Harper's Magazine May 2025

New World Order It’s hard to argue with Anatol Lieven’s observations about the demise of the liberal order [“The Mask of Imperialism,” Easy Chair, March]. After the United States expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in early 1991 and the Soviet Union collapsed later that year, the American foreignpolicy community, composed primarily of liberal internationalists, sought to redeem the world. This resulted in a series of catastrophic failures that have sapped the United States of both its resources and its credibility. Yet in drawing what is by now a rather pedestrian conclusion about the changing world order amid the past thirty years of American overreach, Lieven makes one particularly dubious assertion. It’s unclear why he identifies the war in Gaza and Israel’s attacks on Beirut as the death knells of the…

For the first and very likely the last time in my life, I’m appearing on a prime-time talk show. In Bulgaria. I’m in the capital, Sofia, for a festival, and before I arrived I was sent an article: “Does Bulgarian Literature Have a Place Within World Literature?” The author, Amelia Licheva, also an organizer of the festival, expresses her concern that “Bulgarian literature is far too national, provincial even.” It doesn’t “tackle global issues.” So here we go. The cameras turn to me, and after a few preliminary questions, the host asks: “Mr. Parks, you’re English, but you’ve lived many years in Italy, you write for American journals, you translate, you know the international scene. Tell me, how can our Bulgarian literature survive in an English-speaking world?” I’m thrown. Does…

Percentage of Americans who consider Canada a U.S. ally : 82 Percentage of Canadians who consider the United States a Canadian ally : 33 Portion of Americans who say that the United States should “take control of” Canada : 1/4 Portion of Canadians who say that California, Oregon, and Washington should “become part of” Canada : 1/3 Percentage increase this year in sales of the Canadian flag by Flags Unlimited, one of Canada’s largest flag manufacturers : 100 Average salary cut that a Democrat would take in order to have an employer with liberal views : $1,700 That a Republican would take in order not to have a liberal employer : $1,600 Percentage of Americans who said their sympathies lay more with Palestinians than with Israelis in 2013 : 12…

[Essay] THE TSADIK, THE ROSHE, AND THE UGLY By Isaac Bashevis Singer, from an essay that appears for the first time in English in Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: A Spiritual Reappraisal, 1946– 1955, a collection of his pseudonymous essays for the Yiddish newspaper Forverts that was published in March by White Goat Press. Translated from the Yiddish by David Stromberg. There are some concepts that modern society believes to be thoroughly unscientific and vague. Among them are the concepts of the righteous and the wicked. For our grandparents these concepts were both clear and concrete. Haman was wicked and Mordecai was righteous. Informers in the shtetl were wicked, and Jews who prayed, studied, fasted, were honest, and gave to charity were considered righteous. These two concepts were as clear…

Six years had passed since I had last been to the West Bank, and ten years since I had lived there. A lot had changed in my absence. Ramallah had once felt like a small town. When I returned last November, it was, without doubt, a city. Whole neighborhoods had materialized, and the streets seemed denser, packed with more and flashier shops offering varieties of high-end Western consumer goods that would have once been unobtainable: cappuccinos and croissants, designer sunglasses, North Face jackets and Timberland boots. There was a fancy new pastry shop called Crumbs, and the joke was almost too obvious: this is what the Palestinian elite was settling for. For the first few days, I found myself disoriented. The map I held in my memory no longer matched…

Friday afternoon, June 15, KhanYounis: The Khan Younis refugee camp is a dense, gray, concrete shantytown, the black waters from sewers running in thin rivulets down the middle of alleys. There are no gardens or trees. There is no place for children to play, other than the dunes in front of the neighboring Israeli settlements. Vendors in small, dingy stalls sell roasted corn on the cob or falafel. Hunks of meat hang on giant hooks, alongside wooden tables piled with tomatoes, potatoes, green peppers, and green beans. During the rains the camp floods with wastewater. Crude septic tanks, called percolating pits, lie outside homes, covered only by a thin layer of sand. When the pits overflow, the dirty water may slosh into the dwellings. The drinking water, which often does…