Foreign Policy

Facing Reality on Ukraine

Have you missed me?  Website technical problems have deterred me from posting for the past month, but my inactivity is also partly explained by the fact that I’ve pretty much said what I want to say about the issues of ...

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Ukraine–another endless war?

An article in today’s “Review” section of the NY Times lines up completely with my own views of our wrongheaded course in the Ukraine. You’ve actually seen most of this in my posts, but I am always happy to repeat ...

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Nancy in Kyiv

Nancy Pelosi is a superb legislative strategist, but she has never manifested any notable sophistication or originality in her pronouncements on foreign policy. It is a pretty good bet that her proclamation of a goal of victory in Ukraine, however ...

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What’s the Ukraine endgame?

How will this war end?  And what kind of end should the West be seeking?  Walter Shapiro states the problem as follows: Even with enhanced weaponry (including fighter jets) being sent to Ukraine by the United States and NATO allies, the only ...

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US Objectives in the Ukraine War

What should the US be seeking to accomplish with regard to the war over Ukraine?  Obviously, we have sought, quite successfully, to help the Ukrainians fight back against an aggressor, but fighting aggression isn’t the only or even the most ...

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Albright and Iraq

The passing of Madeline Albright has been noted in laudatory obituaries of an impressively accomplished woman.  I was struck, however, in reading the NY Times obit, that no mention was made of Albright’s role in perhaps the most immediately consequential ...

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Ukraine: The past was prologue

In organizing and spearheading the international response to the Russian assault on Ukraine, the United States has played the role typically assigned to it in the folklore of American foreign policy: leader of the free world in standing for peace, ...

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A Bad Idea

Wars and threats of war tend to generate knee-jerk responses.  Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has brought on calls for increased military spending by the US. The calls come from predictable sources, like Bret Stephens, who coincidentally sees the crisis as ...

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Is a Just Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Possible?

No, it isn’t.  That’s the conclusion reached by political scientist Jerome Slater in his 2021 book, Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israel Conflict, 1917-2020.  But it is possible to craft a solution that minimizes unavoidable injustice. Slater’s ...

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Mea Culpa

So, Putin has decided that the threat was not enough; he is executing the threat.  I was wrong.  I thought that at most Putin would be content to move into the Donbas, to set up a pile of bargaining chips ...

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