Foreign Policy & War

Domestic Fear Is the Price of Empire

by Sheldon Richman February 25, 2015

If you find no other argument against American intervention abroad persuasive, how about this one? When the U.S. government invades and occupies other countries, or when it underwrites other governments' invasions or oppression, the people in the victimized societies become angry enough to want and even to exact revenge -- against Americans. Is the American empire worth that price? We should ask ...

Foreign Policy Failure Everywhere

by Sheldon Richman February 17, 2015

If one tried to design a foreign policy to embroil Americans in endless conflicts that would otherwise be quite remote, one could hardly do better than recent presidents of the United States. What could you do that these men have not done to keep Americans mired in distant turmoil? Signs of apparent failure abound while the ruling elite feigns ignorance of the connection between U.S. ...

Brian Williams Helped Pave the Way to War

by Sheldon Richman February 10, 2015

The scandal of the week is NBC anchor Brian Williams’s shabby bid for self-glorification by falsely claiming he was in a U.S. military helicopter forced to land in the Iraqi desert after being hit by ground fire in 2003. Of course so-called news people shouldn’t make up stuff to look good, but there’s something much worse: uncritically passing along ...

States, United States: America’s James Bond Complex

by Sheldon Richman February 4, 2015

Today, American politicians of both major parties — conservatives, “moderates,” and so-called liberals alike — insist that the United States is an “exceptional,” even “indispensable” nation. In practice, this means that for the United States alone the rules are different. Particularly in international affairs, it — the government and its personnel — can do whatever deemed necessary to carry ...

The Libertarian Angle: American Sniper Revisited

by Future of Freedom Foundation February 2, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the debate continues over the smash hit movie American Sniper. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

The American Sniper Was No Hero

by Sheldon Richman January 28, 2015

Portuguese Despite what some people think, hero is not a synonym for competent government-hired killer. If Clint Eastwood’s record-breaking movie, American Sniper, launches a frank public conversation about war and heroism, the great director will have performed a badly needed service for the country and the world. This is neither ...

The Libertarian Angle: American Sniper

by Future of Freedom Foundation January 26, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the hit movie American Sniper. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

TGIF: The Open Society and Its Worst Enemies

by Sheldon Richman January 16, 2015

Last week’s bloody events in Paris demonstrate yet again that a noninterventionist foreign policy, far from being a luxury, is an urgent necessity -- literally a matter of life and death. A government that repeatedly wages wars of aggression — the most extreme form of extremism — endangers the society it ostensibly protects by gratuitously making enemies, some of whom will seek revenge against ...

Understanding the Paris Violence

by Sheldon Richman January 14, 2015

Contrary to American officialdom and its stalwart “manufacturers of consent” — the intelligentsia and mainstream media — we will never comprehend the reasons for the slaughter of 17 innocent people in Paris as long as we ignore the history of Western violence against the Muslim world. Perpetrators and cheerleaders of Western violence stifle discussion of what motivates young Muslims to ...

L’affaire Charlie Hebdo and Western Colonialism

by John V. Walsh January 14, 2015

To understand the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week, we need only invert George W. Bush’s 2005 mantra*, thus: “They will continue to attack us over here so long as we slaughter them by the millions over there.” In a word, this is one more instance of blowback, as Ron Paul tells us in his perceptive essay, “

The Libertarian Angle: The War in Afghanistan

by Future of Freedom Foundation January 5, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the continuing saga that is Afghanistan. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

The Libertarian Angle: Foreign Policy Blowback and Police Tyranny

by Future of Freedom Foundation December 8, 2014

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: foreign blowback and police tyranny . The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.