An Interview With Stephen Kinzer
The award-winning foreign correspondent and author of The True Flag speaks on the 120-year history of American intervention in the world. When I started reading The True Flag, Stephen Kinzer’s latest book, I got only a few pages in before thinking, “I’ve read him…
Trump’s Climate Fail: Another Loss for American Leadership
President Trump put more than progress on climate change in jeopardy when he reversed the previous administration’s clean-energy policies on Tuesday. With a signature on an executive order, he put America’s global leadership more seriously at risk than at any…
Trump’s Next Challenge: Russia Returns to Afghanistan
America’s 16-years in Afghanistan has so far resulted in 2,216 dead soldiers, 20,049 casualties, and an estimated $800 billion in direct war costs — not including veterans’ health and pension payments that could reach $400 billion before it’s all over….
Trump, Russia, and the Return of Scapegoating, a Timeless American Tradition
Our bipartisan tendency to blame others for our own failures will be the cause of American decline. Now that the intelligence chiefs’ report on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election is available in expurgated form—and we have no reason…
The Militarization of Diplomacy and Other Corruptions of US Empire
In part two of our interview, former ambassador Chas Freeman gives a master class in foreign policy. Part one of my interview with Chas Freeman, the retired diplomat who served in senior posts at State and Defense over a career…
The Russian Blitzkrieg on Aleppo Is a Direct Challenge to Washington
The Syrian cease-fire was already in tatters. But the new offensive is also early preparation for a hawkish Clinton presidency. What are we to make of events in Syria now that Secretary of State Kerry’s latest (and very possibly last)…
Trump Is the Wrong Messenger, But He’s Raised Some of the Right Issues
Donald Trump is never short of controversial remarks and highly unlikely policy positions, but his recent ventures into foreign affairs have prompted unusually sharp reactions even by Trump’s standards. First came a scathing open letter from 120-odd Republican national security…
Why US Companies Are Left Out as Iran Gets Back to Business
It’s hard to say who pounced more quickly, the Iranians or the rest of the world, when punishing international sanctions were lifted last month. In a matter of days, the Islamic Republic is back in business. As expected, the European…
Donald Trump’s biggest crime is his honesty: How he exposes the sickening rot at the core of the GOP
Republicans have spent decades dressing up fear as courage, pretending at seriousness while advancing hysteria. Many of us cast last week’s Republican debate in Cleveland as entertainment—I have heard the thought repeated many times—but this seems to me a cheap…
Reinventing the Foreign Correspondent
Between 1990 and 2004, three years before he died at 74, Ryszard Kapuściński gave a series of lectures around Europe. These shared a theme that suggests a late-in-life preoccupation. A half-dozen of Kapuściński’s talks were published posthumously (in 2008) as…
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