Part Field Notes from a Catastrophe, part 1984, part World War Z, John Feffer’s striking new dystopian novel, takes us deep into the battered, shattered world of 2050. The European Union has broken apart. Multiethnic great powers like Russia and China have shriveled. America’s global military footprint has virtually disappeared and the United States remains… Continue reading Splinterlands
In 2012-13, as part of an Open Society Foundation fellowship, I re-interviewed many of the people I talked to in 1990 when I traveled for seven months through East-Central Europe. Twenty-three years later, I also interviewed a wide range of additional people in order to get as broad a picture as possible of what has… Continue reading Full Interview List
When monsters square off, they are quick to showcase their asymmetrical superpowers. Take Godzilla, for instance. Thanks to U.S. atomic testing in the Pacific, the dinosaur-like sea creature has explosive, radioactive breath that can destroy everything in its path. His archenemy Rodan, meanwhile, is a pterodactyl-like bird that can fly at supersonic speeds, a skill… Continue reading The New Cold War of Rocks vs. Chips
In a fit of pique, Donald Trump recently scaled back the big annual military exercise between the United States and South Korea. He would have canceled it altogether if the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield training hadn’t already started. The U.S. president cited as the reasons for his action the cost of the exercise and that… Continue reading Is Donald Trump Good for the Korean Peninsula
Remember that photo from Donald Trump’s first overseas trip as a president back in 2017? The new president was in Riyadh. Instead of going to Europe or Japan or Canada, Trump was making his first presidential trip to Saudi Arabia. And there he was, at the opening of a new World Center for Countering Extremist… Continue reading Another Blow against Pax Americana
In September 2025, Donald Trump designated “antifa” a domestic terror organization. Last month, his administration went one step further by declaring that the “extreme left” had developed the antifa network into a global threat. Marco Rubio announced at a press conference on July 16 that Antifa militants and their comrades travel from across Europe and… Continue reading The Myth of a Global Antifa
About 3,300 years ago, in the region around the Mediterranean, civilization collapsed. That’s what the archaeological record shows: the spectacular disappearance of a number of thriving cultures in Greece, Anatolia, and the Middle East. The Minoan palaces, with their astonishing frescoes of acrobats jumping over bulls, fell into ruins. Cyprus, at the crossroads of late… Continue reading We Are the Marauders
The Trump administration is doing everything it can to get rid of what it considers to be “undesirable” people. The administration has removed temporary protected status (TPS) for more than a million people from over a dozen countries. It is sending people back to active war zones in Sudan and Somalia. It is deporting people… Continue reading Trump’s War at Home
Imagine a public event 50 years from now in Kyiv. The convener speaks to the assembled crowd. “Before we begin,” she says, “I just want to say that we acknowledge that we are standing on and benefiting from land that has been seized, expropriated, and stolen from the Ukrainian people. For thousands of years, this… Continue reading Ukraine and the Spirit of Red Cloud
The Trump administration concluded a recent mineral deal with Kazakhstan that, not surprisingly, enriches not only Trump’s own family but that of his secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick. Trump’s two eldest sons, part owners of Dominari Securities, are set to profit from the Kazakh tungsten deal. So is Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm run by… Continue reading Trump Enrichment Syndrome
Donald Trump has always considered himself exceptional—that is, an exception to the rules. As a tycoon, he has demonstrated that multiple bankruptcies and an utter contempt for business associates have not hindered his accumulation of wealth. As a politician, he has shown that the same outrageous statements and scandals that have sunk other careers have… Continue reading Trump Trapped
It has long been the dream of the U.S. foreign policy elite to bring Japan and South Korea into a tighter alliance. Notoriously dismissive of history, American leaders don’t understand why the two countries can’t just overcome their past differences. For these Americans, the imperative of strengthened security in the region is so much more… Continue reading Japan and South Korea: An Alliance of Middle Powers