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On Foreign Policy, Romney More Like Nixon than His Own Father
Tweet Share on Facebook October 13, 2011 Comment (2)To reject Mitt Romney as a presidential candidate solely on the basis of his faith is to be in contempt of the First Amendment. To do so for the content of his foreign policy address last week, however, is perfectly acceptable.
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Washington's China Debate Is About Caricature, Not Reality
Tweet Share on Facebook October 7, 2011 Comment (2)Recent posts on the National Interest's website offer divergent yet refreshingly sober-minded assessments of China's growing assertiveness in Asia. Bruce Gilley, an assistant professor of political science at Portland State University, argues that a red tide of nationalism within the increasingly modern Chinese military, to say nothing of the country's netroots, makes some kind of conflict with the West likely. Gilley expects Xi Jinping, the senior apparatchik who is expected to become China's president within the next few years, will side with the military in response to challenges at home and abroad and is not prone to conciliation with the U.S. or Asia.
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U.S.'s Diminishing Influence in the Middle East
Tweet Share on Facebook September 29, 2011 Comment (6)You can't lose what you never had.
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The Danger of China Myopia in Washington
Tweet Share on Facebook September 22, 2011 Comment (2)On Monday I attended a lecture given by John Mearsheimer, the eminent political scientist and foreign affairs specialist. It was hosted by a group called the Committee for the Republic, which stands in plucky opposition to American empire. It was held at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Victorian manor just off Washington's Dupont Circle, and it was attended by about a hundred concerned citizens, including businessmen, lawyers, journalists, and activists.
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In Arab Spring, Foreign Militaries Make Unreliable Partners
Tweet Share on Facebook September 14, 2011 Comment (1)Earlier this month in The Nation, blogger Robert Dreyfuss contributed to the magazine's superb meditation on the Arab Awakening with a look at how the Obama White House responded to the popular revolt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. As opposition to Mubarak reached its crescendo in February, according to Dreyfuss, senior White House aides frantically urged military leaders in Cairo to relieve themselves of him.
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Why a U.S. War With China May Be Inevitable
Tweet Share on Facebook September 8, 2011 Comment (19)Unwittingly no doubt, the Pentagon is marking the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by repeating one of the mistakes that provoked The Big One in the first place. In his 1996 fatwa against what he called the "Zionist-Crusader alliance," Osama bin Laden called the occupation of Saudi Arabia by U.S. troops after their eviction of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991 the "latest and the greatest" of American "aggressions" against Islam. This week, without a trace of irony, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon is fine-tuning a plan to keep 3,000 to 4,000 American troops in Iraq after the deadline for their withdrawal at the end of the year. Such a residual force, like the one in Saudi Arabia before it, will likely stoke resentment among Arab Islamists that will inevitably express itself with violence against U.S. citizens or perhaps even on American soil. It would also make a lie of President Obama’s pledge to bring all American forces home from that misbegotten war and it only multiplies the number of U.S. troops cooped up in wasteful and intrusive military bases abroad.
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With Libya Victory, Obama Should Exit NATO
Tweet Share on Facebook August 25, 2011 Comment (9)"Why are we still in NATO?"
I've fielded this question a half-dozen times over the last week while on radio talk shows promoting my book about the militarization of U.S. foreign policy. Listeners instinctively know, it seems, what our security fetishists in Washington do not: that America's resources at home are badly outstripped by security commitments abroad, particularly at a time of near recession and draconian spending cuts. When the subject comes up I want to turn the microphone on Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's secretary general, and let him explain to cash-strapped callers why job security is more important for alliance bureaucrats than it is for the people who are paying for this Cold War relic in the first place.
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It's Time for the Pentagon to Get Realistic About Its Budget
Tweet Share on Facebook August 18, 2011 Comment (3)After a decade of throwing money at the Pentagon—its budget has grown at an annualized rate of about 6 percent a year over the last 10 years—it now appears the nation's defense budget is on the deficit-chopping block. Given the epic waste associated with our national security accounts, a scandal that Congress routinely abets by demanding the military purchase needless weapons for assembly in districts back home, it is high time the Pentagon establish realistic spending priorities and budget accordingly.
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S&P Credit Downgrade Shows American Un-Exceptionalism
Tweet Share on Facebook August 11, 2011 Comment (4)So how's that "American exceptionalism" thing working out for ya?
Rating agency Standard & Poor's last week offered a contrarian take on what right-wing elites, from shadow presidential contender Sarah Palin to declared candidate and dangerous nut Newt Gingrich describe as the nation's divine entitlement to tell the world to get stuffed. Blessed with the Lord's pleasure and the world's reserve currency, so goes the exceptionalist narrative, there is no international norm or convention Washington cannot flout, either by waging unnecessary wars or by swamping the global economy under the weight of a giant and unsustainable housing bubble.
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America Not Alone With Debt Problems
Tweet Share on Facebook August 4, 2011 Comment (7)
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