May - June 1993
Issue 5, Volume 7

Publication Date: June 1, 1993
Posted: Tuesday, June 6, 1993

This issue includes 'Hawks and Doves Revisited'; 'The Communist Hangover'; 'The Pusillanimous West'; and 'The Question of U.S. Military Intervention'.


In This Issue :

Hawks and Doves Revisited
History, Strategy, and Morality in the Bosnian Crisis
The Bridge on the Drina, which won its Bosnian Serb author, Ivo Andric, the 1961 Nobel Literature Prize, should be required reading for anyone trying to think seriously about the current Balkan crisis. Andric's story is full of memorable characters—some memorable chiefly for their awfulness. But the real protagonist of this epic tale is the great stone bridge itself: an expression, and finally a victim, of the ancient passions of that turbulent region, which are now being broadcast daily into our homes in living (and, too often, dying) color.  [More]

The Communist Hangover
No small part of the West's confusion and consternation over the tribulations of post-communist societies is the result of a residual, debilitating misunderstanding of communism. That misunderstanding (coupled with the historic myopia noted above) has, in turn, fueled Western incomprehension about the sources of the extreme nationalism, ethnic violence, and barbarism that have broken out in several parts of Stalin's old empire.  [More]

The Pusillanimous West
Has Western Europe entered a period of political decadence such that it cannot even police its own neighborhood?  [More]

The Question of U.S. Military Intervention
In the just-war tradition, the use of proportionate and discriminate military force derives its moral legitimacy from its capacity to advance a just political goal. The end does not justify any means; but the means derive their justification from their linkage to a just end. (Or, as a Jesuit moral philosopher of the old school once put it, "If the end doesn't justify the means, what does?")  [More]