Predicting the unpredictable for 2019
It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. That gem of homespun wisdom from the philosopher Yogi Berra weighs on anyone who looks into the crystal ball of geopolitics. Yet the very fact that the world has become so topsy-turvy makes the exercise all but irresistible. Here, then, are one prognosticator’s guesses about what […]
With Syria announcement, Trump confronts his own militarist cabal
AN ENEMY OF American foreign policy is secretly embedded at the highest level of the Trump administration. This lone figure cleverly hides his subversive views. He pretends to endorse the national security team’s snarling, bomb-everyone-yesterday aggressiveness, but his heart is not in it. Could that be President Trump himself? His startling announcement that he will pull American […]
How ‘femicide’ drove the caravan
Violent clashes at the US-Mexican border, with refugees throwing rocks and police firing tear gas, are the latest sign of intensifying trouble in Central America. Why are its people fleeing? Some of the reasons are easy to identify. Decades of exploitation by US-owned corporations left a legacy of political oppression and weak coffee-and-banana economies. Militarization in […]
Three heretic authors take on the US foreign-policy blob
“We are far off course,” the development guru Jeffrey Sachs laments in his new book. The curmudgeonly geo-strategist John Mearsheimer agrees: “Something went badly wrong.” So does Stephen Walt, the dissenting realist at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “Pursuing liberal hegemony did not make the United States safer, stronger, more prosperous, or more […]
Jair Bolsonaro threatens us all
MIDTERM ELECTIONS IN the United States have shaken national politics, but they are hardly this season’s most important message from angry voters. That message came from Brazil. On Oct. 28, a right-wing former military officer, Jair Bolsonaro, won the Brazilian presidency with 55 percent of the vote. His outspoken misogyny and flamboyant racism are beyond disconcerting. […]
