Trump’s Space Force is a silly but dangerous idea
AMERICAN FORCES HAVE spent much of this century failing to achieve their goals in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Our central problem is that many people in those countries don’t like us, don’t share our goals, and either refuse to help us or take up arms to chase us out. Pesky natives have been the bane of […]
How to interfere in a foreign election
FOR ONE OF THE world’s major powers to interfere systematically in the presidential politics of another country is an act of brazen aggression. Yet it happened. Sitting in a distant capital, political leaders set out to assure that their favored candidate won an election against rivals who scared them. They succeeded.
The lesson in the ruins of Rome
FINDING THE SPOT where the most famous episode in Roman history happened is not easy. A bit of research, however, led me to a plaza where ruins have been unearthed. Tourists crowd around Trevi Fountain nearby, but when I arrived at these ruins, I was the only person gazing down at two sets of excavated steps. […]
Putting a stake through fascism as neo-fascism rises
Unruly crowds converged last weekend at Europe’s most formidable monument to fascism. They were Spaniards outraged by their government’s decision to remove the body of longtime dictator Francisco Franco from its crypt in a lugubrious basilica called Valley of the Fallen. Some of them defiantly raised their right arms in the fascist salute. They could […]
Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega leads violent clampdown amid fears of coup, civil war
BUENOS AIRES — When Nicaraguan guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega first took power in mid-1979, his admirers included a 17-year-old Caracas high school dropout who celebrated a “newly lit light” in Latin America as he maneuvered his bus around Venezuela’s hilly capital. Nearly four decades down the road, the driver, Nicolas Maduro, clings to power as his country’s embattled president, […]
