After Trump

Posted by on Apr 13, 2019 in Articles, Featured, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments Donald Trump has shaken up U.S. foreign policy. Most of what he has done has been disastrous, like pulling America out of the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal. He has been erratic, unprincipled, aggressive, and unilateral. And yet, he has also created some interesting opportunities, sometimes inadvertently, that progressives should seize. The foreign policy elite has been challenged...
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Answering the Attacks on the Green New Deal

Posted by on Apr 6, 2019 in Articles, Featured, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments It’s become a common trope of the Trump era for columnists and commentators to attack the lunacy of the far right at the same time as castigating the “loony left.” These pundits, who usually place themselves in a comfortable “moderate” position, adopt a tone of consummate reasonableness. The president is certainly an idiot, they say, but it would be a mistake to respond with comparable...
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The Psychology of the Wall

Posted by on Apr 6, 2019 in Articles, Featured, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments Geopolitics, like thermodynamics, has its laws of conservation. If a wall comes down in one place, you can bet that it will go up somewhere else. It wasn’t long after the Berlin Wall fell that different kinds of walls went up in Eastern Europe. New borders separated the Czech Republic from Slovakia, and then, after much bloodshed, the new successor states of former Yugoslavia. By the end of the...
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Trump’s War on Intelligence

Posted by on Apr 6, 2019 in Articles, Featured, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments In the TV show Designated Survivor, Kiefer Sutherland plays a neophyte president, Tom Kirkman, who tries to bring decency and common sense to the Oval Office after a terrorist attack has wiped out most of the U.S. government. In one episode in the second season, President Kirkman is dealing with the loss of someone close to him. As a result, he has become distracted and indecisive. After a rebel...
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Venezuela: No to Intervention, No to Maduro

Posted by on Apr 4, 2019 in Articles, Featured, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments Thousands of people, mostly women, protested the food shortages in their country by banging on pots and pans as they marched in the streets. They loudly opposed the socialist policies of the government. The police eventually dispersed the protestors, but pressures on the government were mounting. In response, the government complained loudly about a U.S.-led policy of economic strangulation and...
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Trump Punts on Syria

Posted by on Apr 4, 2019 in Articles, Featured, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments Donald Trump wants to pull U.S. troops out of Syria as quickly as possible. Well, it’s Wednesday, so that’s what the president wants now. Tomorrow, who knows, maybe he’ll insist that Syria pay for the pullout. Maybe Trump will decide to hold a summit with Bashar al-Assad after deciding that the Syrian leader’s not such a bad guy after all, since he also doesn’t like the Islamic State...
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