ABSTRACT

Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Calif.) doesn’t pretend to be a foreign policy expert. A former state assemblyman and onetime deputy district attorney who made his name prosecuting rapists, gang murderers, and drug dealers, Rogan, forty-three, has traveled outside the United States only once in his lifetime. But this is an age when politics can be local and global at the same time. Thus Rogan has sided with Armenians in an eightyfive-year-old historical dispute that threatens to disrupt U.S. relations with Turkey, one of America’s most staunch allies and a moderate, democratic bulwark against Islamic extremism.