Tag - united-states

 
 

UNITED STATES

COMMENTARY / World
Jun 24, 2014
America's addiction to war
Somewhere out there in an alternative universe, we should expect a more rational reaction to Barack Obama's announcement that he plans to re-invade Iraq. Perhaps a half-dozen Cabinet members would rush into the Oval Office and bundle the president off to an institution that can give him the treatment he seems to require. Why are American politicians addicted to war?
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 24, 2014
World needs to take a dose of realism about Iraq
As imbalances of power, wealth and productivity become magnified in our age, ethnic and religious loyalties as well as notions of honor and dignity have become more seductive than iPhones and elections. Just ask the despots who've lost the monopoly of force in Syria and Iraq.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 20, 2014
Americans should be worried about polarization
Americans should worry about a new Pew report on political polarization not because there's too much genuine ideological competition, but because our most energetic citizens appear to be dividing every more coherently into factions that can't stand each other.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 17, 2014
Sectarian monster reawakens
The systematic political marginalization of Iraq's Sunni communities demands the establishment of a new political and social contract to re-order the mess created by the U.S. invasion and Iran's intervention.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 17, 2014
U.S. may have to 'drink poison' on Iran
President Barack Obama and the overstretched U.S. may have to decide whether to settle with Iran on the nuclear issue because that would be better than watching the Middle East descend into chaos.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 13, 2014
Kagan and the ruin of ideas
Neocon commentator Robert Kagan's belief — detailed in his new book 'The World America Made' — that the world will benefit from a benevolent American suzerainty, despite the side effects of the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghan wars, beggars the imagination.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 11, 2014
U.S. foreign policy marked by blatant hypocrisy
It is a truth universally acknowledged that behavior by others inconsistent with social norms is condemned as hypocrisy but similar discrepancies in our own conduct is rationalized as understandable prioritization in the face of multiple goals. When the military deposed Egypt's first freely elected president,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 10, 2014
Why don't more American soldiers walk away?
American news media portrays Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and his apparent decision to simply walk away from the war in Afghanistan as bizarre and incomprehensible. Yet some wonder why it doesn't happen all the time.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 9, 2014
Asian threats, provocations giving rise to whiffs of war
When the political history of the 21st century is written, it may well trace the tipping point toward war in Asia to our present decade.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 6, 2014
Let Japan help defend America — and itself
The growing risk that Washington will be drawn into a confrontation with Beijing over parochial issues in East Asia will go down as soon as Japan takes greater responsibility for its own defense and that of its allies, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposes.
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2014
Opportunity for U.S. to extricate itself from Korea
The U.S. should reduce the possibility of impoverished, remote North Korea interfering with its own peace, stability and prosperity by simply going home: Terminate the defense treaty with South Korea.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
May 20, 2014
Washington mixes signals about aims toward China
Even while reconfirming its 'pivot to Asia,' Washington tries to construct multifaceted bilateral ties with Beijing, raising questions about the ultimate fate of longtime alliances between the U.S. and a number of Asia-Pacific countries.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2014
Media's one-sided Yemen spin
According to the Western narrative, Yemen exists for one purpose and nothing else: maintain Western interests in that part of the world. When these interests are threatened, only then does Yemen matter.
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2014
The once-mighty U.S. is in decline: Get used to it
Like fourth-century Romans, Americans are beginning to realize that they are no longer citizens of an unrivaled superpower. And they're kind of freaking out about it.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2014
What Ukraine really needs
The last thing Ukraine needs is domination by either the New Russia or the partisans of an American neocon organization. A federal system of self-governing provinces might work.
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2014
Why the dollar will remain the top currency
China is missing one crucial ingredient as it builds the renminbi's claim to reserve-currency status: the world's trust with regard to a broader and more credible set of public and political institutions.
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2014
A new cold war or a cool power calculation?
Americans understand that if they go too far too fast in pushing sanctions against Russia in the Ukraine crisis, Europe will publicly break with the U.S. approach, because the Europeans have a lot more at stake economically.
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2014
Is China the top economic power?
New World Bank figures suggesting that China's GDP will overtake that of the U.S. sometime this year raise profound issues for Americans who have presumed that postwar economic affluence depends on countries becoming more like the U.S.
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2014
N. Korea won't disarm nukes so stop pushing it
Why shouldn't the U.S. and South Korea grudgingly accept the North's nuclear weapons status and focus on what they might actually be able to change: Pyongyang's belligerent behavior?
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2014
Freedom of expression under fire in America
If you can lose your job in the U.S. as Mozilla's CEO did — because those in charge found his politics repugnant — there are only two options available to those of us who need to earn a living: Keep our opinions to ourselves, or lie about them.

Longform

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