BLOG Post #257: NUKES: The Unmentionable Election Issue (Part 2) 17 Mar 202015 Mar 2020 Getting to Zero Where are the Democrats? Why isn’t the present nuclear danger front and center in the Democrats’ presidential debates? I can think of a few reasons. First, Democrats…
BLOG Post #256: NUKES: The Unmentionable Election Issue (Part 1) 9 Mar 20208 Mar 2020 Overkill More is Better One of these days, national security policy will get a few minutes of campaign debate time. And when that day occurs, perhaps—just perhaps—attention will turn to…
BLOG Post #255: Donald Trump’s Fantasy World 5 Feb 2020 House speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up Donald Trump’s speech, saying he was “shredding the truth.” It was quite a moment, and though she took some heat for such an impertinent…
BLOG Post #254: India’s Failed Democracy 22 Jan 202021 Jan 2020 Citizenship Denied India is often billed as the world’s biggest democracy. But that title has worn thin: Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is becoming a nationalist state home to…
BLOG Post #253: Normal Nation? 6 Jan 20205 Jan 2020 With the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, Donald Trump has arguably done more to undermine US interests in the Middle East and sow the seeds of a region-wide war than…
BLOG Post #252: No Room for Dialogue 3 Jan 20203 Jan 2020 “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak, and he’s ineffective. So the only way he figures that he’s going…
BLOG Post #251: When It Comes to Corporate Taxes, It’s Always Christmas 19 Dec 201918 Dec 2019 As we all know, the largest US corporations and their chief executives were the main beneficiaries of Trump’s so-called tax reform in 2017. A new report from the Institute of…
BLOG Post #250: The Afghanistan Pentagon Papers 10 Dec 20199 Dec 2019 The war in Afghanistan, America’s longest, has cost about 2,300 US lives, over 20,000 wounded, and about $1 trillion. Now, thanks to the persistence of the Washington Post, we have…
BLOG Post #249: Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and the Insecurity of China’s Leadership 5 Dec 20195 Dec 2019 Hong Kong is in chaos, with no sign that the protesters will yield on their demands. Mass incarceration and indoctrination of Uyghurs and other Chinese Muslims has become so widely…
BLOG Post #248: Getting Rid of Treacherous Friends 17 Nov 201916 Nov 2019 Backing the Wrong Horse, Again The United States has a long record of befriending the wrong people—authoritarian leaders who rely on military and police power to enforce social inequality and…
BLOG Post #247: From President to Autocrat 6 Nov 20195 Nov 2019 An Autocrat Like All Others A recent special issue of Foreign Affairs is devoted to profiling some of the world’s most prominent autocrats: Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,…
BLOG Post #246: Will Trump Leave Quietly? 24 Oct 201923 Oct 2019 On October 23, about two dozen unhappy Republican congress members stormed a closed hearing that was part of the impeachment inquiry, determined to show their loyalty to Trump (who knew…
BLOG Post #245: Overreach, the Achilles Heel of Autocrats 6 Oct 20196 Oct 2019 It Has Happened Here and Everywhere It seems like just yesterday that we were celebrating the democratic wave sweeping Europe in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. It seems…
BLOG Post #244: Listen to the Children 23 Sep 201922 Sep 2019 The Republicans are on the sidelines on the climate crisis. Government scientists are muzzled. Leading Democrats—though not all—are cautious. CEOs of some of America’s biggest corporations are pledging action while…
BLOG Post #243: No War for Saudi Oil! 17 Sep 201922 Sep 2019 Even if US intelligence decisively shows that some of the drones and cruise missiles used in the attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil fields originated in Iran, a decision to go…
