John Kerry’s last hurrah: With the Syrian cease-fire, the secretary of state takes a parting swipe at Russophobia
The cease-fire ends his successful skirmish with the Pentagon, but the war will grind on long after Kerry is gone Secretary of State John Kerry now gives us another “cessation of hostilities” agreement — a not-quite-cease-fire — as signed with…
War in the media age: Hysteria over Trump’s supposed Russian ties made headlines, but the “story” is remarkably flimsy
A case study in how a co-opted press manufactures foreign policy consent From one week to the next, I note with mounting anxiety the media’s habit of using innuendo, loaded suggestion, assemblages of proximate facts, implication short of assertion and omission…
Bashing Trump Is Easy. Seeing His Foreign Policy Is Smart Takes Guts
Is Donald Trump “dangerous,” as 50 G.O.P. national security “experts” asserted in an open letter—the second this year—published last week? Would he be “the most reckless president in American history,” as they also warned? Jeffrey Goldberg calls Trump “a de…
About those “experts”: Take a close look at the foreign policy insiders denouncing Trump
The possibility of a true outsider upending Washington’s unspoken consensus has thrown elites into hysteria This latest open letter from 50 Republican “national security experts,” wherein Donald Trump is denounced as “dangerous” among many other things, is simply too much. One does…
4 More Foreign Policy Challenges that Clinton Could Botch
Hillary Clinton threw down a gauntlet worthy of a medieval knight when she attacked Donald Trump’s foreign policy competence in her much-noted speech in San Diego a couple of months ago. She bragged that she was the voice of experience…
The West escalates with Russia: Make no mistake, a second Cold War is now official NATO policy
NATO’s aggressive posture towards Russia sets a dangerous course for Obama’s successor There have been 22 NATO summits since the first convened in Paris 59 years ago. If you study the chronology, they are more frequent during those times the…
Our Syria policy is still a mess: These are the dots the media refuses to connect
Russia’s foreign minister reveals a strange talk with John Kerry, and explains much about American foreign policy MOSCOW—Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s widely respected foreign minister, dropped a big one here last weekend. After an hour-long conversation with John Kerry, Lavrov asserted…
Why It’s Time to Rethink Our Pointless Standoff with Russia
The following column was filed June 5, 2016, and not published. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s widely respected foreign minister, dropped a big one here over the weekend. After an hourlong conversation with John Kerry Friday, Lavrov asserted in nationally televised remarks…
We can’t have more of the same: The very real dangers of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy
Trump may well be dangerous. But know what you’re getting with Hillary: American hegemony that’s hated worldwide Just what we needed: another foreign policy speech from Candidate Clinton. This one arrived last Thursday in San Diego—well-chosen ground, given the Navy’s…
“This will stop only when the American people get fed up”: American exceptionalism, the New York Times, and our foreign policy after Barack Obama
Our smartest modern military historian explains to Salon what’s wrong about our adventures in the Middle East Part one of my interview with Andrew Bacevich, the soldier-turned-scholar who has just published “America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military…
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