The recipe for the Cold War read, "Simmer. Bring to a boil occasionally: do not boil over." Decades later, the surprising line "return to boil" was added. The table for both servings of the Cold War was set by broken American promises. Perhaps the...
Is the US Behind the Brazilian Coup?
There can no longer be a defense of the removal of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from office. The political maneuvering by the opposition PSDB has been uncloaked and revealed for what it clearly was all along: a quiet coup dressed in the disguise of democracy....
Historical Amnesia and the Destruction of the Senate Torture Report
When Winston Smith thinks he has finally made contact with the underground movement he has always hoped existed, in George Orwell’s 1984, he drinks a toast, not to the hoped-for future, but to the past, because "he who controls the past controls the future."...
Is a Silent Coup in Democratic Disguise Taking Place in Brazil?
After the first phase of overt military regime changes in Latin America, the 1954 CIA overthrow of Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz ushered in the era of covert coups. The list is well known: Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile. Much less well known is the 1964 coup that...
How New Sanctions Will Be Perceived in Iran
The moment the United States removed their nuclear sanctions on Iran, they slapped new sanctions on Iran, claiming that two Iranian tests of ballistic missiles that are capable of delivering nuclear warheads violates Security Council resolutions. The Iranians had no...
Why Syria’s Options Are So Bad
In Syria, the West finds itself stuck between the Islamic State and President Bashar al-Assad, fighting a war that the West doesn’t want either side to win. It fights the Islamic State enough to weaken it without a victorious Assad staying in power; it opposes Assad...
What We Knew: A Recent History of Deception
If democracy is a transparent system of government by the people, in which elected officials represent their constituents, then America is failing the test of democracy in its foreign policy. Because, far from governing on behalf of the people they represent, the...
The Knot At the Heart of the Ukraine Crisis
The origin of the Ukraine crisis is consistently reported in the West as an unfortunate and unpopular choice by President Viktor Yanukovych to go with an economic alliance with Russia over the economic alliance offered by the European Union. The package offered by the...
Hillary Clinton’s Hawkish Response to the Iranian Nuclear Deal
Going back at least as early as the 1989 Presidential election of Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran has been attempting to end its international isolation by improving relations with the United States. And at least since the election of Iran’s next President, Seyyed Mohammad...
America’s Bizarre Initial Response to the Islamic State
Regime change is a complex and messy thing. Attempts at regime change always involve three parties: the government who desires to carry out the regime change, the regime it wishes to change, and the domestic group meant to replace the current regime or at least...