Alan Bock

As the Afghan campaign devolves into what University of California political science professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson told me is something of a “phony war” in which the U.S. blunders without a plan and gets drawn in deeper, the imminent war against Iraq is starting to draw some mild second thoughts. This is all to the … Continue reading “Iraqi Warmonger Complications”

I‘m not sure I was quite prepared for the question from Leslie Dutton, host of a Los Angeles-area public-affairs program called “Full Disclosure” that taped last week. (The program, which is independently produced on a shoestring and distributed to cable networks on public access, just won a Local Emmy for Informational/Public Affairs Series for a … Continue reading “Assessing the War”

You can catch a few items in the newspapers – usually stories about raids or massacres – about Colombia, but not much that puts the latest incident in anything resembling a context. So I was pleased that the Orange County World Affairs Council last week hosted an enlightening (if not especially encouraging) discussion on Colombia. … Continue reading “Colombia: Mapping a Quagmire”

It is often said that the roots of the conflicts in the Middle East, which many U.S. diplomats seem to think can be handled with just one more full-court-press and a conference, – and we’re talking not just of disputes between Israelis and Palestinians but the larger regional hostilities – are centuries-old, even milliennia-old. There … Continue reading “Roots of Discord”

In a way, the news that the Bush administration is developing a new strategic doctrine that involves preemptive strikes against terrorists and states alleged to have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons could be viewed as simply formalizing what has been U.S. intervention doctrine for years now. After all, the United States did not require an … Continue reading “The Empire Strikes First”

The CBS reporter Monday morning – I didn’t catch the name, coming in at the end of the report – was probably not conscious of implicitly endorsing a theory of international relations and political action, and one without a whole lot of evidence behind it. Discussing the fact that the presidents of India and Pakistan … Continue reading “Underlying Problems in South Asia”

A good deal of President Bush’s trip to Russia and Europe amounted to the kind of image-polishing and schmoozing most U.S. presidents do at various times. U.S. presidents usually spend about two years trying to work on their purported domestic agenda before figuring out that they look a lot more “presidential” when traveling overseas than … Continue reading “Creating a New Axis”

U.S. Wades Into More Imperial OutpostsWell, let’s see. The Brits have declared "Operation Snipe" (if nothing else you have to acknowledge a certain understated Brit sense of humor there), the latest two-week effort to round up al Qaida remnants, to be successfully completed. From the news reports there’s little evidence that the operation accomplished much … Continue reading “U.S. Wades Into More Imperial Outposts”

The wags say that a second marriage represents the triumph of hope over experience (though I can attest that sometimes it works). So what would you call the umpteenth effort by outside powers to impose a settlement on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute through a combination of nice talk and veiled threats? Nonetheless, the administration says, the … Continue reading “Convening Futility”

I thought it was a little curious when our newspaper, on the day of the coup that ousted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for 48 hours or so, received an exultant fax from one George A. Folsom of the International Republican Institute. "The Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country," crowed Mr. Folsom. … Continue reading “Financing Venezuelan Mischief”