Category Foreign Policy
Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the historical loss of American global moral authority and vulnerability of women globally
Judge Brett Kavanaugh will now be Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. The United States has proven once again in the eyes of the world it’s drifting far from the moral leadership it long clung to globally. In so many ways the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh is the culmination of a long drift toward overt moral hypocrisy […]
Trump policy tilt toward Saudi Arabia a mistake
President Trump’s decision to arbitrarily violate the Iran Nuclear Deal and continue to align American interests with the repressive Saudi Arabian regime signals to the world that the US is far from concerned about human rights, misogyny and the treatment of immigrant guest worker populations. It also indicates the United States isn’t open to persuasion […]
John Bolton appointment a capstone on 15 years of declining American influence abroad
Donald Trump’s decision to ungracefully usher out soldier-scholar General H.R. McMaster (whom Trump never really fancied and represented a consensus-backed face-saving choice after the Michael Flynn debacle ) as his National Security Adviser in favor of arguably the most dangerous man in the western world, John Bolton is an appropriate capstone on 15 years of […]
15 years on from the invasion, very little media attention on Iraq? Why?
This week, fifteen years ago the US invaded Iraq without provocation. The “preemptive” war pushed by President George W. Bush, who lacked the basic intellect to understand that not all Arabs or Muslims who oppose the US are aligned (which is how presumably David Frum conned him into using the “Axis of Evil” phrase lumping […]
India and Pakistan at 70 – Looking back and looking ahead
Let me take a point of personal privilege today – we’ll be turning The Florida Squeeze into the “Subcontinent Squeeze,” today as we commemorate 70 years since India and Pakistan were given independence from Britain. The Indian subcontinent is the mother of all civilization. The human race descended from South India after migrations from Africa […]
India and China headed toward possible war: Why India cannot back down
In the Trump obsession that has defined American politics across the spectrum for the last 26 months, it has been hardly noticed on our TV news that the world’s two most populated nations are coming closer to war. For a full update on what is at stake and the basis of the current dispute here […]
Does free speech include the right to boycott? It should…
It was with some curiosity I read an article penned by two of the most courageous and intellectually honest writers out there – Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Grimm. The subject: proposed legislation by Senators Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) that would make it a felony for American citizens to join in any international […]
How will the Obama foreign policy be viewed with hindsight?
Vice News excellent A World in Disarray documentary that has aired on HBO this month opens up several serious questions about the reaction of the Obama Administration to conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere. Much of the documentary was focused on the growing Chinese hegemony as well as the subtle ways China has grown its […]
Iraq War Syndrome – The Democrats, neocons and Donald Trump
It remains odd from my perspective that the war in Iraq didn’t create the level of activism and anger in its aftermath in this country that Vietnam did. Iraq quite possibly did have more of an impact on the view of the United States and the nation’s moral authority abroad than Vietnam, but it didn’t […]
UK Election – a victory for the true left and a defeat for austerity, the media and “moderation”
The third way is dead in Britain. Parties running to the hard-left captured a total of 306 seats in the 650 seat UK House of Commons last night (counting Sinn Fein seats which will not be filled as the party as usual will NOT take their seats in the Commons). The revitalized Labour Party picked […]
The Florida Squeeze 