Skip to content

Peter Beinart

Editor-at-Large, The New Republic

Peter Beinart has been at The New Republic since 1999, where he is a journalist and editor-at-large. He is also a contributor to Time magazine and writes a monthly column for the Washington Post. Beinart graduated in 1993 from Yale University, where he was a member of the Yale Political Union. In 1995, he received his MA in international relations from Oxford University, which he attended on a Rhodes Scholarship. Critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war and its aftermath, Beinart was nonetheless a vocal supporter of the war itself, defending that position on the PBSshow Buying The War, with Bill Moyers. However, in Beinart's book, The Good Fight: Why Liberals-and Only Liberals-Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again (2006), which he expanded from an essay as a guest scholar at The Brookings Institution, he renounced his position, claiming that if he'd known then what he knows now about the capitulation of the War on Terror, he wouldn't have supported it in the first place. Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

America's Place in the World

Might does not make right.

▸

2 min

—

with

American Empire

We need to restore our stature among other nations.

▸

2 min

—

with

Writing should be judged by its quality, not its venue.

▸

2 min

—

with

Global Governance

Institutions of global governance need to be reformed.

▸

2 min

—

with

U.S. Foreign Policy

We need to manage globalization more equitably.

▸

2 min

—

with

American Identity

The US is wholly unique culture that has grown out of an enlightened liberal tradition.

▸

4 min

—

with

The Media Today

Media failed us in the lead up to the Iraq War.

▸

6 min

—

with

Re: Who has the power in Washington?

Ultimately, the people have the power.

▸

2 min

—

with

Re: Is the American political system broken?

Not broken but not working as well as it should.

▸

2 min

—

with

A moment like 1969.

▸

2 min

—

with

Peter Beinart Exposes the Republican Paradox

Freedom according to Peter Beinart.

▸

3 min

—

with

A not so formidable foe.

▸

4 min

—

with

Democracy is essentially a good thing

Democracy is essentially a good thing for the world.

▸

3 min

—

with

Re: How do we make America secure?

America’s obligation to protect other countries and vice versa.

▸

3 min

—

with

The Struggle of Writing

The challenges of imposing intellectual order on human actions.

▸

3 min

—

with

Re: What were the surprises that came out of your Socrates experience?

Although people don’t feel that their lives have been directly changed by the Iraq war, they do feel that it changed their perception of the government, and of America’s role […]

▸

1 min

—

with

Re: In wartime, does trust in the executive strengthen or weaken democracy?

Excessive trust in executive power can be dangerous.

▸

2 min

—

with

Re: How do presidents learn from defeat without easily acknowledge it?

Presidents who take power in a time when Americans are feeling disillusioned, or in some way defeated must be naturally good at restoring American sense of self-confidence.

▸

2 min

—

with

Re: Did WWII breed the overconfidence that led to Vietnam?

“It is an important part of the story that America had . . . that you had a period preceding those wars of enormous success Ã¯Â¿Â½ both relative prosperity at […]

▸

2 min

—

with