Preserving the New Peace - Michael Mandelbaum Expanding NATO east is unwise. It will not promote democracy or capitalism, and it is premature to assume Russian belligerence. But its risks and costs are understated. The Clinton administration has opened talks with Algeria's Islamic militants, the FIS, who will probably soon topple the current secular regime. Washington can best deal with radical Islam by largely ignoring it and letting fundamentalism burn itself out.
Time is actually on the West's side.
Faced with this diversity, the government has embarked on a course of Islamization to unify Sudan. Although popular dissatisfaction with the Islamic state runs deep, Hassan al-Turabi, the charismatic Islamic leader,and his followers are so well entrenched that it may be impossible to get them out, even with elections. The Oslo accord has failed. Battered by a wave of fundamentalist terrorism, Israelis are ready to elect a hard-line Likud government, while many frustrated Palestinians are spurning the PLO in favor of the Islamic extremists of Hamas. Locked in a political embrace, PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin are dragging each other down.