It is almost impossible to discuss US foreign policy without engaging in Whataboutism. What about American wars? What about American mistakes? What about American crimes? What about … ? Although often dismissed as engaging in moral equivalency, Whataboutism can be...
The War From TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome)
Hear us out here. The Donald himself is the approximate casus belli of the World War III prelude now raging in Ukraine, reminding us once again that sometimes history morphs in the strangest ways. But the truth is, Trump single-handed generated such a deep, intense...
The Forgotten People Displaced By War
Originally posted at TomDispatch. We live on a planet in motion, a world of collision and drift. This was once an Earth of super-continents – Gondwana, Rodinia, Pangea. The eastern seaboard of the United States sidled up against West Africa, while Antarctica cozied up...
On Palestine’s Everyday Victories: Why Israel Is No Longer the Exception
Can Israel be pressured? Or is Tel Aviv the only exception to the global political order in which every country, big or small, is subjected to pressures and subsequent change in attitude and behavior? Several events, in recent days, bring the question of Israel’s...
‘Let Them Kill as Many as Possible’ – United States Policy Toward Russia and its Neighbors
In April 1941, four years before he was to become President and eight months before the United States entered World War II, Senator Harry Truman of Missouri reacted to the news that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union: "If we see that Germany is winning the war, we...
Endless Wars Are the Enemy of Freedom
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of...
Making US Foreign Policy About Americans
Originally appeared at the American Institute for Economic Research. US officials are keeping very busy in the world. Yet very few of Washington’s actions have much to do with protecting America. Instead, the foreign policy establishment believes that its primary role...
The West’s SWIFT Kick Is Aimed at Russia, But it Will Also Hit the US Dollar
As part of the western response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, several regimes acted on February 26 to exclude certain Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network. As of March 1, Reuters reports,...
The Triumphant Foreign Policy of Warren G. Harding
"I find a hundred thousand sorrows touching my heart, and there is a ringing in my ears, like an admonition eternal, an insistent call, ‘It must not be again! It must not be again!’" said a tearful President Warren G. Harding in May 1921, as 5212 wooden...
Is a Russia-NATO Clash Over Ukraine Ahead?
When Hungarian rebels arose in 1956 to overthrow the Communist regime imposed by Joseph Stalin, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. forces to aid the Hungarians. Ike would not take America to war with Russia over a small country in Central Europe. While...


