Antiwar.com

“I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.”In the wake of 9/11, much has been written of the link between religion – specifically, Islam – and the rise of the terrorist threat: the religion of Mohammed, we are told, represents a dire threat to the West, comparable, in scope and potential lethality, to that of … Continue reading “IN THE SHADOW OF SHIVA”

Just before the US presidential election, a much trailed collection of essays on foreign policy, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, was published in October 2000 – edited by Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol. To save you time (and money) I’ll sum this book up in a sentence: American power … Continue reading “Absent Dangers:”

Executive Summary: Whenever Blue Team “China Threat” theorists need to rationalize gunboat diplomacy against China, they trot out their “Taiwan is a Democracy” thesis. “Taiwan is a lively / thriving / vibrant democracy” they declare, “therefore Americans have a moral obligation to rally to its defense.” Their syllogism is bogus in every respect. First, Taiwan … Continue reading “Defending Taiwan’s ‘Democracy’”

You might think I never advocate an expansion of any government function. Not so. I’d like to see a greater national defense. In fact, I’d like to see a national defense – period. Today our government spends virtually nothing on defense. Instead, it spends over $300 billion per year on offense – the most intimidating … Continue reading “National Defense & National Offense”

The horror of 9/11 was bad enough, but what makes it worse is the positively sinister undertone of what we are coming to learn about the events surrounding that singular event. In reviewing my "what’s up with that?" file of 9/11 news stories, it looks like I have enough material for a whole television series: … Continue reading “Unsolved Mysteries of 9/11”

This week, news from the Balkans has focused on the arrival of Bosnia’s new viceroy and the Serbian parliamentary purges. The fact that “Paddy” Ashdown, an accomplished belligerent statist, was to become Bosnia’s new overlord was already mentioned here. And while purges in Serbia might sound like exciting reading, they are but empty political posturing … Continue reading “The Long Shadow of Kosovo”

Cui Bono was the Latin legal term in old Rome for investigating a crime.  Who benefited from 9/11 is the question? No one would accuse Bush of the strategy used by Roosevelt at Pearl Harbor to get America into the Second World War.  But for others in Washington the question of Who Benefited may be … Continue reading “Cui Bono on 9/11?“

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”

I apologize to our non-American readers, but in the US it’s the Memorial Day weekend, and everyone is on vacation. So instead of writing a column that only half my regular readers will see, I’ve decided to run an "oldie but goodie" – written last year, when Ariel Sharon was running for Prime Minister. I … Continue reading “Who Is Ariel Sharon?”

There’s one very good reason why conspiracies are so genuinely rare in international relations, and that’s because, although you can hide what you’re doing, you can’t very often hide why you might do it. In other words, ‘secret diplomacy’ and everything more Bondian beneath that is all well and good, but the interests of a … Continue reading “Conspiracy Corner”