Daniel Larison

The U.S. ended its almost 20-year war in Afghanistan in defeat last week. The speed with which the client government in Kabul disintegrated confirmed that the US military presence in the country was merely delaying the inevitable collapse of a rickety state that the US had propped up at enormous expense and a high cost … Continue reading “An Unsustainable and Unwinnable War Finally Ends”

The U.S. is extraordinarily secure from physical threats, and the threat of international terrorism is small and manageable, but the government has nonetheless waged a "war on terror" for the last 20 years in which it assumed extensive new powers that encroached on Americans’ constitutional rights, wreaked havoc in numerous countries, and left hundreds of … Continue reading “Recognizing and Combating the Pernicious Effects of Propaganda”

The window for resuming productive negotiations with North Korea will be closing soon. The Biden administration has not treated diplomacy with North Korea as a priority in its first six months in office, and it has shown no sign of pursuing a more creative and moderate policy focused on arms control rather than disarmament. Despite … Continue reading “Time Is Running Out on North Korea Diplomacy”

Following the conclusion of a U.S.-German agreement that cleared the way for the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Ukraine has been complaining about betrayal by the West. Ukraine views the pipeline as a threat to its own transit fees from Russia, and their government has lobbied for U.S. sanctions to block it. The … Continue reading “What Nord Stream 2 Means for NATO Expansion”

Joe Biden’s foreign policy record as president in his first six months has been as bad as his non-interventionist and antiwar critics feared it would be. Biden has made one significant and correct decision that he appears to be following through on, and that is the withdrawal of the last remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan, … Continue reading “Biden’s Foreign Policy Failures”

How does a country remain at war without end? Understanding the answer to that is a crucial part of bringing the forever war to an end and building a foreign policy that is not defined by domination and interference in other nations’ affairs. Marilyn Young (1937-2017) was an exceptional historian of U.S. foreign policy, the … Continue reading “Learning From the History of American Militarism”

Every year the notorious cult and "former" terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) holds a political conference to promote its propaganda and call for regime change in Iran, and every year many current and former American, Canadian, and European officials and elected representatives line up to pay homage to the group and their leader, Maryam Rajavi. … Continue reading “A Deranged Cult and Our Warped Foreign Policy”

John Quincy Adams delivered his address celebrating American independence two hundred years ago this week, and in that speech he famously told his fellow Americans that their country does not go abroad "in search of monsters to destroy." This was just one part of his paean to American independence, which was then not yet half … Continue reading “Casting Off the Imperial Diadem”

The U.S. has no compelling reason to keep tens of thousands of troops in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Syria, and it should follow the withdrawal from Afghanistan with complete withdrawals of the forces currently located in these countries. There is a growing body of arguments advocating for ending the US military presence in the … Continue reading “The US Military Presence in the Middle East Needs To End”

The U.S. economic war on Iran hasn’t ended, and one of the costs of that war has been the increasing authoritarianism of the Iranian government. The "maximum pressure" campaign is not solely responsible for empowering Iranian hard-liners and contributing to the rigged victory of Ebrahim Raisi, the head of Iran’s judiciary, but it has significantly … Continue reading “The Economic War on Iran Needs To End”