Epstein Secrets

to hard ones, even if the process takes some time. A moral argument can be made that monsters like Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya and Kim Jong-il in North Korea should be overthrown any way they can, as fast as we can, regardless of the risk of short-term chaos. But that reasoning quickly loses its appeal w

iddle East these dictators remain the exception to the rule, and this is why quasi monarchies of the iron-fisted Assad or the crazed and tyrannical Qaddafi are now under assault. THE PLACE where benevolent autocracy has struck deep and has systematic roots is Asia. Any discussion of whether and how de

required to hold the state together. To be sure, Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali neither ran police states on the terrifying scale of Libya's Qaddafi and Syria's Assad nor stifled economic progress with such alacrity. But while Mubarak and Ben Ali left their countries in conditions suitable for t

ing face. GOLDBERG: Let me flip this entirely around and ask: Why is containment not your policy? In the sense that we contained the Soviet Union, North Korea -- PRESIDENT OBAMA: It's for the reason I described -- because you're talking about the most volatile region in the world. It will not be tolerable

r. Some see similarities with Libya's civil war, during which persistent fears revolved around terrorist seizure of Libyan chemical weapons, or the Qaddafi regime's use of them against insurgents. Those fears turned out to be unfounded. But the Libyan chemical stockpile consisted of several tons of agi

state isn't what it used to be. Frightening problems still flourish. There's always the danger of being sucked into hellholes like Iran, Syria, and North Korea. The Middle East seems more explosive than ever. China now looms as the challenging superpower. At seminal moments in American history, the secreta

There was the good King Hussein, the wily but indispensable Arafat, the enigmatic yet much-courted Assad, the cruel Saddam, the crazy (like a fox) Qaddafi, and the plodding but reliable Mubarak. The United States built its policies on these men and their regimes without much regard to broader politica

security issues. The Obama administration has repeatedly said that it wants Beijing's help in dealing with the erratic nuclear-armed menace that is North Korea. The Chinese talk the language of shared responsibility in Sino-American meetings, but they never quite step up to the task of jointly solving prob

Erdogan was one of the first world leaders to call on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down, yet one of the last to ask the same of Libya's Qaddafi. In Syria, meanwhile, the Turkish government remains unable to let go of Bashar al-Assad: It has condemned the violence but not the perpetrator. T

to isolate regimes that defy the international community in specific ways. Along with most of the world, the E.U. has imposed sanctions on Iran and North Korea to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. On the other hand, it has been standard practice to maintain diplomatic and trading relations wit

hose domestic systems of governance we may dislike, aiming to encourage them over time to change their behavior. Indeed, in the case of Libya, the Qaddafi regime was brought in from the cold when, among other things, it abandoned its quest for weapons of mass destruction. Might Qaddafi have been broug