Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia who served in the U.S. Senate from 2007 to 2013 and was secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan asks: When did it become acceptable to kill a top leader of a country we aren’t even at war with?
Analysis
BOAS: What Europeans believe about Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and why it matters
Did the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shorten the war, and were they necessary to force the Japanese surrender? Many people believe the answer to both questions is yes: In dropping the Bomb, America chose the lesser of two evils.
Bonnie Kristian: Trump’s reasoning is bad, but withdrawing troops from Germany is a good idea
The Pentagon’s announcement that around 12,000 U.S. troops will leave Germany, reducing the American force presence there by a third and continuing decades of similar reductions, was widely met with derision in Washington from policymakers on both sides of the aisle.
Bill Rivers: Abuses in domestic surveillance of the Trump campaign echo Red Scare
A court has ordered the FBI to explain how it will correct its behavior going forward, exactly a century after it should have learned its lesson.
Vox: “The end of arms control as we know it”
The last agreement limiting America’s and Russia’s nuclear arsenals is months away from expiring.
Justin Garrison: Reagan’s vision of U.S. foreign policy
Despite his seeing serious disagreements with other nations, he sometimes stressed that a successful U.S. policy would need to include restraint, flexibility, realism, and openness to dialogue, especially with the Soviet Union. Comments like these suggested that he viewed politics and foreign policy as the art of the possible, not as an attempt to realize some great ideal.
Responsible Statecraft: How to do trilateral arms control
The Trump administration appears to be holding the renewal of the bilateral New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, hostage with the fallacy that China should, and would immediately, join trilateral negotiations with the United States and Russia.
Andrew Bacevich: The “Revolution of ’89” Reassessed
Thirty years ago this month, President George H.W. Bush appeared before a joint session of Congress to deliver his first State of the Union Address, the first post-Cold War observance of this annual ritual.
Stephen Walt: Countries Should Mind Their Own Business
What we are seeing, in short, is a reassertion of sovereign independence on the part of great and small powers alike.
Matthew Petti: Trying to Turn NATO Into NATOME
Donald Trump wants the U.S.-European alliance to do more work in the Middle East. But are America’s allies on board with his counter-Iran campaign?
Claes G. Ryn: American exceptionalism fans imperial designs. We must reject it.
Exceptionalism does not defuse or restrain the will to power, but feeds it, justifying arrogance, assertiveness, and even belligerence.
Beverly Gage: Review of Andrew Bacevich’s Age of Illusion
The Cold War constituted a “tragedy of towering proportions,” Andrew Bacevich writes, 40-plus years of “folly and waste,” all to create the greatest buildup of lethal force in human history. The proper response, when it came to an end, would have been “reflection, remorse, repentance, even restitution.”
Mary Dejevsky: Is Putin loosening his grip on Russia’s regions?
Protests in Khabarovsk could herald big changes to the way the nation is run.
[Video] Amb. William vanden Heuvel: Hope and History
Ambassador Willam vanden Heuvel talked about his book, Hope and History: A Memoir of Tumultuous Times, on his life and career in public service. He spoke with his daughter, Nation Magazine publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel at the New York Historical Society.
George Beebe: Is Russia Really Trying to Steal Coronavirus Secrets?
There is little chance that Moscow and Beijing will play by our preferred rules in this new era of great power competition if we refuse to engage with them over what the rules of the game should be.
Erik Wemple: David Corn and the Steele dossier: Just checking the facts!
When the [Steele] dossier’s allegations were fresh and sexy and unvetted they were suitable for inclusion in Mother Jones. Once they were vetted and found wanting, however, they lost their appeal.
Adrian Campbell: The wild decade: how the 1990s laid the foundations for Vladimir Putin’s Russia
After 20 years in power, the narrative of Russia’s chaotic 1990s remains core to Putin’s legitimacy as the leader who restored stability.
Doug Bandow: The Obama Administration Wrecked Libya For A Generation
Libya’s ongoing destruction belongs to Hillary Clinton more than anyone else.
Paul Sperry: Meet the Steele Dossier’s ‘Primary Subsource’
The mysterious “Primary Subsource” that Christopher Steele has long hidden behind to defend his discredited Trump-Russia dossier is a former Brookings Institution analyst — Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, a Russian national whose past includes criminal convictions and other personal baggage ignored by the FBI in vetting him and the information he fed to Steele, according to congressional sources and records obtained by RealClearInvestigations.
Jessica Schulberg: War With Iran Nothing To Worry About, Say Men Who Launched Iraq War
In a sane and just society, the architects of the nearly 17-year-old war in Iraq – which is still ongoing and has left an estimated half-million people dead – would face war crimes charges and those who cheered them on would be thoroughly discredited.