A project of the MA program of NYU’s Department of Politics Issue 1, Spring 2008 Editor’s Note A Message from the founding Editorial Staff of the Journal of Political Inquiry Essays Walter Gindin Anticipating the Failure of Containment Policy to Deny Iran the Bomb: The Justification (and Need) for a Paradigm Shift in U.S. Foreign Policy Andrey Tomashevskiy Balancing Power? An Empirical Test of Realist Theories of Alignment Najada Tafili Consolidation of Democracy: The Albanian Case  Adam Stern Pakistan: A Strange and Vital Bedfellow   Reviews Patrick Frost Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman and Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism by George Weigel   Basel Hamdan The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt   These essays represent the views of the individual authors and not of New York University, the Department of Politics or the MA Program.