ARTICLES
“The Forgotten War.”
Q & Aing with Ambassador John Evans. Last week The Scrum began video-recording a new series of question-and-answer exchanges with leading international relations experts, thinkers, and practitioners. Our first guest, I am pleased to say, was Ambassador John Evans. John’s learned and…
“Minimum wage mythologies.”
Fifty years of analytic scams. The Congressional Budget Office’s latest assessment on the impacts of President Biden’s proposed increase in the minimum wage to $15/hour, issued at the beginning of February, is both predictable and disappointing. While acknowledging that 27 million people…
“The great reset, part 2.”
An attempted corporate coup. Second of two parts. In their Reset primer, Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret consider what the post–Covid world might look like at various levels of civilization. While the authors frequently inject their vague and utopian hopes and wishes…
“The great reset.”
Neoliberalism 2.0. First of two parts. There are rumblings among the Right and Libertarian factions of Western politics about a horrific plan that Davos Man intends to unleash upon mankind: The Great Reset! While Western conservatives and libertarians depict this as some sort of globalist attempt…
“Sanctions and drift.”
America’s alienating addiction. Trans–Atlantic drift—the creeping alienation of Americans and Europeans—is nothing new. Certainly it predates Trump—let us be clear on this straightaway. Depending on how one counts, this problem extends back to the mid–Cold War decades, when the Continent…
Biden is Already Breaking Promises
Tony Blinken will be secretary of state with the élan and faux sophistication the nakedly bankrupt foreign policy requires if the U.S. pantomime is to be sustained another four years. It was inevitable that President Joe Biden would betray numerous…
“Our health care mess: Now what?”
The argument for an all-payer system. Among the numerous other disasters the Covid–19 pandemic has wrought, it has proven to be an existential threat to America’s largely employer-based health care provision. This long-established system has indisputably added greater weight to…
“Inauguration ruminations: A podcast.”
Where will Biden take us? Earlier today Jospeh R. Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Expectations, in some quarters, seem quite high, and nowhere is this truer than among the establishment media, where Donald Trump’s (no doubt…
“The Last Pragmatist.”
After Jim Baker, the triumphalists. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III. Doubleday. 720 pages. It did seem for a while that James Addison Baker III was in some danger…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Diplomacy of No Diplomacy
We now watch as Biden and his foreign policy people effectively allow Israel to dictate the conditions under which the president can fulfill his campaign promise on Iran. A return to diplomacy: Let us hold this thought up to the light….