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Robert Farley lays out the questions the Russian-Georgian war has raised about NATO expansion and answers them:
It is possible that if NATO and the United States had not expanded, Russia would gradually have accepted territorial norms that would have limited the tools it uses in relations with its neighbors. But possible is not the same thing as likely. Why would allowing Russia to evade territorial norms in its neighborhood make Russia more likely to respect those very same territorial norms?Harold Meyerson considers the future role of Russia and China:
On or about last Friday, the world changed. With two very different coming-out parties -- the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and the invasion of Georgia -- China and Russia put everyone on notice that the power relationships of the past have been reshuffled and that formidable new powers are challenging the established order.
And, from our last print issue, Theda Skopol reviews Larry Bartels' new book Unequal Democracy:
In Unequal Democracy, his new book on the effects of partisan politics and public policy on economic inequality, Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels casts provocative light on what's at stake when Americans go to the polls. Drawing on disparate quantitative studies, Bartels makes a strong case that rising income inequalities are not merely inevitable concomitants of technological and global changes but hinge on political choices. He also takes sharp issue with those who portray Democrats and Republicans as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, drawn to middle-of-the-road policies to appeal to the median voter. On the contrary, Bartels shows, Republican and Democratic politicians and partisans have sharply different beliefs about social inequality and support policies with opposite distributive consequences. Senators of different parties representing the same states vote very differently. And while the privileged make sharp gains in income during Republican administrations, lower- and middle-income Americans do better under Democratic presidents. At scholarly conferences for the past several years, Bartels has shown graphs with these striking patterns, arousing skepticism because the exact mechanisms that presidents use to produce such radically different effects remain murky. But in this book, Bartels makes an incontrovertible case that election results do matter--and it is easy to see how the 2008 outcome could be another case in point.
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—The Editors
