Discussion Questions for the Transatlantic Alliance
Kennan The Sources of Soviet Conduct
- What role does the ability to define truth play in ideology and culture?
- Do people believe things (like revolutionary communism) because they are
true, or because they want them to be true?
- Why is it important to defend the source of power or truth?
- How does deterrence work? When does it work, and when does it not
work? And what is the moral argument for and against it?
The Lessons of Vietnam
- What lessons are true, and what ones are not?
- Do many little arguments add up to a big one?
- Why are “negative arguments often sterile”, and how can one tell when
that is so.
- What lessons of Vietnam apply to the war on terror
- What lessons do people think apply to the war on terror
Fukuyama: The End of History
- What is Fukuyama’s main point
- What is it to be mired in history, or to be out of history
- Inevitable, universal, irreversible, and defendable
- Westernization vs. Modernization
- What is the “good life” beyond history that most people desire?
- Can that life exist without religion? Without nationalism?
Without Ideology?
- Can those without ideology defend themselves against those who have it?
- Do ideology changes lead to changes in economics and politics?
- Do economic changes lead to changes in ideology and politics?
- What does the above imply about element two of the Bush doctrine?
- Can those who have left history be imperialists?
Huntington: The Clash of civilizations
- What are the civilization groups that Huntington discusses?
- Are Europe and the U.S. sub-groups of the same civilization, or are they
different civilizations
- Are Thailand and China part of the same civilization group? Or to
put it another way, is Thailand culturally closer to Japan or China (or India or America)
- Are Sunni’s and Shia part of the same civilization?
- Are some civilizations inherently more aggressive then others?
- Does power politics between civilizations resemble power politics within
civilizations?
- Does Huntington’s discussion of the Islamic-confusion vs. the west arms
race support clash of civilizations, or end of history?
- Can civilizations have civil wars?
- Can civilizations colonize each other (imperialism)?
Luttwack: Give War a Chance
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Luttwack: The Middle of Nowhere
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Gat: The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers
- Did Japan and Germany take on the world because of foolish leaders, or were foolish leaders (Gat) or were foolish leaders inherent to their systems (Fukuyama?)
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Lewis: The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)
Zakaria: The Roots of Muslim Rage (2001)
- What are the roots of the rage
- Why did the Muslim world adopt the failed policies from the west that
they did
- Can the Muslim world go back to its own indigenous systems of
government?
- Why is there no “rage” outside the Muslim world?
- Could there be in the future? Where?
- Does the rage take different forms inside Muslim majority countries then
inside Muslim minorities in other countries?
- Is the rage deliberately supported, or strengthened, by forces in Muslim
societies?
- What role does education (or mis-education) play in the rage?
- How is the rage transmitted over time and distance?
- In what way do Zakaria and Lewis differ in their views of Muslim Rage?
- Why does Lewis argue that the Arab Worlds adoption of "anti-american european ideologies" is mearly an excuse for rage, but not a cause of it?
- Does Lewis believe that crusades, Reformation, etc. are direct sources of rage, or inderect ones. What is the difference.
Podhoretz World War IV
- Why did the Bush administration adopt the policies it did when it
did. Why not sooner (or later)
- Can the bush doctrine survive if a majority of Americans don’t support
it?
- When a democrat becomes president, will the bush doctrine survive, or
not?
- If another 9/11 occurs, will that strengthen the bush doctrine, or
weaken it?
- Podhorotz talks about the radical left attack upon the bush doctrine,
from the “blame America firsters”. Is this culture war A?
Element One: No moral
equivalence.
- Does the Bush doctrine require allies? Does America?
- Does the world think America does bad, or is bad? Does it matter?
- If it does matter, why?
- Can America be good if it does bad; i.e. do/can the ends justify
the means
- Is America held to a higher standard? Should it be?
Element Two: Political,
not economic, roots to terrorism
- Can political systems be imposed from outside?
- Do people dislike dictators in general, or do they dislike it when
somebody else is the dictator?
- Can Islamic societies be secularized? Can non-secular governments
be free?
- Should the U.S. pursue economic or political liberation first, or
simultaneously?
- What kind of timeframe does changing the root causes imply? How
quickly can it be done?
- Is it enough for people to want to be free, or do they need to also know
how to be?
Element Three: Preemption
- What level of threat is necessary to trigger a pre-emptive strike
- At what cost does a pre-emptive strike become counter productive or prohibitively
expensive?
- What are the moral and legal arguments against preemption?
- Should the U.S. try to change international law to allow preemption, or
does it already?
- Is international law an oxymoron? Does the world need an
international policeman?
- What are the alternatives to preemption
- Absent preemption, how many other states will acquire nuclear weapons?
- Will that make the world more safe, or less? America more safe, or less?
American Strength and European Weakness
- Why is America strong and Europe weak?
- Is strength a function of will, or of power. How are power and
strength different?
- What are the psychological roots of European policy?
- What are the practical/physical roots of it?
- Can Europe become strong?
- Will it? Should it? Or should America become weak?
- Would a weak American strengthen, or weaken, the U.N. and international
law?
- Will a strong American continue to defend a weak Europe? Should
it? Do the Europeans want it to?
- Does America face direct threats to America that justify its strength?
Does it face indirect threats that justify its strength? Does America need to justify its strength?
- Is America really that strong? Will it remain so? Who
can/will challenge it in the future?
Theodore Dalrymple
Tough love/Reader She Married
him
- Is western “culture” as Dalrymple described it, really that bad?
- Why do the upper classes in the west now seek to imitate the lower
classes?
- What does the breakdown of the family in the west imply?
- Can multiculturalism survive? Give an example of a multi-cultural,
free society.
- Would applying British laws to Muslim immigrants lead to more, or less, terrorism?
When Islam Breaks Down
- what are the problems with Islam and modernization that Dalrymple
discusses?
- Why does Dalrymple believe the radicals will always triumph in Muslim
societies?
- Why has his historicism optimism faded?
- Is Dalrymple a racist?
- Can Islamic societies be powerful? Can they be backwaters?
- Are the problems in the Islamic world a function of the intrinsic
differences in the civilizations (Huntington) or due to the problems with modernizing
(Fukuyama)?
- In what ways are Dalrymple’s explanations of Islam’s rage different from
Zakaria’s. In what ways are they similar?
Barbarians at the Gates of Paris
- Can the French long tolerate unassimilated/unassimilatable North
Africans in its midst?
- Are all the problems with Muslim immigrants, or with North African immigrants?
- What is the solution to the “zones”
- Is the solution cultural, political, military, or economic? And is
it spiritual or material?
- Is “eurabia” or “londinistan” a real threat?
The Suicide bombers among us
- what is the problem with religion as described by Dalrymple?
- Is it limited to the Muslim communities?
- Why (in Dalrymple’s view) must the modern Muslim deal with the tension
of pure Islam vs. the west.
- Do Dalrymple’s view of the inner jihad explain the roots of Muslim rage?
Wiegel: Europe’s Two Culture Wars
- How are Weigel’s and Dalrymple’s criticisms of western culture similar?
How are they different?
- Is western culture evil or bad? Is it defendable? Is it
superior to other cultures?
- Can one culture be superior or inferior to another?
- How can one tell? Does this mean truth is absolute or relative?
- Is multiculturalism pro-western, anti-western, or neither. Why or
why not?
- Is a culture separable from religion? Why or why not?
- What is the explanation for Europe’s (the developing world’s) fertility
decline?
- Are radical secularists ideologically pro-radical Islam?
Objectively?
- Can there be a “secular religion”?
Last Modified: November 16, 2007