Invitation to an arms race
INTIMIDATING WEAKER COUNTRIES is normal behavior for great powers. For most of the 20th century, the United States was strong enough to keep allies in line and rivals at bay. Today, however, other countries are not so easily intimidated. Many have lost confidence in the US. At the same time, competing powers have emerged. This […]
Why are we so fixated on Iran?
DURING HIS PRESIDENTIAL campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly denounced America’s “forever war” in the greater Middle East. As his principal advisers on world affairs, however, he has chosen some of the most relentless militarists ever to sit at the hand of an American president. How fully he accepts their advice will determine whether the United States […]
40 years later, grappling with regime change in Nicaragua
NICARAGUANS ARE RELIVING a nightmare. Forty years ago, they deposed the brutal Somoza family dictatorship. But over the decade of Sandinista rule following the coup, tens of thousands of Nicaraguans were killed in a brutal civil war. Now the country is facing a strikingly similar situation: President Daniel Ortega is, by all measures, an autocrat, […]
Preventing ‘Another Rwanda’ Is No Reason to Deploy US Forces All Over ther World
ONE OF THE most horrific orgies of violence in modern history broke out 25 years ago this month in Rwanda. Nearly a million men, women, and children were clubbed or hacked to death, many by their own neighbors, in the space of three months. World leaders turned away. Since then, this tragedy has been repeatedly […]
The Birth of American Imperialism (audio)
Stephen Kinzer joins Free Thoughts Podcast to discuss an age-old question; What is America’s role in the world?
