Reversals are so commonplace in history that for the Mountain to come to Mohamet, sparing him the arduous climb to its holy heights, need cause little surprise. Xi Jinping has come to Washington, where he was lavishly received and duly honored by President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Xi is General Secretary of the Chinese Communist […]
The English translator of the Chinese epic, Moss Roberts, retells the points of the story and its importance for present-day China (This is an edited version of an interview that Professor Roberts had with Joseph Harmer of the Anglo-Chinese Friendship Association.) After I graduated and came to NYU, I began playing around with translation. I […]
Can Nixon’s 1971 analysis of China be helpful today? The country is very different from 55 years ago, but the American challenges could be just as important. On June 9, 1971, Henry Kissinger arrived in Pakistan with a delegation. Something he had eaten must have disagreed with him for he retired to his room with […]
Are the new “regime change” policies an existential challenge to the organization, shifting it from a defensive mechanism to something else? NATO’s violation of the Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.” The word regime is a negative term for government or administration, which are neutral, ordinary terms. When action is pending or […]
(US intervention in the Middle East and its plans on the Indo-Pacific might have something to learn from Mao’s strategy about Japan in 1937. Eventually, Japan was defeated, and Mao took power in China.) In the spring of 1938, 88 years ago, Mao Zedong gave a set of three talks titled On Protracted War. It […]
Accusations levelled too strenuously at others often reveal the accuser’s own failings – a psychological defense called displacement or projection, what the New Testament (John 8:7) meant in warning against “casting the first stone.” Inflammatory selective accusations – “autocrat,” “aggressor,” “terrorist,” “authoritarian,” and other swear-words – are hurled at adversaries with subjective enthusiasm but little […]
Russian culture and history has long embraced a hybrid self-image: a western and an eastern, orientations sometimes compatible but more often in conflict. Geographically too, it is one-third in Europe, two-thirds in Asia. In 1703 Peter the Great built St. Petersburg (named for the apostle, later for the tsar), a city on the Baltic Sea […]
