Mueller, RussiaGate, and the 2020 Elections

Posted by on Apr 13, 2019 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments In horror movies, the monster can usually be dispatched in only one way. A werewolf requires a silver bullet. A vampire will only stay dead with a stake through the heart. The Blob shrivels in contact with the icy cold. For many opponents of Donald Trump, the report by special counsel Robert Mueller was supposed to be the magic method of taking down the president. After all, like a movie monster,...
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It’s a Borderful World

Posted by on Jan 7, 2019 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments Nation-states: what a quaint notion. As a means of organizing territory, they seem to be a brief transition period between large empires and an even larger, borderless world. Sure, nation-states might live on in the form of anthems and flags and independence days, but the idea of fixed borders just doesn’t make sense in a world of cell phones, the Internet, and global assembly lines. Borders...
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What RussiaGate Skeptics Get Wrong

Posted by on Dec 20, 2018 in Articles, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments Imagine if the rightwing government of Shinzo Abe in Japan had interfered in the 2016 election in support of Donald Trump. Following which, Trump held a summit with Abe to endorse Japanese territorial claims in Asia as well as Abe’s efforts to remilitarize his country. The American Left would never countenance a rightwing Japanese nationalist interfering in American politics. But, of course,...
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Trump’s Dirty Money

Posted by on Aug 12, 2018 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments Marty Byrde has a problem. His partner at the financial services firm has been skimming off the top of the money-laundering service they’re providing a Mexican narcotrafficker. The drug dealer responds by killing Marty’s partner. He’s just about to put a bullet into Marty as well when, in desperation, the financial planner comes up with a cockamamie idea to move the money-laundering...
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The New New Cold War

Posted by on Apr 8, 2018 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe, Security | 0 comments When an epoch ends, as the Cold War did between 1989 and 1991, it takes some time to come up with a name for the new order. For some years, the world lived in a “post-Cold War” era. That phrase was supposed to capture the optimism of a new beginning as well as the uncertainty that accompanies any great transition. “Post-Cold War” didn’t last long. The horrors of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and...
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Trump’s Majoritarian Dream

Posted by on Apr 8, 2018 in Articles, Asia, Featured, Human Rights, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments Washington and New Dehli are having a mutual lovefest these days. Donald Trump is popular in India — where only 17 percent of the population considers the president “intolerant,” compared to a global average of 65 percent — and he has warmly welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House. Both leaders are eager to bump up bilateral security cooperation to the next...
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