From time to time the political landscape shifts in such a way that an aperture flicks open, revealing with some certainty which issues will dominate the decades ahead, and which people will dominate those issues. One of the issues, of course, is national defense, a subject that relates not only to national security, but to […]
Pentagon
Posted inMay 1982
Misfire: How Pentagon Critics Shot Down Their Own Ace
Last month this magazine set out to explain in some detail how the defense budget could be cut without hurting national security. There were two reasons we devoted so much space to the defense issue: first, the enormous importance of the subject for the future of the American economy and military; and second, our sense […]
Posted inPolitics
The Foreign Service as Mirror of America
When the bodies of the two American diplomats murdered in the Sudan were brought home last month, a State Department official commented to the press, “I hope this outrage lets everyone know we’re not a bunch of cookie-pushers in striped pants. We’re a corps of highly competent, professional people, in a highly difficult, demanding, dangerous […]
