William Pfaff
William Pfaff is a globally respected political commentator and author on international relations, contemporary history and U.S. policy. He is published in five countries and his column is syndicated by Tribune Media Services.
The American Academy of Diplomacy in 2006 awarded him its annual prize for distinguished commentary, saying that "for more than a generation, William Pfaff has been called the 'dean' of American columnists and commentators. Few can rival his impact on thinking about the deepest dilemmas of foreign policy and the prime movers in human society, inspired by his moral vision of the proper use of power and limits on its abuse." The late American historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., called him "Walter Lippmann's authentic heir."
Pfaff is the author of eight books on American foreign relations and contemporary history, including analyses of nationalism and political utopianism. His "Barbarian Sentiments," was a National Book Award finalist and winner of the city of Geneva's Prix Jean-Jacques Rousseau. A recent compendium of his columns on the early years of the war on terror, "Fear, Anger and Failure,'' was described by Russell Baker of The New York Times as "page after page, article after article what should have been said week after week [in Washington] as Bush's cheery civilian warriors marched us into the Middle East. Really splendid work." Peter Preston, former editor of London's The Guardian, reviewed the book under the title, "the man who was right."
Pfaff also writes for The New York Review of Books, and has contributed to Foreign Affairs, World Policy Journal, The National Interest, and to leading European political journals. For twenty years he was political essayist for The New Yorker magazine. He is the former deputy director of Hudson Research Europe in Paris, European affiliate of the well-known American policy research institute of the 1960s and 1970s. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a veteran of infantry and Special Forces service in the U.S. Army.
William Pfaff Samples
G-2 Talk Aside, U.S., China Hardly on Equal Footing
PARIS -- I have never understood the widely touted idea or assumption of China-U.S. equality or partnership or joint rule of the world or superpower-partnership that has dominated the press coverage of Barack Obama's trip to Asia.
The Demilitarization of the White House
PARIS -- I was very struck watching television coverage of President Barack Obama on his Asian trip. Where were the aides and orderlies and protocol people and staff who usually surround a high official?
A Possible New U.S. Option in Afghanistan: Getting Out With Grace
PARIS -- There are two tried and disproved methods for dealing with insurrection in a non-Western country. The first method is treat the insurrection as a conventional military challenge.
A Year With Obama -- and U.S. Foreign Relations Have Only Worsened
PARIS -- Who would have thought a year ago that most of the issues of conflict in America's foreign relations would be made worse during the first year following Barack Obama's election as U.S. president?
The New International Dialogue
MARRAKECH, Morocco -- The international conversation among foreign-policy makers and political specialists has since the cold war and the Second World War tended to be Anglophone and something of an American monologue.
Today's U.S. Army and Its Ambitions
PARIS -- It is possible that the creation of an all-professional American army was the most dangerous decision ever taken by Congress.
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