U.S. Policy

It is surprising how few Arabs and Arab states are supporting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. As Secretary of State James Baker's visit to Damascus on Thursday shows, the anti-Iraq coalition includes the Arab world's three other most important powers: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. This triumverate marks the Arab world's

Many commentators and policy-makers in Washington are calling for U.S. military action to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait. While this option may be attractive in principle, today it is impossible in practice. Indeed, according to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, the U.S. military still has some way to go before it can

The danger of a U.S.-Iraq military confrontation may be receding for the time being. But now the debate in the administration, Congress, and the public faces a new issue: will the Bush Administration's multilateral strategy prevent it from taking unilateral military action if Saddam Hussein refuses to withdraw from Kuwait

Superpower relations in the Middle East is an especially timely and provocative topic -- timely because superpower relations clearly are changing, and provocative because the consequences from those changes are far from self-evident. On one hand, the lessening of the tensions between the superpowers, especially the declining role of the

We have been living through a political earthquake. A year ago Erich Honecker was still heading East Germany, and people were talking about the solid infrastructure of the GDR. Milos Jakes was still ruling in Czechoslovakia, and it was said that the communist party had a strong system of control

The American government is intent on trying to bring the parties in the Arab-Israeli dispute closer together, to talk, to negotiate and to resolve differences. President Bush has reaffirmed this commitment on several occasions and Secretary of State James Baker described our goals eloquently in his speech on "principles and

Keynote address by George Shultz. With Madeleine Albright, Itamar Rabinovich, Oleg Derkovsky, Hirsh Goodman, and others.

The violent uprising in the West Bank and Gaza has destroyed a status quo which had been tolerable, if not entirely comfortable, for several years. Mounting casualties injected fresh urgency into the search for a new peace process to replace one that has been stalled by differences over procedures and

Keynote addresses by Walter Mondale, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Richard Murphy. With William Kirby, Daniel Kurtzer, Aaron David Miller, and others.