America

After half a century studying the issue, here’s lesson number one: Wars are bad and empire is folly. For over 50 years I have been writing about foreign policy—mostly America’s, but those of other nations as well. I think I have a pretty good grasp of places like Turkey, China, …

U.S. foreign policy under Biden is essentially one of reviving the Cold War that existed with the Soviet Union to the current period against China and Russia. Wouldn’t it be fun if delegates to the United Nations General Assembly had buttons at their seats to gauge audience reaction in real-time …

We need a reinvigorated anti-war movement. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, after 20 years of brutal occupation, should just be the beginning. The United States must also end the disastrous ​”War on Terror,” including the bombing campaigns targeting Somalia and Yemen. And it must also put a stop to the brutal sanctions …

With outer space being, as anyone over the age of 25 or so knows, the Final Frontier, is it any surprise that the Pentagon is rushing full speed ahead to turn it, against the general desire of almost everyone on Earth, into a battlefield? To borrow science fiction parlance, Afghanistan …

The Post-9/11 years have been an unmitigated disaster for nearly everyone—but not the weapons makers and other Pentagon contractors. The costs and consequences of America’s twenty-first-century wars have by now been well-documented — a staggering $8 trillion in expenditures and more than 380,000 civilian deaths, as calculated by Brown University’s Costs of War …

The tool is the product of a growing industry whose work is usually kept from the public and utilized by police. A MICHIGAN STATE POLICE CONTRACT, obtained by The Intercept, sheds new light on the growing use of little-known surveillance software that helps law enforcement agencies and corporations watch people’s …

We must unite and dismantle this American Empire before it dismantles us. Yoda, the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films, once pointed out that the future is all too difficult to see and it’s hard to deny his insight. Yet I’d argue that, when it comes to the U.S. military and its …

In the dangerous Trump era, the Pentagon pronounced that “There is no higher priority for national defense” than to “replace [the country’s] strategic nuclear triad and sustain the warheads it carries.” The estimated cost for upgrading the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal and replacing all its nuclear warhead delivery systems—intercontinental ballistic missiles, …

Despite its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. military maintains an “over-the-horizon capability,” which allows it to continue launching airstrikes. Facing unrelenting criticism over the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden Administration is insisting that the United States will maintain a capability to launch airstrikes in Afghanistan, regardless of the legal limitations and possibility …

The civ-mil divide and the health of our volunteer forces are of urgent concern right now, with blame pointed at the top. The month of August was a roller coaster of emotion for the war-weary American public and her beloved all volunteer military. As Afghanistan reverted to rule under the …