NATO Poised To Escalate Tensions Over Ukraine

The NATO summit that took place at the end of last week in Wales was supposed to celebrate the end of a long, draining war in Afghanistan. But with the presidential election still up in the air in Kabul, NATO couldn’t enjoy its “mission accomplished”...

read more

Bluster and Bluff in the Baltic

"I say to the people of Estonia and the people of the Baltics, today we are bound by our treaty alliance. ... Article 5 is crystal clear: An attack on one is an attack on all. So if ... you ever ask again, 'who'll come to help,' you'll know the answer – the NATO...

read more

Obama Is No Wimp

Hawks of both parties have been taking swipes at the "overly cautious" Barack Obama over the many foreign policy "crises" he recently has been trying to juggle. The general line of their analysis is that the world is going to hell, and Obama is...

read more

Corruption Is the Price of Empire

A New York Times investigation into the influence of foreign money on American thinktanks is causing a Twitter-storm as I write this, and with good reason. In one particularly egregious example, the report details an explicit agreement, signed by the principals,...

read more

How Not To Win Hearts and Minds in Africa

Originally posted at TomDispatch. In light of recent history, perhaps it’s time to update that classic U.S. Army recruitment campaign slogan from "be all that you can be" to "build all that you can build." Consider it an irony that, in an era when...

read more

Nixon’s Vindication

Forty years ago many Americans celebrated the demise of the imperial presidency with the resignation of Richard Nixon. Today it is clear they celebrated too soon. Nixon’s view of presidential powers, summed up in his infamous statement that, “when the...

read more