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Foreign Affairs Preview: May/June 2008

Interviewer: Michael Moran
Interviewee: Gideon Rose
April 23, 2008

In this week's podcast

Foreign Affairs Managing Editor Gideon Rose discusses the May/June 2008 issue with CFR.org Executive Editor Michael Moran. They start with articles by Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria and CFR President Richard Haass on the future of international politics. The era of American hegemony is over, says Haass, and will be followed by nonpolarity -- a world order without much order at all. Not necessarily, says Zakaria; reports of America's demise have been greatly exaggerated, and if the United States continues to play to its strengths as an open society, it will do just fine even as other countries rise and thrive.

They then turn to Iraq, discussing CFR Senior Fellow Steven Simon's argument that Bush administration's "surge" strategy has bought short-term peace at the price of long-term stability. The surge's bottom-up approach, Simon says, is creating a time bomb of tribalism, warlordism, and virulent sectarianism; unless Washington changes its course soon, it will leave Iraq in worse shape than before the war.

Finally, they discuss a two articles on Africa. The first, by former U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Andrew Natsios, argues that a renewed civil war between Arabs in the north and Christians and animists in the south pose a graver problem than Darfur. And the second, by Barnard Professor Severine Autesserre, explains how the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Congo is even worse.

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