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In the Human Interest – Mel Gurtov

In the Human Interest – Mel Gurtov

Critical appraisals of foreign affairs and politics from a global-citizen perspective

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Tag: war

APB

APB: The Play’s the Thing

16 Nov 201815 Nov 2018
The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a tragedy, and it is of a piece with the related tragedy of US-Saudi relations. Weeks ago I outlined a play in four…
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…
BLOG…

Post #134: Voting Against Peace in Colombia

28 Oct 201627 Feb 2017
Those of us who study how to end wars rather than find new ways to prosecute them must be stunned, like many Colombians, by a popular vote there on October…
American Politics and the World…

Post #133: Left Unsaid at the Third Debate

21 Oct 201627 Feb 2017
Donald Trump waited one day before delivering the punch line to his sad joke, “I will keep you in suspense” about respecting the election results.  “Unless I win,” he said…
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 #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 #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…
American Politics and the World…

Post #79: The Pentagon Slush Fund

1 Jun 201527 Feb 2017
Back in 1959, President Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Khrushchev took a break from their summit and walked in the woods around Camp David.  Khrushchev, in his memoirs, relates a conversation…
BLOG…

Post #78: The Middle East Quagmire: Give Peacemaking a Chance

23 May 201527 Feb 2017
The desperate state of US policy in the Middle East became apparent once again with the ISIS rout of the Iraqi army at Ramadi. It was another setback for US-supported…
BLOG…

Post #67 – Presidents and War

14 Feb 201527 Feb 2017
President Obama has submitted a request to Congress for authorization—actually, reauthorization—of wars the United States has been fighting for many years.  Though he considered the initial authorization in 2001 to…
American Politics and the World…

Post #57 – The Torture Report

9 Dec 201427 Feb 2017
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are back in the news, defending all the true patriots who brought the United States into the “Global War on Terror” after 9/11.  Determined…
BLOG…

Post #55 – Obama’s Wars: Deeper into the Quagmire

25 Nov 201427 Feb 2017
President Obama continues to do everything to fulfill his prediction of September 12 that the Middle East wars will long outlast his administration. At that time (see my post #47,…
BLOG…

Post #47 – Mission Impossible

29 Sep 201427 Feb 2017
The New York Times editorial board has finally awakened to Obama’s “strategy” in the “war” (as it is officially called now) against ISIS. It is essentially the same strategy that…

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