From The American Conservative:Barbara Boland reported on the House Armed Services Committee’s vote to impede withdrawal of US from Afghanistan:The House Armed Services Committee voted Wednesday night to put roadblocks on President Donald Trump’s vow to...
The Iran Obsession Has Isolated the US
From The American Conservative:Mike Pompeo delivered an embarrassing, clownish performance at the UN on Tuesday, and his attempt to gain support for an open-ended conventional arms embargo on Iran was rejected the rest of the old P5+1:Secretary of State Mike Pompeo...
Attacking Congressional Oversight To Sell Weapons to War Criminals
From The American Conservative:The Trump administration is considering ending the process of giving Congress informal notification about pending arms sales:While congressional aides were not surprised by the proposed move, which they said the Trump administration has...
Recognizing the Limits of US Power
From The American Conservative:Jeremy Shapiro wrote an interesting review of Shields of the Republic, a new book by Mira Rapp-Hooper about U.S. alliances. Dan Drezner responds to Shapiro by changing the subject to talk about the recent clash between Indian and Chinese...
How Interventionists Hijack the Rhetoric of Morality
From The American Conservative:Kori Schake objects to Biden’s foreign policy record on the grounds that he is not hawkish enough and too skeptical of military intervention. She restates a bankrupt hawkish view of U.S. military action: This half-in-half-out...
Endless War Comes Home
Originally appeared at The American Conservative.The president ordered an attack on protesters to clear the way for a photo op last night, and he also threatened to deploy the military on American soil:When Trump had returned safely to the White House less than an...
The US Shouldn’t Get Involved in the Ladakh Standoff
Originally appeared at The American Conservative.Tensions between India and China have been increasing over the last few weeks with a buildup of troops along a disputed border in eastern Ladakh. The buildup on the Chinese side appears to have been a response to Indian...
The Weakness of ‘Maximum Pressure’
Originally appeared at The American Conservative.An Iranian tanker delivered some gasoline to Venezuela this week, and this is how the report in The New York Times framed the event: Venezuela needs gasoline and has gold. Iran has oil but needs cash. Both Venezuela and...
The ‘Cost-Effective’ Coup and Other Myths
Originally appeared at The American Conservative.Fresh off of his defense of the foreign policy “Blob,” Hal Brands suggests that the U.S. might get back into the business of covertly overthrowing foreign governments:Just as the US sought to undermine or...
No One Should Be Missing Kissinger
Originally appeared at The American Conservative.Thomas Meaney debunks the myth of Henry Kissinger:Since leaving office, too, Kissinger has rarely challenged consensus, let alone offered the kind of inconvenient assessments that characterized the later career of...


