How the Iran Deal Alters Ties That Bind
Whatever one thinks of the accord governing Iran’s nuclear program, Iran and the six nations that sat across from it for 18 tough months of negotiation—the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and...
View ArticleWe do what we damn well please: The demented American exceptionalism behind...
The right wants to substitute religious belief and ideology for reality and smarts. The Iran deal won’t derail them A few blocks south of where I sit, the 70th General Assembly just opened in the...
View ArticleHow America built its empire: The real history of American foreign policy...
Perry Anderson sits down with Salon to discuss the Cold War, Hiroshima, American exceptionalism, Iran and more The other day I wrote Perry Anderson, the subject of the following interview, to ask what...
View ArticleWith Xi and Putin, Obama Sets the U.S. on a Course of Confusion
President Obama’s September agenda will need a glass case all its own when his presidential library is built. Straight from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit, Obama is now scheduled to meet...
View ArticleObama’s Syria Strategy: ‘Scrambling’ and ‘Desperate’ as Putin Takes Charge
What a week for President Obama and his toe-in-the-water strategy to stabilize the riotous anarchy that is Syria. The administration can do all the papering over they wish, but there’s no obscuring the...
View ArticleThomas Friedman, read your Chomsky: The New York Times gets Putin/Obama all...
“Do you realize now what you’ve done?” The best question about our Middle East disasters actually comes from Putin A lot of good people are asking a lot of good questions these days, and this is an...
View Article“Putin is the only major leader to utter a few simple truths about the role...
Perry Anderson on foreign policy: America’s problem is it’s a global hegemon without global ideology legitimacy Part two of our conversation with Perry Anderson. Find part one here. Fifteen years ago,...
View ArticleObama’s Failure in Syria Now Extends to Turkey
The Obama administration’s failure in Syria after four years of wasted lives, money, and effort deepens by the day now. The Russians have just benched us, whether Washington wants to admit it or not,...
View ArticlePutin might be right on Syria: The actual strategy behind his Middle East...
There’s actually common sense and historical vision behind the Putin plan. Not that our media covers it honestly One sentence in a news report the other day on Russia’s assertive new campaign to subdue...
View ArticleJournal Entry
NORFOLK, CONN.—When I began the two columns I now produce weekly—four years and some, two years and some ago—they weren’t my first outings in the foreign affairs scene. I had written one for three...
View ArticleAdd ‘Brexit’ to the Immigration Crisis that Threatens Europe
This has been a very bad year for the European Union. Until recently, you could have put the EU in that elite category reserved for too-big-to-fail institutions. But not anymore. In the simplest terms,...
View ArticleThis is not a democracy: Behind the Deep State that Obama, Hillary or Trump...
Foreign policy never really changes regardless of who holds the White House. This is why exceptionalism always wins There are two ways to consider the White House’s announcement last week that, no,...
View ArticleHow Putin Put Obama in a Bind on Syria
As Russia’s advance into Syria proceeds, apparently with some early successes against key targets, it starts to look as if Moscow is using the Syria crisis to force the Obama administration into a...
View Article“Does anyone have a plan?” Here’s how we fix decades of overseas...
We have accepted the horrors of American exceptionalism for too long. Here’s a progressive foreign policy blueprint “Tell me, what exactly is ‘an authentically progressive foreign policy.’” That is the...
View ArticleDefense and State In a Tug of War Over Obama’s Syria Policy
For many of us, the news last week that President Obama is sending U.S. Special Forces to Syria to oversee the training of Syrian rebels fighting ISIS is confusing. It begs the question—what exactly is...
View ArticleJudy Miller’s ghost lingers: Putin, Syria and how the New York Times cheers...
The propagandists have turned on the fog machine. Let’s try and sort out myth vs. reality with Russia, Middle East We reach a moment in the four-year-old Syria crisis when it is vital for anyone who...
View ArticleObama’s Foreign Policy Smacks of the ‘Carter Syndrome’
With a vastly ambitious deal governing trans-Pacific trade and a “no” to the oil industry’s pet pipeline project, President Obama is now thoroughly in that mode all White House occupants favor late in...
View ArticleBernie Sanders is a cruise-missile progressive: False hope, foreign policy...
Sanders would do nothing to change America’s worldwide meddling. This is a dangerous moment, and he’s ducking it Whatever happened to Bernie Sanders? It is always preferable to be first in my trade,...
View ArticleWe brought this on ourselves: After Paris, it is time to square our “values”...
The West’s behaved horrifically in Middle East for decades. We can’t be surprised by Paris. Let’s look in a mirror Another horrific attack emanates from the shattered, shredded Middle East into the...
View ArticleIn a Single Weekend, Tragedy in Paris, a Sign of Hope in Vienna
Buried in all the moving, hard-to-fathom accounts of the savage assaults in Paris Friday are a few home truths. French President François Hollande didn’t hesitate to term the attacks an act of war, and...
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