As the Trump presidency nears, it has suddenly become fashionable to downplay the achievements of Barack Obama, not least because the President-elect seems so keen on ripping up much of what he did. One view in particular has become popular: that Obama pursued a weak foreign policy, which is to blame for many of the […]
Conspiracy theories about Russia suggest that the awful prospect for the USA is of a global superpower with the domestic politics of the Philippines or Argentina. Read Here – The National Interest
Trump has not merely, at the behest of his supporters, disrupted the status quo. He has exploded the great American story that lay beneath it. What makes Trump so difficult to write about is that he presents no story. Like a cubist portrait, he changes your perception of reality by the minute. Read Here – […]
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s cabinet is shaping up to have a smaller percentage of women and nonwhites than the first cabinets of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush. Read Here – The New York Times
The confirmation of Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State appears to be one of those areas where liberal columnists, conservative politicians, Democratic lawmakers, and some former U.S. government officials arrive at a similar understanding. And for Tillerson, the news from these quarters isn’t particularly good. Read Here – The National Interest
In January 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise […]
President Obama has been called the “first social-media president.” It’s both a true and a misleading characterisation. On the one hand, the Obama White House was indeed the first presidency to make use of services like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. But on the other hand, these services either didn’t exist or weren’t used by […]
Let’s take a moment to savor what looks to be Henry Kissinger’s final act. The man is 93 years old. At that age, most people are lucky to have enough energy for “Wheel of Fortune” and a few Facebook posts. Not Kissinger. These days, he’s playing the influence game against insiders who hadn’t even been […]
No American President has figured out an enduring way to calm the tensions between the West and the Islamic world, which have a troubled, millennia-old history spanning the Crusades, the Inquisition, European colonialism, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Many, however, have at least tried. Read Here – The New Yorker
looking beyond borders 