful sympathies for anyone opposing a tyrant. Unfortunately, you tend not to ask whether rebels, exiles, and other anti-regime forces are trying to enlist your support by telling you what they think you want to hear. (Two words: Ahmed Chalabi.)

...

The Lessons We Aren’t Learning from Iraq | Stephen M. Walt
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/03/21/the_dearth_of_strategy_on_syria

If you want evidence of the tunnel vision that continues to dominate U.S. national security thinking, check out David Sanger’s news analysis yesterday http://seenthis.net/messages/123543 on the “lessons” of Iraq. Sanger checks in with various former policymakers to explore the different implications one might draw from the Iraq experience for the current situation in Syria. 

As expected, there is some difference of opinion expressed by the various people that Sanger interviewed. But what’s striking is how the entire discussion of “lessons” revolves around tactical issues, and none of the people quoted in the article raise larger questions about how the United States is defining its role in the world or the broader goals it is trying to accomplish. Instead, they debate the reliability of pre-war intelligence, whether the U.S. can do a better job when it occupies other countries, or whether the U.S. can figure out ways to intervene in various places without getting sucked into costly quagmires. In short, it’s all about whether we can do these things differently and not about whether we should do them at all.

What’s going on in Israel? | Stephen M. Walt (Foreign Policy)
►http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/07/12/the_veil_falls

One of the more enduring myths in the perennial debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict is the claim that Israel has always been interested in a fair and just peace, and that the only thing standing in the way of a deal is the Palestinians’ commitment to Israel’s destruction. This notion has been endlessly recycled by Israeli diplomats and by Israel’s defenders in the United States and elsewhere. Of course, fair-minded analysts of the conflict have long known that this pernicious narrative was bogus. They knew that former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (who signed the Oslo Accords) never favored creating a viable Palestinian state (indeed, he explicitly said that a future Palestinian entity would be “less than a state.”) The Palestinians’ errors notwithstanding, they also understood that Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offers at Camp David in 2000 — though more generous than his predecessors’ — still fell well short of a genuine two-state deal. But the idea that Israel sought peace above all else but lacked a genuine “partner for peace” has remained an enduring “explanation” for Oslo’s failure. Source: Foreign (...)

What’s going on in Israel? | Stephen M. Walt
►http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/07/12/the_veil_falls

One of the more enduring myths in the perennial debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict is the claim that Israel has always been interested in a fair and just peace, and that the only thing standing in the way of a deal is the Palestinians’ commitment to Israel’s destruction. […]

Of course, fair-minded analysts of the conflict have long known that this pernicious narrative was bogus.

[…]

What is going on, in short, is slow-motion ethnic cleansing. Instead of driving Palestinians out by force — as was done in 1948 and 1967 — the goal is simply to make life increasingly untenable over time, so that they will gradually leave their ancestral homelands of their own accord.

Ouh là : John Mearsheimer écrit une longue défense de Gilad Atzmon. On n’est pas sortis de l’auberge.

Why Jeff Goldberg is Wrong about Mearsheimer—Again | Stephen M. Walt
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/09/25/mearsheimer_responds_to_goldbergs_latest_smear

In sum, Goldberg’s charge that Atzman is a Holocaust denier or an apologist for Hitler is baseless. Nor is Atzmon an anti-Semite. He has controversial views for sure and he sometimes employs overly provocative language. But there is no question in my mind that he has written a fascinating book that, as I said in my blurb, “should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike.” Regarding Goldberg’s insinuation that I have any sympathy for Holocaust denial and am an anti-Semite, it is just another attempt in his longstanding effort to smear Steve Walt and me.

Tom Friedman finally gets it | Stephen M. Walt
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/09/18/well_duh

But I will say this: Friedman’s admission reflects the protracted failure of U.S. policy on the Israel-Palestine issue, going back several decades. That’s not news, of course. What has changed in the past few years is that the lobby’s operations and its harmful influence are now out in the open for all to see, which makes it almost impossible to make the old arguments that Israel is a “vital strategic asset” or a country that “shares our values” with a straight face, or to convince anyone who’s not already in agreement. Not after more than forty years of occupation, not after 9/11, not after the 2006 Lebanon War, not after Operation Cast Lead, not after the killings on the Mavi Marmara, and not after PM Netanyahu’s repeated acts of contempt toward the U.S. president.

Je suis en train d’imprimer l’étude que vient de publier le Center for American Progress : Fear, Inc. The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America :
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/08/pdf/islamophobia.pdf

J’ai bien l’impression que c’est un document très important. J’en reparle quand je l’aurai lu (et que j’aurai le temps).

A visit to Libya : First Impressions | Stephen M. Walt
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/18/the_shores_of_tripoli

L’auteur se définit comme « un réaliste » :

#Libya appears to be more open than contemporary #Iran or China and the overall atmosphere seemed far less oppressive than most places I visited in the old Warsaw Pact.

certaines révisions sont déchirantes