David Stockman

OK, the title is a bit crude and is deliberately mocking in tone. But it has to be because there is a deeply-entrenched, almost sacred presumption embedded in the nation’s foreign policy catechism that “allies”, “alliances” and “coalitions of the willing” are the be-all-and-end-all of enlightened, necessary and effective foreign policy. American policy-makers and diplomats … Continue reading “Why America Don’t Need No Stinkin’ ‘Allies’”

Last week we noted that the ascension to NATO of the Balkan Five (Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania) and the Baltic Three (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) amounts to some kind of bad joke. Their combined active military forces total just 66,000 servicemen, which is exactly equal to the combined 66,000 man police forces of … Continue reading “Who Gives Two Hoots About the Houthis!”

It goes without saying that the Donald can never get enough of the limelight. But last Friday in a live Oval Office broadcast seen around the world that thirst for public attention may have actually changed the course of history. And very much for the good – even if the trigger was pulled by a … Continue reading “Zelensky’s Oval Office Melt-Down”

Wow! These are the most powerful and consequential 36 words spoken by any US President. Ever. “One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia, and I want to say, ‘let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that.” Yes, from the … Continue reading “Hallelujah! President Trump Actually Wants To Give Peace a Chance”

Exactly 177 days after being sworn to office, America’s greatest peace president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, announced that the demolition derby on the Korean peninsula would be halted, and that an armistice would prevail henceforth – which armistice remains in place to this very day. Unfortunately, Ike’s truce in the hot war never got translated into … Continue reading “Make The Ukraine Truce, Then Cut Europe Loose”

Hot damn! Not only has Elon Musk brought the hammer down on the entirety of the Deep State’s foreign aid boondoggles, but his sleuths have apparently also uncovered one of the Swamp’s most pernicious artifices. To wit, numerous Federal agencies, including USAID, purchase a shit-ton of expensive subscriptions from beltway megaphones like Politico, which by … Continue reading “Slashing Foreign Aid Redux”

The case for getting out of NATO now encompasses four fundamental propositions: First, the Federal budget has become a self-fueling fiscal doomsday machine, even as the Fed has run out of capacity to monetize the skyrocketing public debt. Second, the only viable starting point for fiscal salvation is slashing the nation’s elephantine Warfare State by … Continue reading “NATO: The Case To Get Out Now”

This is the third part of a four-part article.   Read part one here. Read part two here. The evidence from the Soviet archives shows that Stalin’s policy during the 1947 pivot to Cold War was largely defensive and reactive. But even that departure from the cooperative modus operandi of the wartime alliance arose from what … Continue reading “NATO Was Never About American Security”

This is the second part of a three-part article.   Read part one here. The war-weary Washington policy makers were absolutely correct when they brought America’s 12 million-man expeditionary force home from Asia, Europe and the Seven Seas after August 1945. So doing, of course, they also abruptly closed the sluice-gates to what was America’s Brobdingnagian … Continue reading “The Entire Cold War Was an Avoidable Mistake”

There is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place of containing America’s public debt disaster unless the Empire is brought home and the national security budget is slashed by $500 billion per year. The merits aside, all the other big slices of the budget led by Social Security and Medicare are surrounded by nearly … Continue reading “Fiscal Redemption Requires a Republic, Not an Empire”