The best of last week's editorials March 2009

New York Times

The Pentagon Meets the Real World
Many crucial details are missing from the military budget released last week by the Obama administration. But the initial signs are encouraging.

Foreign Affairs
The Precedents for Withdrawal: From Vietnam to Iraq by Bennett Ramberg
As Washington ponders how long to stay in Iraq, it would do well to remember the limited impact of the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, Lebanon in the 1980s, and Somalia in the 1990s.

New Statesman

Notes on a post-Blair foreign policy by Michael Harvey

Noted for his command of the ministerial brief, David Miliband is arguably the most cerebral occupant of the Foreign Office in a generation. The main challenge confronting him, and indeed Gordon Brown, since he assumed office in June 2007, has been the shaping of a foreign policy for the post-Blair years.

The Wall Street Journal

Post-Post-9/11 Looks Just Like Pre-World War II by Bret Stephens

After 9/11, historians and pundits rushed to give a new era a suitable name. My favorite was Norman Podhoretz's, who called it "World War IV." In doing so, he recast the Cold War as World War III while putting the attacks in a century-long context of the global struggle between democratic and totalitarian forces.

The Guardian

Beijing loved Bush's America. Now it is much less sanguine by Isabel Hilton

After Hillary Clinton arrived in Beijing, following her stops in Japan, Indonesia and South Korea, she was well aware that the Obama administration's relations with China did not get off to a good start.

Foreign Policy

The Most Dangerous Place in the World by By Jeffrey Gettleman

Somalia is a state governed only by anarchy. A graveyard of foreign-policy failures, it has known just six months of peace in the past two decades. Now, as the country's endless chaos threatens to engulf an entire region, the world again simply watches it burn.

The Economist

A year in the life of Kosovo

On February 17th Kosovo will mark the first anniversary of its unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. Doubtless Kosovo's mostly ethnic-Albanian population will celebrate happily and noisily. Yet thanks to Russian obstruction of any new United Nations resolution on Kosovo's status, its independence remains highly controversial.