Foreign Policy & War

Can U.S. Foreign Policy Be Fixed?

by Laurence M. Vance January 3, 2011

The WikiLeaks revelations have shined a light on the dark nature of U.S. foreign policy. As Eric Margolis recently described it: “Washington’s heavy-handed treatment of friends and foes alike, its bullying, use of diplomats as junior-grade spies, narrow-minded views, and snide remarks about world leaders.” As much as I, an American, hate to say it, U.S. foreign policy ...

Why WikiLeaks Leaks Matter

by Sheldon Richman January 3, 2011

Why should anyone care about the secret diplomatic cables WikiLeaks has disclosed? So what if State Department bureaucrats say unflattering things about other world “leaders”? Some people may be asking those questions in response to WikiLeaks’s latest disclosures. Okay, they say, leaks about atrocities on the battlefield (such as the first WikiLeaks disclosure, the “Collateral Murder” video) tell us ...

Where Is the Tea Party Revolution on Foreign Policy?

by Stephen Kinzer January 1, 2011

America’s latest populist movement, which reaches back to revolutionary history by calling itself the “Tea Party,” helped shape the remarkable results of last November’s midterm election. Some dare to hope that candidates elected in that political uprising might help arrest America’s alarming decline. Others see the uprising as no more than a cover for the corporate power that lay ...

How Will the Empire End?

by Anthony Gregory January 1, 2011

Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope by Chalmers Johnson (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010); 212 pages. Most Americans would very likely deny that their government is a global empire, horribly destructive to national security, liberty, and wealth. But whatever we call this U.S. system of ubiquitous military bases, satellite regimes throughout the world, ever-growing “defense” budgets, and an ...

The Neoconservative Obama Administration

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2010

President Barack Obama was far from candid when he announced the end of combat operations in Iraq in August — 50,000 troops and a large number of mercenaries remain — but in his speech he did nothing to hide his neoconservative outlook on the American empire. This was not lost on leading neoconservatives, who tend to prefer Republicans. William Kristol, ...

TSA Intrusion Is One Price of Empire

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2010

How gratifying to see Americans increasingly angry at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for using offensive full-body scans and frisks in its latest production of what security expert Bruce Schneier calls “security theater.” The government would have us believe these measures are safe and effective, but its record for veracity is, to put it mildly, disgraceful. Meanwhile Schneier, an independent ...

The Falling American Empire

by Anthony Gregory December 1, 2010

American Empire before the Fall by Bruce Fein (Campaign for Liberty, 2010); 219 pages. The very notion that America has an empire is most taboo. No matter the party in power, pointing out the reality of U.S. imperialism rarely wins political points. Our country, land of the free, won independence from the British Empire, defeated the Nazi empire, and ...

Blood on His Hands

by Sheldon Richman November 15, 2010

As George W. Bush hawks his memoir, Decision Points, he seems especially driven to justify his decision to invade and occupy Iraq. He emphasizes how sickened he was at learning that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, though not too sick to kid about it at the White House correspondents’ dinner. While he refuses to say whether ...

U.S. Covert War Provokes Terrorism in Yemen

by Sheldon Richman November 2, 2010

The U.S. government and mainstream media continue to play dumb about threats to Americans from the Muslim world. After two Chicago-bound packages of explosive materials originating in Yemen were found in England and Dubai, White House homeland security and counterterrorism advisor John Brennan said, “We are trying to understand who is behind it....” President Obama added, “We will continue to ...

The Violence That Empire Engenders

by Matthew Harwood October 1, 2010

On May 1, a naturalized Pakistani-American left the United States a smoking surprise in Times Square meant to maim and murder indiscriminately. Fortunately the car bomb failed because a Senegalese Muslim T-shirt vendor sounded the alarm and because the bomb was ineptly designed. But as all acts of violence warrant, we should ask why. Was homegrown terrorist Faisal Shahzad’s ...

Terrorist Threat Has Roots in U.S. Policy

by Sheldon Richman September 28, 2010

“While al-Qaeda continues to threaten America directly, it also inspires its affiliates and other groups and individuals who share its violent ideology.... Homegrown terrorists represent a new and changing facet of the terrorist threat. To be clear, by ‘homegrown,’ I mean terrorist operatives who are U.S. persons and who were radicalized in the United States....” With those words Homeland Security ...

Leading Humanity Out of the Darkness, Part 4

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 21, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 During the entire 11 years of the sanctions on Iraq, the anger in the Middle East was simmering, not only among Iraqi parents but also among Muslims throughout the Middle East, who could only sit idly by and watch the deaths occur year after year. There ...