David Bromwich

Originally posted at TomDispatch. A new war, a new alibi. When we think about our latest war – the one that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just six months after our Afghan War ended so catastrophically – there is a hidden benefit. As long as American minds are on Ukraine, we are not thinking … Continue reading “Living on a War Planet”

Reprinted from The Nation by permission of the author. Ukraine is a country we are just getting to know. What is more important is to hate Russia: an emotion in which Americans have been well trained. Media workers and the experts they interview, one notices, can’t help stumbling occasionally: “the Soviet Union – I mean, … Continue reading “Russia Hating”

Reprinted from The Nation with permission of the author. There is a puzzle about American hegemony that should interest us more than it does. We are a conquering empire (even if our latest conquest always seems to end in retreat), but we can’t agree on the content of the product we send abroad. Is it … Continue reading “Whose Rules? Our Rules! in the Rules-Based International Order”

Reprinted from The Nation with permission of the author. America has been involved in a crisis of conscience for some time. Most of our recent political controversies have ended in denunciations and upheavals that seem off the charts by the standard of all previous American experience outside war. Consider the right-wing birther movement, which questioned … Continue reading “Another War Won’t Save Us”

Reprinted from The Nation with permission of the author. Russia invaded Ukraine in violation of international law, and now we stand on a precipice. Advocates of war are saying that World War III has already begun, and the United States should therefore plunge in. How can they say that? People may finally hurl themselves into … Continue reading “Against World War III”

Reprinted from The Nation with permission of the author. Ukraine shares a border with Russia the way Mexico and Canada do with the United States. Since 1823, we have claimed the right to defend our hemisphere in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine, and now Russia is putting into practice a similar policy against a militarized … Continue reading “Russia, Ukraine, and The New York Times“

Reprinted from The Nation with permission of the author. Bush and Cheney sold the war, Obama normalized it, Trump disowned it, and Biden had the courage to end it. Cecil Rhodes once said he would annex the planets if he could, and the United States, over the past four decades, has nursed an ambition quite … Continue reading “Our Foreign Policy Elite Has Learned Nothing From Afghanistan”

The New York Times on September 10 ran six articles with the word Trump in the headlines. Two of the stories were clearly warranted – one on Trump’s continuing resolve to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, and one on the way the commerce department played along with Trump’s false message about the Alabama destination of … Continue reading “Trump, the New York Times, and John Bolton”

One of the greatest speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Time to Break Silence," was delivered at Riverside Church, New York City, on April 4, 1967. It is a statement against war in principle, in the same sense in which King’s "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," published four years earlier, had been a statement … Continue reading “Martin Luther King’s Speech Against the Vietnam War”