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Wikileaks Guantanamo Files Show the Great Cost of the U.S. Empire
Tweet Share on Facebook April 29, 2011 Comment (1)While working in Baghdad in June 2003, as the armed insurrection that would soon turn Iraq into a holocaust was quivering to life, I attended a U.S. military briefing inside the Green Zone. In response to the rise in guerrilla attacks on U.S. forces, reporters were told, the Pentagon was unleashing a counter-insurgency campaign designed to pre-empt the rebellion.
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Libya Fiasco Shows NATO's Uselessness
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2011 Comment (10)In a post last month, I predicted that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would prove itself unable to adequately support rebel forces in Libya, which would oblige President Obama, like so many of his predecessors, to bail out Old Europe.
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The Budget and the Real Scandal of Foreign Aid
Tweet Share on Facebook April 14, 2011 Comment (8)In the mythology of our federal budget wars, no expenditure is as misunderstood as the “burden” of foreign aid. Not only does America’s foreign assistance budget represent a small slice of public outlays--less than 1 percent, compared with the two-thirds or so that is consumed by the Pentagon and entitlements--the nation is among the most miserly of donor countries. A mere 0.19 percent of gross national income is earmarked for humanitarian assistance, compared with the global average of 0.30 percent. [Check out a roundup of political cartoons about the budget and the deficit.]
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What Middle East Economies Can Learn From China
Tweet Share on Facebook April 7, 2011 CommentIt’s enough to give a financial journalist a case of the bends.
In 1997, I covered the collapse of Asia’s emerging economies and the end, it seemed, to the “authoritarian” model for development. The intrusive hand of the state, which for years subsidized export-driven growth at the expense of consumer spending, had given way to fatal levels of corruption and dollar-denominated debt. With the help of the International Monetary Fund, which offered bail-out packages conditioned on painful reforms--dismantled trade barriers, banking and currency reform, privatization--the situation stabilized.
, will be published in August by Crown. You can follow him on Twitter 
