Stephen Walt: Americans have come to believe that spending government revenues on U.S. citizens here at home is usually a bad thing and should be viewed wth suspicion, but spending billions on vast social engineering projects overseas is the hallmark of patriotism and should never be questioned. This position makes no sense, but it is […]
Tag: foreign policy
This doesn’t seem right to me: During the Cold War, the United States and Turkey formed a “strategic partnership” based on both countries’ fear of Soviet intervention in the Mi
The European Union selected its President and High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and Vice President for External Affairs. In the classic stereotype of the dull gray bureaucrat, they&#
Stephen Walt, following a rundown of ten “scary monsters” of foreign policy: First, we are often told that international politics is a dangerous business, and that it makes sense to prepare for the worst case. This is nonsense, because there are real costs to exaggerating various potential threats. Not only may this policy lead us […]
I’m guessing that this is going to make it hard to treat the settlements as “bargaining chips.”
Nicholas Thompson’sThe Hawk and the Dove is an exceptionally readable dual biography of George Kennan and Paul Nitze. George Kennan is, to some, rather an odd dove; he helped formulate the visio
Peter Beinart has a rather bizarre column praising the Democrats for “sacrificing abortion and immigrant rights to get conservative Democrats to vote for expanded health-care coverage” amidst some nostalgia for the era in which the Democrats were forced to make sacrifices by its pro-apartheid faction. The historical analogy is problematic for some obvious reasons, namely […]
Two QOTDs:Jacob Levy: A Veteran’s/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn’t just mean a gauzy and somber honoring of live veterans and fallen soldiers. It
A few years ago, a student of mine worked out the implications of a large scale Chinese SRBM (short range ballistic missile) attack on Taiwan. He argued that the attack was, based on the historic resi
I was going to write something about this, but that’s too easy: the “drug czar” of the UK gets the sack for very publicly disagreeing with the Government’s drug policy, and terms Gordon Brown and the cabinet “irrational luddites”. He has a point, but it’s too simple to point out the hilarity of a Government, […]
Indeed; and of course it’s even worse if establishing a reputation for toughness is simply impossible under any circumstances...
Especially when they come from different countries? Former Ambassador Martin Indyk revealed an interesting wrinkle to the story of Eastern European missile defense system, which the Obama administrati