The year I moved away, George W. Bush stood beneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier and declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. Facebook hadn’t yet been turned into a company. The iPhone did not exist. I left before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, before Detroit went bankrupt. I missed […]
In the sixteen months since he declared his candidacy, Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign has elicited comparisons to those of George Wallace and Barry Goldwater, to the hallucinatory paranoia of Joseph McCarthy, to the fascist preoccupations of Charles Lindbergh, and to lesser lights of American demagoguery like Father Coughlin and the Know-Nothings of the nineteenth century. […]
To understand her foreign policy, it is important to understand the evolution of American strategy since the fall of the Soviet Union. Clinton is a creature of the beliefs, values and illusions that dominated American policy from 1991 until 2008. By understanding that world, we can understand Clinton’s core beliefs and then consider the extent […]
As Anders Fogh Rasmussen puts it, America is bordered by “two friendly neighbours and fish.” As a result of this geographic position, Rasmussen argues, Americans have the luxury of alternating between what you might call Trumpian and Clintonian views of the wider world. Read Here – Defense One
In the narrative of this election, Donald Trump is the “politically incorrect” one in the race. He says what “people are thinking” and isn’t afraid of the reaction. For the most part this is nonsense. Trump’s political incorrectness is just a cover for run-of-the-mill prejudice. If people don’t blame Mexico for “sending rapists” over the […]
The war left two political vacuums. One is in Iraq, where the post-Saddam government can barely hold its own against ISIS and other sectarian forces. The other is in the United States. The war discredited Republican management of the presidency. George W. Bush devoted six years to a massive policing and nation-building project, and he […]
There were a couple of not-so-very-subtle signals here inside of Hofstra University that Donald Trump lost Monday night’s highly-anticipated debate against Hillary Clinton, and badly. The first was the audible sound of groaning by some of his supporters inside the debate hall as Trump meandered self-defensively through a succession of answers against a very focused, very […]
Many people around the world are probably wondering why Hillary Clinton – who is obviously more prepared and better suited for the American presidency than her opponent, Donald Trump – isn’t waltzing to victory. Many Americans share the world’s bewilderment. Read Here – Project Syndicate
As his two-term presidency draws to a close, Barack Obama is looking back—at the legacies of his predecessors, as well as his own—and forward, to the freedom of life after the White House. In a wide-ranging conversation with one of the nation’s foremost presidential historians, he talks about his ambitions, frustrations, and the decisions that […]
Saudi Arabia doesn’t have the same clout it used to. That’s the message the chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee says he has delivered to the Saudi government. Read Here – Bloomberg
