and Mozambique, provide a chance for independence in Namibia, and somehow make white South Africans realize that change must come?

In the Muslim world, the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini’s radical fundamentalism had the Arab nations in a panic, and with good reason. Even the Grand Mosque in Mecca had been attacked, in November 1979, by extremists. Iran’s military drive into Iraq was raising the specter of a new and fearsome force across the world of Islam—from Marrakesh to Bangladesh.

In our own part of the world, I could see that President Reagan was giving sharper attention to the Caribbean and Central America as well as Canada and Mexico. U.S. foreign policy started in our own backyard: anything rotten there could infect the United States. So we must pay attention. AnotherVietnam: that’s what critics called U.S. support for El Salvador. Democracy in Central America was showing sparks of life, but setbacks there were too often magnified into an imperative for American disengagement. The Soviets observed our domestic discord with relish, expecting that an America divided in rancorous debate over emerging Marxist revolutionary movements to its south would be less inclined to act to contain Moscow’s advances elsewhere in the world.

Then there was Lebanon: there was no point in philosophizing over whether this country was a vital U.S. interest. A war was raging there, and war in the Middle East meant trouble for everybody. Only a few weeks earlier, the Israelis had launched an invasion into southern Lebanon and by now had beaten the Syrians back and had pinned