Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. Two articles I read Monday are typical of polarized, indeed antithetical, views on the Russia-Ukraine War. At the British Guardian, Simon Tisdall says this is Europe’s moment to step up and support Ukraine in...
More than two millennia ago, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounted a disastrous conflict Athens waged against Sparta. A masterwork on strategy and war, the book is still taught at the US Army War College and many other military institutions...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. As a teenager in the 1970s, I recall talking to my dad about fears of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. My dad took a broad view, suggesting that if U.S. and Soviet leaders were...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. In my eclectic reading, I came across a couple of references to ChatGPT, an experiment in artificial intelligence (AI). You ask the AI bot a question, or give it a task, and it spits out an answer, and I must...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. Terminology is so important. There was a time when America spoke honestly of a Department of War. But not everyone is keen on war, even Americans, so in 1947 the national (in)security state slyly changed its...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. (I prepared these notes for a talk I gave on “Truth-killers: The Corporate Media and the Military-Industrial Complex,” sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action. David Swanson also spoke.) I served in the U.S....
Originally posted at TomDispatch. It was a backlit wonder of a plane on what looked like a Hollywood set – though the location was actually a Northrop Grumman plant in California. The workers from that giant weapons maker were there, too, chanting “USA!...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. Reports that Ukraine is launching modified drones to strike airbases deep in Russia highlight the unpredictability and escalatory nature of wars. Ukraine is no longer content at defending itself against...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Here’s the curious thing: since at least the Vietnam War era of the 1960s and early 1970s, the United States has been almost continuously at war. Certain of those conflicts like the Vietnam War itself and those in Iraq and...
Back on June 1st, I noted that Ukraine couldn’t possibly absorb more than $54 billion in U.S. aid, most of it related to weaponry and munitions, given the country’s lack of infrastructure as well as the chaos inherent to a shooting war. As I wrote back...
