Foreign Policy & War

Unleashing the Dogs of War

by Matthew Harwood February 1, 2020

Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss (New York: Crown, 2018); 752 pages. Even with power in the hands of a political philosopher and statesman who understood the rabid nature of war, President James Madison couldn’t help but embroil the young nation in a conflict it wasn’t ready for. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, his ...

U.S. Foreign-Policy Perpetual Perfidy

by James Bovard January 1, 2020

The Washington establishment was aghast in October when Donald Trump appeared to approve a Turkish invasion of northern Syria. The United States was seen as abandoning the Kurds, some of whom had assisted the United States in the fight against ISIS and other terrorist groups. But the indignation over the latest U.S. policy shift in the Middle East is ...

Wake-Up Call On The Syrian Border

by David Stockman October 23, 2019

Syria has been turned into the most wretched of neighborhoods on the planet by Washington’s neocons and liberal interventionists. From its pre-2011 population of 23 million, more than 6.7 million have fled to countries such as Lebanon (1 million), Jordan (700,000), Turkey (3.6 million), Europe and elsewhere. At the same time, more than 6.5 million Syrians are internal refugees, driven ...

Bravo Donald! A War Washington Might Finally Leave

by David Stockman October 17, 2019

Just when you think the Donald has lost his marbles completely, he pulls a rabbit of rationality out of the hat of Imperial Washington’s Forever Wars madness. We are referring, of course, to his sensible decision to decline the opportunity to put American soldiers in harms’ way in an impending showdown between Turks and Kurds on the northern border of ...

Guns for Hire

by John W. Whitehead October 4, 2019

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of ...

Monsters and U.S. Foreign Policy

by Laurence M. Vance October 1, 2019

It looks like the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity will be having some competition. The formation of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft was recently announced. The think tank gets its name from John Quincy Adams. According to the organization’s website, The Quincy Institute promotes ideas that move U.S. foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy ...

Insane and Ill-Advised: Trump’s Future War with Iran, Part 2

by Danny Sjursen September 1, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 Iran is an enigma to most American policymakers. Iranian foreign and defense policies, according to Kenneth Katzman, are “products of overlapping, and sometimes contradictory, motivations.” The key question is whether Iran is an expansionist, theocratic, Shia-chauvinist state, or a rational, defensive bulwark with only limited regional aspirations. While it is a bit of both, ...

Radio Hypocrisy

by Laurence M. Vance August 21, 2019

During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe (RFE) broadcast news, information, and U.S. government propaganda to Soviet satellite countries and Radio Liberty (RL) did the same to the Soviet Union. But although the Cold War has been over for 30 years, RFE/RL is still operating. According to the RFE/RL website, RFE/RL journalists report the news in 22 ...

The Real Korean Question

by Laurence M. Vance July 15, 2019

Last year in June, Donald Trump met with the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, in Singapore. Said Trump, We’re very proud of what took place today. I think our whole relationship with North Korea and the Korean Peninsula is going to be a very much different situation than it has been in the past. We ...

America’s Benevolent Bombing of Serbia

by James Bovard July 1, 2019

Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton commenced bombing Serbia in the name of human rights, justice, and ethnic tolerance. Approximately 1,500 Serb civilians were killed by NATO bombing in one of the biggest sham morality plays of the modern era. As British professor Philip Hammond recently noted, the 78-day bombing campaign “was not a purely military operation: NATO also ...

The Russians Are Coming!

by Christine Smith June 11, 2019

The Russians are coming! Sure they are, and the sky is falling too. Based on rhetoric, you'd think the United States government was now stealthily undermined by Russians. With never-ending allegations of Russian interference/collusion and even the absurd implication that the duly elected president might be a Russian agent, along with all the other continual anti-Russia references these days, the Red ...

America’s Legacy of Regime Change

by Stephen Kinzer June 1, 2019

Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War by Lindsey A. O’Rourke (Cornell University Press, 2018); 330 pages. For most of history, seizing another country or territory was a straightforward proposition. You assembled an army and ordered it to invade. Combat determined the victor. The toll in death and suffering was usually horrific, but it was all ...