Roundup: Media's Take

Praveen Swami: America Embracing the Taliban, Again

Praveen Swami is Associate Editor Frontline magazine, and also writes for its sister publication, The Hindu.In the spring of 1839, the extraordinary Indian adventurer and spy, Mohan Lal Kashmiri, engineered one of the greatest intelligence coups of the 19th century: using nothing more lethal than cash and intrigue, he brought about the fall of Kandahar and secured the Afghan throne for Imperial Britain's chosen client, Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk.Less than three years later, in the bitter winter of 1842, Kashmiri found himself working undercover in insurgent-held Kabul, seeking to ransom the remnants of his masters' once-magnificent army — children, women and men at threat of being sold as slaves in Central Asia.For decades after, imperial historians agonised over the Afghan debacle of 1842, using tropes that still colour discourse on the country: religious fanaticism; treachery of native rulers; savagery of the tribal culture; primitiveness of its civilisation.

Charles Villa-Vicencio: What the Arab Spring Countries Can Learn from South Africa

Charles Villa-Vicencio is a visiting professor in the Conflict Resolution Program at Georgetown University and a senior research fellow in the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in South Africa. He was formerly national research director in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.In June 1976 Hector Pieterson was shot dead by police in the black township of Soweto, launching a nationwide student uprising that injected new life into the liberation struggle in South Africa. The movement culminated -- 18 long years later -- in the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first democratically elected president in 1994. Mohamed Bouazizi, a young market worker in Tunisia, set himself on fire in December 2010 and died in the hospital a few weeks later. Amid the political turmoil triggered by his death, the long-serving President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia and the "Arab Spring" dawned.

Michael Ignatieff: Canada’s Cautionary Tale for Scottish Secessionists

Michael Ignatieff is the former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.Now that Scotland has launched itself down a path towards a referendum on independence, London and Edinburgh are battling about who gets to make the rules for the vote. This matters: how the rules get made will determine who wins.Canada has had to think hard about the rules that govern debates about our country’s existence. Scots could save themselves a fair amount of grief if they were to learn from our experience.There is grief aplenty in store. In our 1980 referendum on Quebec, the result was a clear cut victory for Canada. But in 1995, the country survived by a hair. In both, the referendum divided English and French-speaking communities, and it also split families and cut right through individuals, forcing them to make choices about their personal identities. We learnt the strongest argument for leaving countries as they are turns out to be that most people don’t want to choose between different parts of their identity.This must be true of the Scots too...

Richard Cohen: Political Donations Helped to End the Vietnam War

Richard Cohen writes a column for the WaPo.Sheldon Adelson is supposedly a bad man. The gambling mogul gave $5 million to a Newt Gingrich-loving super PAC and this enabled Gingrich to maul Mitt Romney — a touch of opinion here — who had it coming anyway. Adelson is a good friend of Gingrich and a major player in Israeli politics. He owns a newspaper in Israel and supports politicians so far to the right I have to wonder if they are even Jewish. This is Sheldon Adelson, supposedly a bad man. But what about Howard Stein?The late chairman of the Dreyfus Corp. was a wealthy man but, unlike Adelson, a liberal Democrat. Stein joined with some other rich men — including Martin Peretz, the one-time publisher of the New Republic; Stewart Mott, a GM heir; and Arnold Hiatt of Stride Rite Shoes — to provide about $1.5 million for Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 challenge to Lyndon Johnson. Stein and his colleagues did not raise this money in itsy-bitsy donations but by chipping in large amounts themselves. Peretz told me he kicked in $30,000. That was a huge amount of money at the time....

Sebnem Gumuscu: There is No ‘Turkish Model’ for Egypt

Sebnem Gumuscu is a political scientist at Istanbul's Sabanci University who specializes in Islamic political movements. In Egypt, a number of younger and more moderate Islamists have pointed to Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a source of inspiration, citing legal reform, successful economic management, and electoral victories as models to be emulated.In some policy quarters, Turkey has even been presented as an overall model for the Arab world – a characterization which derives largely from its seemingly unique ability to couple secular democracy with a predominantly Muslim society. But those who talk of "the Turkish model" misunderstand that country’s transformation. The coexistence between Islam and democracy has come to pass in Turkey not from the AKP’s development of institutional and political structures that accommodated both Islamic and democratic principles, but rather because Islamists themselves came to accept the secular-democratic framework of the Turkish state.

Paul Stevens: Ignore the Hyperbole on Hormuz ... Embargoes Don’t Work

Paul Stevens is senior research fellow, energy, environment and development at Chatham House.In recent weeks there has been intense speculation that in the event of a European Union oil embargo, Iran would try to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which flow 32 per cent of global oil exports and 28 per cent of global liquefied natural gas exports. Such an attempt is unlikely, although, to be clear, history suggests that sanctions would not work in constraining the Iranian regime.

Dan Gardner: America’s Decade of Terrorism? Try the 1970s

Dan Gardner’s column appears Wednesday and Friday.If you say something horrible will happen within the next five years, and it does, everyone will talk about the horrible thing and you will be hailed as a visionary. And if it doesn’t? Don’t worry about it. No one talks about horrible things that don’t happen and no one will remember what you said five years ago.So it’s “heads, I win; tails, you forget we had a bet.” You can’t lose.But what if you predict that something horrible will not happen? Then you can’t win. And your name is John Mueller.Mueller is a political scientist at Ohio State University. He’s also a born contrarian who has been right about some of the biggest issues of the last several decades. The Soviet Union. Nuclear proliferation. War. Time and again, Mueller took a position at odds with the leading experts. And he was right.But John Mueller has not been hailed as a visionary because, for the most part, he hasn’t been right about horrible things happening. He’s been right that horrible things wouldn’t happen...

Bennett Ramberg: Why We Need Détente With North Korea

Bennett Ramberg served as a policy analyst in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the George H.W. Bush Administration and is the author of several books on international politics.Whatever Kim Jong-Il’s death meant for the people of North Korea, it did not change the fundamental strategic interest that the United States has in the country. The paramount issue for Washington remains assuring that Pyongyang never uses its nuclear arsenal, and that it never leaks or gifts its weapons material and technology to other nations or terrorists.But if Washington’s basic strategic posture remains, it should consider revising its current non-proliferation policies in the wake of Pyongyang’s change of leadership. After all, the West’s efforts until now have not been borne fruit. Now is the time to try an untrodden, but potentially promising path: Washington should concede that North Korea has beaten nonproliferation roadblocks and focus instead on forestalling our worst nuclear fears by normalizing relations with Pyongyang. America’s embrace of a rising nuclear bête noire of a much earlier era, Mao’s China, provides a template.

Donna Brazile: For King, the Right to Vote was Sacred

Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor and a Democratic strategist, is vice chairwoman for voter registration and participation at the Democratic National Committee, a nationally syndicated columnist and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She was manager for the Gore-Lieberman presidential campaign in 2000 and wrote "Cooking with Grease."Every third Monday in January we gather as Americans to commemorate the values and beliefs -- as well as the ultimate sacrifice -- of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.His tireless advocacy for civil rights, equal protection under the law, labor rights, and for the ultimate realization of our essential creed that we are "one nation, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is taught in every school in America, and is now enshrined in a memorial on the National Mall.Dr. King believed so strongly not only in these values, but also in the moral imperative to heed the "fierce urgency of now." He knew that in the face of injustice no moral man or woman can stay silent -- and he paid for it with his life....

Tim Murphy: The Republican Field on Martin Luther King: It's Complicated

Tim Murphy is a reporter at Mother JonesOn Monday, the five remaining GOP presidential candidates will celebrate Martin Luther King Day by gathering in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and debating Rick Santorum's thoughts about Mitt Romney's response to Newt Gingrich's condemntation of Newt Gingrich's super-PAC's attack on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital. Or something like that. The timing of the Fox News debate hasn't been lost on folks like South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Dick Harpootlian, who suggested on Thursday it showed a lack of regard for the life of the Civil Rights icon.The other, probably more plausible explanation is that, with the primary scheduled for Saturday, Monday was just an obvious date to hold the first of two debates. But it does raise the question—one that could come up in some iteration during the debate: How do the GOP candidates feel about Dr. King and his civil rights legacy? Here's a quick guide:

Paul Krugman: How Fares the Dream?

Paul Krugman is an economist at Princeton University and an op-ed columnist for the NYT.“I have a dream,” declared Martin Luther King, in a speech that has lost none of its power to inspire. And some of that dream has come true. When King spoke in the summer of 1963, America was a nation that denied basic rights to millions of its citizens, simply because their skin was the wrong color. Today racism is no longer embedded in law. And while it has by no means been banished from the hearts of men, its grip is far weaker than once it was.To say the obvious: to look at a photo of President Obama with his cabinet is to see a degree of racial openness — and openness to women, too — that would have seemed almost inconceivable in 1963. When we observe Martin Luther King’s Birthday, we have something very real to celebrate: the civil rights movement was one of America’s finest hours, and it made us a nation truer to its own ideals.

Robert J. Shiller: Spend, Spend, Spend. It’s the American Way.

Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics and finance at Yale.GRIDLOCK in Congress implies that there won’t be any collective decision to spend more as a nation to get out of our slump. Increases in deficit spending seem unlikely, and so does the balanced-budget stimulus I’ve been advocating in this column. For now, we must pin our hopes for a robust recovery on the willingness of millions of consumers to spend substantially more.But what really drives consumer spending? Economists are reasonably good at divining how consumers tend to react to changes in government policy, but in the absence of such policy, and when the economy is in the doldrums, they aren’t very good at predicting spending shifts.A new book, “Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves” (Princeton University Press), offers some insights. It was written by Sheldon Garon, a Princeton professor who is not an economist but rather a historian with a sociological bent.

Soner Cagaptay: France and Turkey are Once Again Imperial Rivals

Soner Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.AS Egyptians and Tunisians vote to replace ousted despots and the Syrian government teeters on the brink, two old imperial powers are competing to exert their political influence over Arab countries in upheaval. And they are not America and Russia. After years of cold-war competition over the Middle East and North Africa, it is now France and Turkey that are vying for lucrative business ties and the chance to mold a new generation of leaders in lands that they once controlled.This rivalry is nothing new. Since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, France and Turkey have competed for dominance in the Middle East. France’s rise as a Mediterranean power has been an inverse function of Turkish decline around the same sea. As the Ottoman Empire gradually collapsed, France acquired Algeria, Tunisia and, temporarily, Egypt. The French took one final bite from the dying empire by securing control over Syria and Lebanon after World War I.

Scott Shane: In Russia, Echoes of Revolution

by Scott Shane

Scott Shane is a national security correspondent for The New York Times and the author of “Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union.” THE memorial stone is still there, across from the old K.G.B. headquarters, the handsome building where in the 1930s thousands of people were shot in the basement as trucks roared their engines to cover the noise. “To the Memory,” the inscription reads, “of the Millions of Victims of the Totalitarian Regime.” I was a reporter in the crowd on a crisp October afternoon in 1990 at the dedication of the gray granite boulder, brought from the birthplace of the Soviet prison camp system on the White Sea. A 90-year-old survivor of the gulag prison system spoke, and hundreds of people filed by, solemnly placing roses or carnations.... For anyone who covered the slow-motion collapse of Communism here, this moment feels familiar. Then, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s experiment in modernizing the Soviet system began to run out of control, security officials were deeply uncertain about how to respond to the proliferating street demonstrations....

Sam Tanenhaus: G.O.P. History vs. the Tea Party

Sam Tanenhaus is the editor of The New York Times Book Review. FOR more than two years, conservatives have been riding a wave of Tea Party insurgency that has formed the most dynamic force in American politics, a protest movement that promised to slash taxes, close the federal deficit and remake Washington. And yet to judge from the results of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, some of the most engaged Republican voters are inching closer to nominating Mitt Romney, the candidate they like least, a Harvard-educated technocrat who is in many ways a mirror image of the president the insurgents want to dislodge....

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: Woody Guthrie is More Relevant than Ever

Bill Moyers is managing editor of the new weekly public affairs program, "Moyers & Company," airing on public television. Check local airtimes or comment at www.BillMoyers.com.  More Bill MoyersMichael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos and a senior writer of the new series, Moyers & Company, airing on public television. The traveling medicine show known as the race for the Republican presidential nomination has moved on from Iowa and New Hampshire, and all eyes are now on South Carolina.Well, not exactly all. At the moment, our eyes are fixed on some big news from the great state of Oklahoma, home of the legendary American folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated later this year....In an era of gross inequality there’s both irony and relevance in Woody Guthrie’s song ["This Land is Your Land"]. That “ribbon of highway” he made famous? It’s faded and fraying in disrepair, the nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges, once one of our glories, now a shambles because fixing them would require spending money, raising taxes and pulling together.

Karl Rove: Romney Makes History

Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007.In an open race for the GOP nomination, no Republican has won both Iowa and New Hampshire, as Mitt Romney has. No one has come in fourth or fifth in New Hampshire, as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum did, and become the nominee. No one has entirely skipped Iowa, as Jon Huntsman did, and won elsewhere. No one has recovered after grabbing the 1% that Rick Perry received in the Granite State. And no one became the nominee after failing to win one of the first two contests, a position in which Ron Paul finds himself.All this means history will be made this year, no matter what happens next.The focus Tuesday was more on the winner's margin than on the victory itself. Mr. Romney won the New Hampshire primary by an impressive 16.4 points. (The state's last five contested GOP primaries have seen an average winning margin of 10.5 points.) True to its tradition, New Hampshire paid little attention to Iowa's big story—Mr. Santorum's impressive second-place finish. He finished fifth. The candidate who camped out in New Hampshire saw that pay off, as Mr. Huntsman did 17 times as well there as he's doing in the Gallup national poll, where he's at 1%...

Tony Karon: Will Assad Be the Next Gaddafi or Milosevic?

Tony Karon is a senior editor at TIME, where he has covered international conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, and the Balkans since 1997. A native of South Africa, he now resides with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

Robert Haddick: What Iran Should Learn from Japan's Pre-World War II Mistakes

Robert Haddick is managing editor of Small Wars Journal. A recent 10-day training exercise conducted by Iran's Navy included a test of an upgraded anti-ship cruise missile, presumably designed to counter the regular presence of U.S. 5th Fleet warships nearby. Before the Iranian exercise began, the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier strike group sailed from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. The carrier received some parting advice from Gen. Ataollah Salehi, the commander of Iran's armed forces. "We warn this ship, which is considered a threat to us, not to come back, and we do not repeat our words twice," Salehi said.

Joan Walsh: When White People Lack “Bourgeois Values”

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large....Now Republicans are taking their judgments about and disapproval of African-American marriage and family patterns and applying them to white people, too. In 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan declared a “crisis” in the “Negro family” because “nearly one-quarter of Negro births are now illegitimate,” he wrote. Today the birthrate to white single mothers is even higher – and it’s climbed particularly sharply for white women who dropped out of high school, as well as those who didn’t go to college. Interestingly, rates of divorce and single-motherhood are lowest among the affluent and well educated, and that’s true in black as well as white families....