American Politics and the World… Post #148: Bannon’s Coup 31 Jan 201727 Feb 2017 Stephen K. Bannon, Donald Trump’s chief strategist, has been elevated to the Principals Committee of the National Security Council, the top tier of national-security policymakers.* It is the first…
American Politics and the World… Post #142: Unfit to Command 9 Jan 201727 Feb 2017 During the presidential campaign a significant number of former senior foreign policy and national security officials from both parties spoke in no uncertain terms about Donald Trump’s qualifications to…
American Politics and the World… Post #140: The Diplomacy of Donald J. Trump 27 Dec 201627 Feb 2017 Oblivious to Tradition and Good Sense Those of us who appreciate the unconventional have to have second thoughts after watching Donald J. Trump in action. All the more so when…
American Politics and the World… Post #137: The National Interest and the Trump Interest 21 Nov 201627 Feb 2017 As the Trump administration takes shape, one fact seems unassailable: We have an unprecedented situation in which, step by step, a president’s business interests—past, present, and future—are inseparable from the…
BLOG… Post #136: The Trump Team: Loyal and Dangerous 15 Nov 201627 Feb 2017 Personnel appointments provide a useful glimpse into what policy will be. Senior-level appointees are the policy shapers, and from what we have seen thus far, we are right to have…
American Politics and the World… Post #135: Our Worst Nightmare Has Come to Pass 9 Nov 201627 Feb 2017 The American people voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by nearly 800,000 votes.* But Trump was right: the system is rigged, meaning that thanks to our outdated and illogical…
BLOG… Post #129: Carrots or Sticks? Addressing North Korea’s Fifth Nuclear Test 20 Sep 201627 Feb 2017 As many experts predicted, North Korea (DPRK) followed another ballistic missile test with its fifth nuclear-weapon test on September 9. The event continues a pattern of testing increasingly sophisticated weapons…
BLOG… Post #127: Mission Impossible in the Middle East 1 Sep 201627 Feb 2017 We all know from personal experience how difficult it is to burn the candle at both ends when we’re trying to satisfy two people who are at odds with one…
BLOG… Post #121: Unintended Consequences and the Warfare State 7 Jul 201627 Feb 2017 “The danger is, as ever with these things, unintended consequences.” So wrote Prime Minister Tony Blair to President George W. Bush in 2002, as Bush prepared to invade Iraq (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/06/full-text-annotated-tony-blairs-2002-iraq-memo-to-george-bush). …
BLOG… Post #119 – Too Close for Comfort: The Dangerous US-China Maritime Dispute 11 Jun 201627 Feb 2017 The Background Two recent close encounters between US spy planes and Chinese jets spell trouble for relations between Washington and Beijing. The first occurred over the South China Sea…
American Politics and the World… Post #118: Cowgirl Diplomacy? Foreign Policy Under Hillary Clinton 24 May 201627 Feb 2017 America’s mainstream media, ever attracted to the splashy rather than the serious, has a new topic to occupy the time until Election Day: President Trump. What will he do first? …
BLOG… Post #117: Evaluating Obama’s Foreign Policy Record 15 May 201627 Feb 2017 So you’re not excited by Donald Trump’s announcement of his first foreign-policy acts as president: building the Mexico Wall, the No-Muslims Wall, the End-of-NATO Wall, and the China Trade Wall. …
BLOG… Post #115: Sanctions and Defiance in North Korea 23 Apr 201627 Feb 2017 Part 1: Sanctions—A Failed Strategy (Note: This is the first of a two-part commentary on North Korea. The second part will discuss the North’s latest weapons programs, which have evidently…
American Politics and the World… Post #113: Nuclear Insecurity 5 Apr 201627 Feb 2017 The fourth Nuclear Security Summit, hosted by President Obama, has just ended. The focus was on terrorism, a perfectly reasonable topic. But the larger question, not taken up by the…
BLOG… Post #107 – Is US-Russia Engagement Still Possible? 11 Feb 201627 Feb 2017 President Obama’s failed attempt to “reset” US-Russia relations raises the question whether or not engaging Russia in the fullest sense is still possible. I think not, at least for the…
BLOG… Post #105: Time for a Reset in US-Saudi Relations 27 Jan 201627 Feb 2017 The growing rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran is reportedly causing great consternation in US policymaking circles (www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/us/politics/us-struggles-to-explain-alliance-with-saudis.html). Once again, US officials are called upon to decide whether to…
BLOG… Post #102 – Endless War, Undeclared and Undebated 27 Dec 201527 Feb 2017 The death of six US soldiers in Afghanistan on December 21 at the hands of a Taliban suicide bomber brings to twenty-one the number of US combat deaths there in…
BLOG… Post #99: After Paris, What? 21 Nov 201527 Feb 2017 In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, the community of security experts in the US and abroad seems already to have formed a consensus about what happened, why it…
BLOG… Post #97: Arming Dictators: An American Tradition 29 Oct 201527 Feb 2017 Last week the Obama administration announced another military aid package for Pakistan: eight F-16 fighter jets. Once again considerations of human rights and democratic values have been sacrificed to strategic…
BLOG… Post #96: Truth and Consequences 21 Oct 201527 Feb 2017 A recently discovered piece of Vietnam War history has new meaning today. At the same time that Richard Nixon was telling the public that the US air war in Vietnam…
In the Human Interest - Mel Gurtov 