The comparison between the crisis in Ukraine and the Cuban missile crisis has occasionally been made. With an honest look at that crisis, history has two lessons to offer for the crisis of today. The first is that the Cuban missile crisis demonstrates clearly how the...
New York Times Opinion Piece: What Biden Is Telling Putin
When the President of the United States writes an opinion piece in The New York Times, he is talking to Americans, but, as he is aware as he is writing it, he is also talking to Putin. Officials in Russia will be analyzing the short text, decoding the messages. What...
Biden’s New China Policy
On May 26, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a major speech defining the Biden administration’s China policy. Though the US is pouring tens of billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, the training on how to use them, and the intelligence to target them...
Russia and China and Bold Red Lines
With calls for Russia to be pushed out of "the whole of Ukraine," for Russia to be "weakened" and defeated and even calls for regime change in Moscow, what might Russia’s and China’s red lines be, and how does the US measure when it’s in danger of...
Losing Latin America
Suppose they gave a summit, and nobody came? In a spectacular act of defiance against America’s claimed right to control the hemisphere, the protest against the US hosted, by invitation only, Summit of the Americas is growing. In its continued attempt to shape the...
US and Latin America: Trouble in the Backyard
While the US is expanding into Russia’s sphere of influence, it seems to be having trouble consolidating and controlling its own sphere of influence. There may be trouble in America’s backyard. The Biden administration has been so distracted by expansion and so asleep...
When Is the US at War? Russia’s Red Line
Your friend is taking a taxi to a job. It’s too big a job for him, so you offer to go along to help. You pay the fare and bring along the right tools for him to use. Just after you set out, though, you order the taxi driver to stop and redirect him from your friend’s...
Joe Biden and the Dearth of Diplomacy
Joe Biden promised the world that he was "opening a new era of relentless diplomacy." Either those were just words or Biden has lost control of his foreign policy. Rather than the birth of diplomacy, the first sixteen months of Biden’s term in office have...
Five Reasons To Be Increasingly Worried About the War in Ukraine
The New York Times reported on May 1 that "the Biden administration" – the same one that ignored Putin’s warnings about Russia’s red line regarding NATO expansion to Ukraine – "increasingly casts aside fears expressed by some early in the war that too...
Iran Talks Stall: Does America Even Believe in Diplomacy Anymore?
Joe Biden promised that he would be the president of diplomacy. He promised that, after the turmoil of the bellicose Trump years, he would usher in the age of "relentless diplomacy." But the US has been absent from negotiations on the war in Ukraine and...