If you’re in the market for a troika of tyranny, Donald Trump, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo certainly fit the bill. Or, if you’d rather focus on countries not individuals, you might single out Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt as the three most likely candidates. Perhaps, if you’re in a confessional mood,… Continue reading Bolton and the Troika of Tyranny
Donald Trump has shaken up U.S. foreign policy. Most of what he has done has been disastrous, like pulling America out of the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal. He has been erratic, unprincipled, aggressive, and unilateral. And yet, he has also created some interesting opportunities, sometimes inadvertently, that progressives should seize. The… Continue reading After Trump
It’s become a common trope of the Trump era for columnists and commentators to attack the lunacy of the far right at the same time as castigating the “loony left.” These pundits, who usually place themselves in a comfortable “moderate” position, adopt a tone of consummate reasonableness. The president is certainly an idiot, they say,… Continue reading Answering the Attacks on the Green New Deal
Geopolitics, like thermodynamics, has its laws of conservation. If a wall comes down in one place, you can bet that it will go up somewhere else. It wasn’t long after the Berlin Wall fell that different kinds of walls went up in Eastern Europe. New borders separated the Czech Republic from Slovakia, and then, after… Continue reading The Psychology of the Wall
In the TV show Designated Survivor, Kiefer Sutherland plays a neophyte president, Tom Kirkman, who tries to bring decency and common sense to the Oval Office after a terrorist attack has wiped out most of the U.S. government. In one episode in the second season, President Kirkman is dealing with the loss of someone close… Continue reading Trump’s War on Intelligence
Thousands of people, mostly women, protested the food shortages in their country by banging on pots and pans as they marched in the streets. They loudly opposed the socialist policies of the government. The police eventually dispersed the protestors, but pressures on the government were mounting. In response, the government complained loudly about a U.S.-led… Continue reading Venezuela: No to Intervention, No to Maduro
Donald Trump wants to pull U.S. troops out of Syria as quickly as possible. Well, it’s Wednesday, so that’s what the president wants now. Tomorrow, who knows, maybe he’ll insist that Syria pay for the pullout. Maybe Trump will decide to hold a summit with Bashar al-Assad after deciding that the Syrian leader’s not such… Continue reading Trump Punts on Syria
You know the story: the globalists want your guns. They want your democracy. They’re hovering just beyond the horizon in those black helicopters. They control the media and Wall Street. They’ve burrowed into a deep state that stretches like a vast tectonic plate beneath America’s fragile government institutions. They want to replace the United States… Continue reading The New World Order Is Here
“Get me outta here.” At the recent G20 meeting in Argentina, Donald Trump was on the world’s stage when he muttered this aside to an aide. He was supposed to be getting ready for a photo op with the other global leaders at the conclusion of the meeting. And, after some confusion, Trump eventually did… Continue reading Trump Turns the G20 into the G19
Nation-states: what a quaint notion. As a means of organizing territory, they seem to be a brief transition period between large empires and an even larger, borderless world. Sure, nation-states might live on in the form of anthems and flags and independence days, but the idea of fixed borders just doesn’t make sense in a… Continue reading It’s a Borderful World
You’ve done enough escape rooms to know the drill by now. You are escorted into what seems like an ordinary room. There’s a table and a chair. On the table is a book. As soon as you step across the threshold, the door closes behind you. You hear the lock click into place. You are… Continue reading Welcome to the Ultimate Escape Room
In his recent speeches and articles, Bernie Sanders has been talking about forming a Progressive International. It’s about time. The alt-right, thanks in part to Steve Bannon, has formed an international network centered in Europe on the National Front in France and the Northern League in Italy. Authoritarian leaders from Vladimir Putin in Russia to… Continue reading Bernie Sanders and a Progressive International
Russia, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia are the latest members of a select international club. Assassins Without Borders has roots that go back, in the modern era at least, to the policies of the Soviet Union, Chile, Israel, Bulgaria, and the United States. All of these countries share a single trait. They were willing to… Continue reading Assassins without Borders
The news that Canada has caved on trade has me depressed. The glee with which Donald Trump has announced his latest “victory” is galling. Sure, he didn’t force Mexico and Canada to do everything he wanted in the NAFTA replacement. But he certainly can claim a public-relations coup. And his supporters in Congress are milking… Continue reading Do Bullies Always Win?
Donald Trump is the epitome of irrational exuberance. You might remember that phrase from the 1990s. Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve at the time, was describing how the tech boom was creating a bubble by generating enthusiasm way out of proportion to the actual value of the new companies. Such an unwarranted… Continue reading There’s a New Crash Coming
John McCain was an American politician. That sums up his best and worst qualities. He was not a maverick. As a rather conventional politician, he wasn’t even particularly courageous or much of a straight talker. He represented establishment values as the establishment tilted ever rightward. And yet, in comparison to what passes for political orthodoxy… Continue reading Who’s the Real Maverick: Trump or McCain?
Donald Trump has many enemies. And he has long had an enemies list: all the people that he has attacked repeatedly in person, in print, and on Twitter. But now Trump, as president, has drawn up a formal enemies list. At the top is John Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency who… Continue reading What Trump Means by the Deep State
It’s embarrassing enough to have Donald Trump as president. But now American citizens have to endure the additional pain of the sanctions that other countries are imposing on the United States. Doesn’t the world realize that we’re suffering enough as it is? That seems so grossly unfair. Oh, but wait: that’s how sanctions work. Iraqis… Continue reading Wait, You’re Sanctioning Us?
Tucker Carlson has impeccable conservative credentials. He started out as a low-level staffer at the Heritage Foundation and now he hosts a popular show on Fox News. In between were stints at The Weekly Standard and the on-line publication he co-founded, The Daily Caller. His often contentious prime-time show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, which now occupies… Continue reading The War Before the Iran War
As presidencies approach their midpoints, pundits begin the inevitable search for that elusive creature: the doctrine. It’s often a quixotic quest, since presidents rarely boil down their foreign-policy visions — if they even have them — to some pithy essence. Then there’s Donald Trump. Conjuring up the current president’s foreign-policy doctrine is like arguing that… Continue reading The Flight 93 Doctrine
Right-wing populists are all the rage these days. Donald Trump and his spleen control the White House, while his counterparts have taken over in Italy, Hungary, Poland, Colombia, India, and elsewhere. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former Svengali, hopes to inspire a worldwide revolution of nationalism-inflected right-wing extremism. But what about left-wing populists? Bernie Sanders made an epic run… Continue reading Bernies of the World, Unite!
In the wake of the disastrous G7 meeting in Canada and the successful summit in Singapore, it’s hard to know what to call U.S. foreign policy these days. It’s not just unilateralism, where Washington acts alone and allies be damned. Nor is it merely unipolarism, in which the United States targets all hegemonic challengers in… Continue reading Trump’s Unileaderism
Imagine a trio of tech-savvy and entrepreneurial souls on the prowl for the next killer app. They’re staying up late in their dorm, or perhaps they’re celebrating at a nightclub after finishing their MBA program. They want to make money. They want to change the world. They want to create something that gets snatched up… Continue reading The Disrupters-in-Chief
Gina Haspel is a consummate professional who has served the U.S. intelligence community with distinction for more than 30 years. As the Trump administration’s nominee to head up the Central Intelligence Agency, Haspel has received endorsements from six former CIA directors, three former directors of national intelligence, and two former secretaries of state. It would be hard… Continue reading The Banality of Haspel
The gloves are off in the White House now that Mike Pompeo is slated to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. Whatever restraining influence Tillerson had on the president – and, frankly, it was minimal – Donald Trump is now about to veer headlong into the “dark side” of foreign policy, much as the… Continue reading With Tillerson Out, Trump’s Bringing Foreign Policy Deeper Into the Dark Side
Five hundred years ago, a popular test to flush out witches was called “ordeal by water.” Dunk an alleged witch into a lake. If she sinks, she’s innocent. If she floats, her guilt is plain for all to see and she can be safely burned at the stake. By this ancient form of waterboarding, witch… Continue reading Hunting Witches in Washington
Welcome back, Gog and Magog. I can’t say that I’ve missed you. You might remember the Gog and Magog story from 2003, when George W. Bush was making plans to invade Iraq and assembling a “coalition of the willing.” French President Jacques Chirac was quite unwilling, so Bush went to great lengths to break down… Continue reading Oh, Magog!
As a candidate, Donald Trump enjoyed pillorying the globalists. “We will no longer surrender this country, or its people, to the false song of globalism,” he said in his first major speech on foreign policy in April 2016. By globalists, he first of all meant rival Hillary Clinton, who represented the face of American internationalism as a… Continue reading Big Surprise: Rich Globalists Love Trump
Evil is a popular topic in Hollywood, from The Evil Dead franchise to Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies. But evil makes only the occasional cameo in the U.S. policy realm. In the early 1990s, the topic of evil became buzz-worthy in the wake of the Cold War’s collapse as pundits and policymakers tried to understand the unfolding… Continue reading Dr. Evil’s First Year in Office
The United States has never invaded Norway. It has never bombed Oslo. It has never rounded up Norwegians and thrown them in Guantanamo. Perhaps some U.S. diplomats have referred to the country as a “shithole” — because the food’s rather bland and the nightlife rather staid — but the important thing is that the United… Continue reading A Foreign Policy of Sticks and Stones