Fall 2024

We devote this issue almost entirely to American politics, looking back to the disputed presidential election and forward to the administration of Bush II. The mix of articles is incomplete; we can’t cover everything at once. But the pieces add …

I am only one of the just war theorists whose work Laurie Calhoun criticizes, but because I am the local one, it seems right that I respond in Dissent. She and I have an old disagreement, and I am not …

Whatever questions dominate this year’s presidential campaign, however they are reported in the media, the context in which they will eventually be answered has been “globalized.” We are all internationalists now. Politics is still local, of course; as Göran Therborn …

Imagine the possible political arrangements of international society as if they were laid out along a continuum marked off according to the degree of centralization. Obviously, there are alternative markings; the recognition and enforcement of human rights could also be …

It is possible (just possible; I don’t mean to slip into the prophetic mode) that we are at the beginning of a new period of political activism. Globalization seems to be producing not only rapid-fire growth, erratic movements of capital, …

Back in the 1960s, I criticized the Vietnam War, in part, by contrasting it with the Korean War. This was a way of distinguishing myself, and the part of the antiwar movement to which I belonged, from those leftists who …

It is hard to figure out what the stakes are in this year’s presidential election. “Compassionate conservatism” looks very much like a Republican version of the “third way,” and the third way looks more and more like a Democratic version …

I firmly believe that even Israelis who voted for Benjamin Natanyahu were re-lieved by Ehud Barak’s victory last May 17. It was as if the whole country had been in a state of anxiety and depression, and now its mood …

How does the miraculous year 1989 look ten years later? We asked a number of friends to respond to some questions about the fall of communism and the standing, afterward, of the democratic left. The responses are a characteristically Dissentish …

At this writing, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia continues, and the Serbian destruction of Kosovar society also continues. Yes, the Serbian campaign must have been planned before the bombing began; the logistics of moving forty thousand soldiers are immensely complex. …

I think that I am in favor of the fourth way, or maybe the fifth; anyway, I am sure there is a “way” coming that will be better than all the others. The advantage of four and five is that …

The famous American liberalism/communitarianism debate, which is now being reproduced (at least among academic political theorists) in many parts of the world, is far less important for real politics than the recognition of two competing kinds of communitarianism, one focused …

It is perhaps a sign of living uneasily in the here and now that we spend so much time looking backward and forward. We find our way in the difficult present by focusing on the past and the future. So, …