The great dumbing-down of US foreign policy
American presidential campaigns no longer offer voters reasoned debate about world affairs or foreign policy. Candidates compete with each other to promise that they will keep America safest, build the strongest military, and kill the most enemies. At town-hall meetings and other events during the current campaign, voters have rarely asked foreign policy questions. When […]
On Syria: Thank you, Russia!
Once again, Moscow has shown itself better able to make strategic choices than we are. Russia is not an ideal partner for the United States, but sometimes its interests align with ours. In those cases, we should drop our Cold War hostility and work with Russia. The best place to start is Syria. American policy […]
Why Saudi Arabia is behaving like a cornered boxer
Too much happened in the Middle East during 2015. What was the most important and far-reaching event? At year’s end, there seemed to be several possible answers: the rise of the Islamic State group, the nuclear deal with Iran, or Russia’s entry in the Syrian civil war. Just a few weeks into 2016, all those […]
Rearming for the apocalypse
AMERICANS ARE IN near-panic over the danger posed by Islamic terrorists. That danger, however, pales beside an emerging new one. President Obama has proposed a frighteningly wrongheaded plan to “modernize” our nuclear arsenal at the unfathomable cost of about $1 trillion over the next 30 years. Terror will never reach even 1 percent of our population. […]
Is Iran Really So Evil?
Maybe it’s time to stop the knee-jerk demonizing of Tehran. The demonization of Iran is arguably the most bizarre and self-defeating of all U.S. foreign policies. Americans view Iran not simply as a country with interests that sometimes conflict with ours, but as a relentless font of evil. This is true across the political spectrum, […]
