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
Greece's Balkan inheritance is heavy
PARIS -- The Balkans are historically apart from Europe for two reasons, one religious and the other political.
Elections could shift EU away from austerity, but should they?
PARIS -- The weekend elections in France and Greece seem widely to have been taken, at least on the European and American left, as a solution to the great European economic crisis.
Catholicism and the GOP: An awkward tango
PARIS -- A novel aspect of the Republican campaign for the party's presidential nomination has been the importance placed by some candidates, their admirers and some voters on the Catholic religion and certain claims to formal academic certificati...
French election's first round narrows the field
PARIS -- The French elections have settled one question, that of the two finalists for the presidency.
Scandals in China intensify possible Communist Party crisis
PARIS -- Events suggest that the long-overdue crisis of China's Communist Party has arrived. China's crisis, as I have argued in the past, is that of political legitimacy. All this makes for a history that cannot be dismissed.
An America in decline
PARIS -- Is the United States in decline? Well. Actually, the only people who can really say that are those who haven't been to Europe or the major Asian states recently, where everything works beautifully, even if Europe's debts are not paid off.
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