Volodymyr Zelensky, Between a Rock and a Hard Place

A year and a half into the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may be finding himself back in the same dilemma he was confronted with at the beginning of his presidency, only magnified by the disaster of war. In April 2019, Zelensky won a surprising landslide...

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Washington’s Strategic Overextension

The Biden administration seems determined to pursue highly confrontational policies toward both Moscow and Beijing.  The United States, through its leadership of NATO, is pursuing a full-blown proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.  Indeed, that initiative appears to be...

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A Rough Diplomatic Week for Ukraine

In the early weeks of the war, a peace was still possible that would have seen Ukraine lose few lives and little to no land. Even the Donbas would have remained in Ukraine with autonomy under a still possible Minsk agreement. Only Crimea would have remained lost. A...

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NATO Keeps Saying Things NATO Doesn’t Let You Say

There are two things that go off script and are not allowed to be said. Every official statement or mainstream media article that mentions the war in Ukraine must call it an unprovoked war. You are not allowed to say that NATO expansion east, potentially to Ukraine...

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Imagining a Progressive Pentagon

In September 2007, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian William Astore emailed me out of the blue. He’d been reading TomDispatch articles on this country’s Global War on Terror, especially the invasion of, and never-ending conflict in, Iraq. And as a...

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