David Aikman
Musings and commentary on the world scene from Senior Fellow David Aikman
Obama’s Challenges Overseas
Tue 23 Dec 2008 by David Aikman
It’s likely that historians will view the 2008 election as a moment when America turned inward and looked hard at what was going on inside the country. Many recently-elected presidents have taken office with a decidedly strong pre-occupation with foreign affairs: Richard Nixon was one, and George H. W. Bush another. Both men, incidentally, accomplished major things in foreign affairs but were tripped up by American domestic developments.
On the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
Wed 26 Nov 2008 by David Aikman
Fourteen Years On
Senior Fellow David Aikman reports on the speeches of Mark Noll and Nathan Hatch at the November Senior Fellows Dinner, reprising themes from Noll’s landmark 1994 book.
Korean Anxieties
Wed 05 Nov 2008 by David Aikman
While the attention of almost all Americans and much of the world has been focused on the presidential election campaign that ended November 4, tensions are rising alarmingly in a part of the world thousands of miles away. North Korea is up to its old tricks, threatening fire and brimstone on the South, and keeping the world guessing as to the whereabouts, and indeed the health, of its “Dear Leader” President Kim Jong-il. The combination of leadership uncertainty in North Korea, a South Korean administration notably more hard-nosed towards North Korea than its predecessors, and an imminent political change in Washington, constitute the ingredients for a possible serious rise in tensions on the Korean peninsula.
A Historic Election
Thu 30 Oct 2008 by David Aikman
With barely a week to go before American voters go to the polls November 4 (that is, those who haven’t already voted early), it is possible to make some generalizations about the election campaign that is now in its final throes.
A New Bretton Woods for the New Millennium?
Tue 21 Oct 2008 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
The global financial crisis, now into its second month as a factor in everyone’s consciousness, has done more than change the dynamics of the current U.S. presidential election. In the U.S. it has shifted the balance, even if only slightly, to Senator Barack Obama. This is because Democratic politicians are generally associated with big government, and many Americans at a time of national financial anxiety instinctively feel that the best thing that can bail them out of trouble is government. But globally, there may be a far more important tectonic shift taking place. This is the sense that global economic leadership may now be transferring itself to the European Union, the 27-member economic confederation of European states.
Obama’s Cult of Personality
Tue 14 Oct 2008 • Responses: 6 • by David Aikman
The U.S. presidential election campaign has certainly become more negative recently, with McCain’s side seeking to paint Obama as a man with past ties to dangerous American radicals and a propensity to increase taxes. Obama has responded with sharp attacks on McCain’s policy, painting him as a man who is “out of touch” with ordinary American concerns and in the pocket of big oil companies. Sarah Palin, McCain’s vice-presidential running mate and other Republican supporters have tried to raise doubts about Obama’s reliability, focusing on his ties to his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright and connections with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers. McCain, to be fair, has distanced himself from some of his more scare-mongering supporters. He has recently declared Obama to be “a decent man and a person you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”
Let us hope McCain is right, and that if Obama wins, he will not be an extremist of any kind and will govern wisely and modestly.
The Financial Tsunami
Mon 29 Sep 2008 by David Aikman
“We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis,” President Bush told the American people in a televised national address on September 24. The “entire economy” of the U.S. was in danger, he explained; the market was “not functioning properly, and “more banks could fail.” Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a few days earlier had described the crisis as a “once-a-century” phenomenon and the worst he had ever seen. Others referred to the meltdown on Wall Street as a financial “tsunami” that could overwhelm all regular economic activity in the U.S. and create not just a recession but an economic depression not seen in the U.S. or the world since the Great Depression that followed the Wall Street Crash of October 1929.
Electoral Politics: The Possibility of a ‘Perfect Storm’
Thu 18 Sep 2008 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
The predictable journalistic punditry of every American presidential cycle—“the most vicious presidential election ever,” “how come we always end up with such mediocre candidates?”—has been handily refuted in the last 50 days or so of the 2008 presidential election. In Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, there are two candidates for the presidency of exceptional talent, but with contrasting approaches to America’s future. Obama, a gifted orator and charismatic campaigner who has energized a whole new generation of young people to participate in politics, harks back to candidate John F. Kennedy. Nearly half a century ago, JFK tapped into the political idealism of large numbers of young Americans, winning the presidency in the process.
Putin’s Brezhnev Doctrine
Wed 20 Aug 2008 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
Forty years ago this August, all of Europe and the U.S. watched with horror as the Soviet army, in conjunction with units from four of its Warsaw Pact allies, rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring.” The “Spring” had been a dramatic movement for reform and liberalization of Czechoslovakia’s Communist system that had been introduced by Czech Communist leader Alexander Dubcek and some others.
The 200,000 invading troops met only token resistance, because Dubcek had ordered Czech citizens not to oppose the invasion. But in a singular act of brutal humiliation, Dubcek and his associates were transported to Moscow in chains in the belly of a Soviet cargo plane, then made to face the bullying shouts of the assembled Soviet Politburo. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s rationale for the invasion became known as the “Brezhnev doctrine,” a principle that Communist Party control of the countries of Eastern Europe should never have to submit to reforms that might bring capitalism and democracy to them.
The Greatness of Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008)
Mon 11 Aug 2008 by David Aikman
A Second Look
David Aikman looks back at his three interviews with the great Russian writer and offers a different assessment of his life, message, and influence.
