Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.

20th Century Horrors, Exhumed

Los Angeles Times
August 15, 2004
(Review of The Stone Fields: An Epitah for the Living. By Courtney Angela Brkic)

It used to be that a young American, seeking adventure or enlightenment, would join the Peace Corps and, after two years in a distant locale, return home with an abundance of exotic memories ... (Read more)

The Quiet Tycoon

What is life like for a man who is worth $4 billion and controls as much oil as ExxonMobil? My profile of Vagit Alekperov, the president of Lukoil, is the cover story of this week’s New York Times Magazine. The article ... (Read more)

The Triumph of the Quiet Tycoon: Vagit Alekperov Has Figured Out How to Beat the System — You Just Play by Putin’s Rules

The New York Times Magazine
August 2, 2004

Pity, if you can, the richest man in Russia. With a fortune estimated at $15 billion, Mikhail Khodorkovsky is on trial for fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion and faces a 10-year jail term. His oil company, Yukos, has been hit with a tax bill of $3.4 billion, ... (Read more)

A Bad Barrel

If you want to understand how the abuses occurred at Abu Ghraib, the best explanation is contained in a story in today’s New York Times. The story recounts a 1971 experiment at Stanford University in which 24 ... (Read more)

The Things We Carry

Gizmodo, the tech website, wanted to know what gadgets journalists carry in warzones. Here’s my answer.

What’s In Your Gadget Bag? A War Correspondent’s Digital Gear

Gizmodo
May 3, 2004

Although we started out aiming for other topics, Gizmodo being what it is, we tended toward the technical, and ended up asking accomplished war correspondent Peter Maass something very much like “What’s in your Gadget Bag?” Which is fine, but it’s the stories ... (Read more)

Watching North Korea

For anyone interested in updates on North Korea, a CNN journalist, Rebecca Mackinnon, has started a new website, NKzone, which tracks developments there and includes a useful variety of links and discussions.

Over Iraq, the Army Takes on the Marines

In today’s Washington Post, an Army lieutenant colonel writes a lengthy opinion piece criticizing an embryonic Marine policy to use a “velvet gloves” approach in the Sunni Triangle, in contrast ... (Read more)

The Counterinsurgent

John Nagl was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University who wrote his PhD thesis about counter-insurgency. He read every classic book on the issue, his favorite being T.E. Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” which warns that fighting a guerrilla war is “messy and slow, like eating ... (Read more)

The Counterinsurgent: Could Major John Nagl Make His Ideas Work on the Ground in Iraq?

The New York Times Magazine
January 11, 2004

Maj. John Nagl approaches war pragmatically and philosophically, as a soldier and a scholar. He graduated close to the top of his West Point class in 1988 and was selected as a Rhodes scholar. He studied international relations at Oxford for two years, then ... (Read more)