Ted Snider

The United States, the President swore, is "not seeking a new Cold War." But he is, and it didn’t have to be that way. The end of the Cold War could have been the end of the Cold War. Russia really didn’t want a new Cold War and has only been reluctantly drawn into it. … Continue reading “If It’s Not a Cold War, Why Does It Look So Much Like a Cold War?”

The Middle East was a crucial arena in the Cold War. It was then that Israel first acquired its value to the US as a bulwark against perceived Soviet penetration into the Middle East. The Soviet Union perceived US activity in the Middle East as encircling them on their southern border. Nations chose blocks, and … Continue reading “The Middle East and the Second Cold War”

President Biden’s words were hollow. The content had been cored because the words were empty of any real world content. On September 21, 2021, he told the UN General Assembly that the US is "not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocks." UN Secretary-General Antonio Gueterres disagreed, warning against the … Continue reading “If We Fight a New Cold War, Who Are We Fighting It With?”

On September 21, President Biden addressed the United Nations General Assembly for the first time. His speech was a confusing combination of boasts followed by lines that refuted those boasts. Here is an attempt to decode some of the biggest confusions. We Are Not Seeking a New Cold War Biden made the claim that America … Continue reading “Decoding Biden’s UN Speech”

At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama realized that the US was "overweighted" in the Middle East, fighting wars against countries that could not challenge American hegemony and "underweighted" in the Asia-Pacific region where there was a country, China, that could. So, Obama pivoted to Asia. The National Security Strategy of December 2017 ranked … Continue reading “How Provocative Are Australia’s Nuclear Submarines?”

On September 8, 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that the US was getting tired of waiting for Iran: "I’m not going to put a date on it but we are getting closer to the point at which a strict return to compliance with the JCPOA does not reproduce the benefits that that agreement … Continue reading “Biden Shelves Diplomacy To Confront Russia and China”

On September 1, 2021, President Biden met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House and continued the American push into Russia’s sphere of influence that has made Russia feel so threatened. Zelensky has been frustrated because he has been pushing for this meeting since his election in May 2019. Despite the delay, Biden … Continue reading “Ukraine, USA, Russia, and Spheres of Influence”

America may famously be pivoting to China, but so is everyone else: and not in the intended way. Vice President Kamala Harris’ invitation to Vietnam to join the US against China was coldly rejected by an unaligned Vietnam who wishes to enhance relations with China. And they’re not the only ones. Russia By the time … Continue reading “Look Who’s Pivoting to China Now”

From Cuba to Korea, from Iran to Russia and Palestine, there is a long history of failed negotiations and wasted time. The negotiations are all different, but a clear pattern establishes the reason why all of them fail. In each case, US negotiations fail because the interlocutor nation cannot trust that the US really wants … Continue reading “Why US Negotiations Always Fail”

If you walk down the road of many of today’s worst crises, you will find, far up ahead of you, the foot prints of President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Some of the key cold war moves that Brzezinski made triggered events that still make the world worse today. Afghanistan Brzezinski, according to … Continue reading “Living With Brzezinski’s Mess”