At the very moment that US President Joe Biden is busy demonstrating how little power he wields, whether in reigning in the neocolonial and militaristic behavior of the Israeli government or in attempting to push key legislation through Congress, Elon Musk, who has never been elected to any public office, is flaunting his unchallenged personal power over what may be the most disruptive force in today’s global economy: cryptocurrency. Can the US Really Rally Other Nations? READ MORE Gregory Barber, writing for Wired, notes that through his tweeting, Musk has become a self-contained agent of vol ..read more

The Biden administration is posing some stark choices for its European allies. It is not only challenging them to stand more firmly against the Kremlin, but is expanding America’s expectations of what democracy should be inside their own countries. President Joe Biden’s tough position on Russia, especially the sanctions announced on April 15, risks further exacerbating the split within NATO countries over how tough to be on the Kremlin. The administration also risks blowback from Central and East European (CEE) states over its strong support for liberal democratic standards that not all of the ..read more

In early September, with the war in Afghanistan officially over and the Middle East retreating from the media’s landscape, The New York Times began preparing the American public for the next theater of war. This time it will be just off the coast of mainland China, in Taiwan. There will be no boots on the ground or even drones in the air. The media is now busy putting in place the initial elements of a new Cold War, in which intense military build-up will be designed to serve the stated purpose of avoiding a hot war. Nature hates a vacuum and, when it comes to war, so does US media that has al ..read more

When he was trying to win the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon famously told his chief of staff that he wanted Communist leaders — in the Soviet Union, in North Vietnam — to think that the US president was a mad man, that he was capable of doing pretty much anything up to and including the use of nuclear weapons. Fear of an unpredictable, erratic leader would bring the communists to the negotiating table and render them more conciliatory. Nixon’s was, of course, a calculated craziness. “When the wind is southerly,” Tricky Dick certainly could distinguish “a hawk from a handsaw,” as Hamlet famously p ..read more

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made one thing clear about the Trump administration’s approach to US foreign policy: It’s going to change. In his first month on the job, Secretary Blinken rescinded former President Donald Trump’s designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group, reaffirmed America’s strategic partnerships and announced plans to rejoin the UN Human Rights Council. The Winners and Losers of Israel’s Normalization Deal With Morocco READ MORE This is just the beginning. Blinken’s predecessor, Mike Pompeo, left what many consider to be an internecine mess on the world stage, a ..read more

On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked four planes and launched suicide attacks on iconic symbols of America, first striking the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and then the Pentagon. It would be the deadliest act of terrorism on American soil, claiming nearly 3,000 lives. Scroll down to read more in this 360° series The attacks not only shocked the world, but the images of planes crashing into the World Trade Center came to define a generation. In a speech on October 11, 2001, then-President George W. Bush spok ..read more

The far right have a habit of co-opting symbols and visual iconography originally used by other movements, oftentimes those holding opposing ideologies. For example, during the rally-turned-siege in Washington on January 6, protesters chanted, “Whose house? Our house!” This was a likely nod to, “Whose streets? Our streets!” shouted by attendees of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Prior to the Unite the Right rally, however, the phrase was commonly used by groups protesting oppression. The “Whose streets? Our streets!” chant has, since the 1990s, been used by “LGBTQ ..read more

The sudden reemergence of the lab leak theory earlier this year — that COVID-19 was made in and escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology — has hit international media and occasioned nervous reactions from the Biden administration, which demanded a conclusive report on the origins of the pandemic within 90 days. That deadline has just expired, with little result. As the head of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) emergencies program, Michael Ryan, stated last week, “The current situation is that all of the hypotheses regarding to the origins of the virus are still on the table.” The New A ..read more

We live in resentful times. Dare we even utter these words? They sound as trite and cliché as that time-honored opening sentence that has introduced so many articles on populism in recent years, “A specter is haunting Europe.” It can easily apply to Latin America, or the United States or, why not, India, Turkey or the Philippines. But, to abuse a well-known adage, only because something is trite does not necessarily mean that it isn’t true. The Good Old Days: Nostalgia’s Political Appeal READ MORE The fact is that we do live in an age of resentment, and populism has been among its main politic ..read more

The United States has been the most powerful country in the world for 130 years and has actively led the international community for 75. With only 4.25% of the world’s population, the US still accounts for a little more than 24% of the world’s GNP. Its military is by far the world’s most powerful, with a budget larger than the next 12 biggest militaries combined. The US has the highest per capita income of any major country and the most diverse and creative economy the world has ever seen. It leads in virtually every technology critical for economic and military predominance, from artificial i ..read more