Was ‘No NATO Expansion East’ More Than a Promise?
At the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, eventual membership in NATO was promised to Ukraine and Georgia with the statement that “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agree today that these countries will become...
Villainy In Vilnius
America’s Brobdingnagian $1.3 trillion national security budget thrives on manufactured threats and falsely demonized foes. And nothing could be more demonstrative of that proposition than the utter villainy now emanating from the NATO summit in Vilnius. For crying...
Jenin is Just the Start: Did Palestinians Finally Bury the Ghosts of the Past?
The deadly Israeli invasion of Jenin on July 3 was not a surprise. Unsurprising also is the fact that the killing of 12 Palestinians, wounding of 120 more, and the destruction of nearly 80 percent of the Jenin Refugee Camp’s homes and infrastructure will not make an...
It’s Always a ‘Difficult Decision,’ They Tell Us
“In a dark time,” poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “the eye begins to see.” Stanley Kunitz observed: “In a murderous time / the heart breaks and breaks / and lives by breaking.” In the current murderous time, amid the dim media swirl, acuity arrived for some with the news...
Vice Presidents Keep Getting Worse on Foreign Policy
Every vice president in this century has been terrible on foreign policy. In the race to be the least terrible, Mike Pence did himself no favors the other day. Pence was bragging to Fox News about how tough he and Donald Trump were with regards to Russia. He proudly...
Peace in Ukraine? Faltering Counter-Offensive, Failed Coup
So far, Ukraine’s month-long "counter-offensive" has been a very costly failure. Attacks on Russian forces in the southern province of Zaporozhe have yet to achieve any significant strategic success, and the same is true all along the line of contact....
Netanyahu: No Palestinian State and the PA ‘Works for Us’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not just against the establishment of a Palestinian state, he wants to eliminate the very aspirations for such a state. This was the gist of Netanyahu's remarks, made at a meeting of the Israeli Knesset's Foreign Affairs...
Cluster Munitions for Ukraine
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. News that the Biden administration is sending cluster munitions to Ukraine highlights the dangerous escalatory nature of wars. These are special bombs and artillery shells with hundreds of “bomblets” that...
Good News on Free Speech — for Now
Occasionally, the news makes one cheer. That’s the case with a preliminary injunction granted this week (July 4) to stop the federal government from suppressing lawful speech on social media. U.S. District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty took the action in the case...
