Alan Bock

The panel on which I sat at the Antiwar.com was entitled, "The War Party and the Media – or Do I Repeat Myself?" Along with George Szamuely and Eric Garris, I tried to explore some of the reasons for what might be seen as something of a mystery: Why most of the media seem content … Continue reading “The War Party and the Media”

Perhaps gasoline prices have gotten high enough that some people will be interested in a somewhat impish (and certainly impolitic) but quite possibly an effective way to get at the root of the problem. Stick with me a moment. The problem, from the perspective of American consumers, is that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries … Continue reading “Blockading OPEC”

The existence of the World Trade Organization as something of a talisman of hope or of evil, depending on one’s predilections and the obvious continuance of gross and blatant human rights violations by the mainland Chinese regime make it difficult to view the range of possible relationships between the United States and China with anything … Continue reading “Human Rights and Trade Policies”

Call me a cock-eyed optimist if you will, but despite the almost complete lack of any discussion of foreign policy let alone any serious questions about whether recent foreign policy has been wise during the major-party primaries, I suspect the American people are more on the anti-war side of things than the designated leaders or … Continue reading “New Doubts About Intervention”

We interrupt my philosophical excursion into the big picture this week for a couple of rather current items that deserve attention. Let’s start with Colombia, which is poised to become the dubious beneficiary of a $1.3 billion Clinton administration escalation/intervention into its ongoing civil war and drug trafficking mess. As Sam Loewenberg writes in an … Continue reading “Big Money and Colombian Intervention”

I begin musing about an authentic American foreign policy for the coming century with a possibility I would view as something of an imperative, but which is all too often forgotten or downplayed by commentators bemused and entranced by the capacity of a powerful nation like the United States to bend, shape, and mold history … Continue reading “Toward An American Foreign Policy II”

It is easy – sometimes all too easy – to criticize American foreign policy and those who make it in these days of sole-superpower listless empire maintenance. Quite frankly, the United States faces few if any severe challenges certainly not to its existence and hardly at all to its economic prosperity and effective dominance of … Continue reading “Toward An American Foreign Policy”

My clip files hold news stories from as far back as last September parroting government predictions that the taking of Grozny by the patriotic forces of the Fatherland was imminent. When former Gen. William Odom told me in December that the Russian army is still largely incompetent, I wrote it up for this site. Although … Continue reading “Russian Developments and Austrian Absurdities”

I wish I could share Justin Raimondo’s essential optimism that Pat Buchanan will be able to make war and interventionism a viable issue at some point during the current election season. I have, well, issues with Pat. I disagree with some of the stands and attitudes he has taken in regard to trade, immigration and … Continue reading “The Absence of the War Issue”

Perhaps Madeleine Albright’s abject apology to the presumptive Masters of the Universe at the United Nations for the unfortunate and retrograde comments made by North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms the week before was predictable. You could even argue that it was amusing. But it was unfortunate and contained some dubious assertions, reflecting some dubious attitudes. … Continue reading “Madeleine’s Dubious Endorsement”