Several Burmese police fled across the border into India. One of them told the Associated Press that they had been ordered to "shoot people and not just the people, we were told to shoot our own family if they are not on the side of the army," known as the...
War fires the imagination, especially of those who never suffered its horrors. Washington, D.C.’s faux heroes find nothing so courageous as sending other people off to fight and die in one grand cause or another. Of course, some professionals glory in death and gore,...
Friday is the 18th anniversary of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. That misadventure proved to be a humanitarian catastrophe. As well as Washington’s worst geopolitical blunder in four decades. Tragically, America’s involvement is the misbegotten gift that keeps on...
Running an empire isn’t easy. A large military is imperative. How else to wage multiple wars at once? To defeat powers large and small? To police an unruly world? And to garrison the globe? Unfortunately, creating expansive armed services isn’t cheap. There are...
The Biden administration has been attempting to deal with an unruly world and found it no more receptive to his polite talk and gentle ministrations than to President Donald Trump’s vociferous demands and blustering threats. Implementing the president’s active...
I was watching yet another webinar from yet another think tank discussing European discontents with the U.S. There was predictable elation at Joe Biden’s arrival in the Oval Office, but dissatisfaction with almost everything American – infrastructure, health care,...
The United States is the world’s most militarized and belligerent nation. Stating this reality shocks and outrages Washington policymakers. Yet the facts are incontestable, like the sun’s rise. Last week the Biden administration ordered airstrikes in Syria against...
President Joe Biden’s most important accomplishment so far has been to drain the fetid swamp that was Mike Pompeo’s State Department. Pompeo spent nearly three years swaggering about the globe, a faux diplomat who exuded arrogance and sanctimony while spewing...
"All great powers" want to rule the world, declared Robert Kagan, propagandist for America as imperial power, democratic hegemon, aggressive unipower, and perpetual war machine. However, they typically fail. Wrote Kagan in a new Foreign Affairs article:...
The U.S. is approaching its 20-year mark in the Afghan civil war. Intervening after 9/11, Washington speedily crippled al-Qaeda and ousted the Taliban. Alas, three successive administrations found it much harder to bring strong central government and Westminster-style...
