With recent polls giving Donald Trump a reasonable chance of defeating US President Joe Biden in the November 5 election, commentators have begun predicting what his second presidency might mean for domestic politics. In a dismally detailed The Washington Post analysis, historian Robert Kagan argued that a second Trump term would feature his “deep thirst for vengeance” against what the ex-president has called the “radical Left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country,” thereby launching what Kagan calls “a regime of political persecution” leading to “an irreversible desce ..read more

This morning it occurred to me that Chad might have some insight into the phenomenon French President Emmanuel Macron recently described as “suivisme,” the pathology of uncritically following someone else’s direction. “Chad, you surely remember that back in 2019 the Trump administration made the extraordinary decision that a man called Juan Guaidó, who had never been elected or even considered as a presidential candidate, should be recognized as the legitimate president of Venezuela. Donald Trump justified this by claiming the democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro was a dictator who ..read more

It has finally happened. Donald Trump has finally been indicted for criminal misconduct. After decades as an aggressive and unrepentant grifter, racist, and serial offender, Trump finally faces processes and procedures that may be beyond even his capacity to intimidate, manipulate, and corrupt. So, in case you are wondering, I am thrilled. And yes, I take this personally. Everything that Trump represents and everything that his venal acolytes espouse is anathema to everything that I have believed in and fought for my entire life. In a country where the criminal justice system is tasked with so ..read more

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 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