Donald Trump and a majority of South Koreans believe that South Korea should have a nuclear weapon. Are they right?
Should South Korea Get the Bomb?
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Realism
Why Doesn’t the Foreign Policy Establishment Take World Peace Seriously?
When it comes to what should be a fundamental goal of foreign policy — world peace — the elites aren’t even trying.
Realism about the Obama Doctrine
Obama’s foreign policy legacy will not be secured unless he addresses head-on the belief that we have the power to achieve our objectives by threats, intimidation, and coercion.
Applied to Nuclear Weapons, Realism is the Road to Ruin
In an op-ed at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists titled Why nuclear realism is unrealistic, Benoit Pelopidas writes that “adopting the point of view often called nuclear realism—the notion that technology and careful management will keep us safe—is a dangerous...
Diplomats’ Reports in the Cold War Years: Indispensable or Exercise in Futility?
Post-World War II U.S. administrations often marginalized diplomats’ reports that dissented from their policies on the Cold War, China, and the Vietnam and Iraq Wars.
Review: Washington Rules
For his first 40 years, Andrew Bacevich lived the conventional life of an army officer. In the military world where success depended on conformity, he followed the rules and “took comfort in orthodoxy…[finding] assurance in conventional wisdom.” Comfort, that is, until he had a chance to peer behind the Iron Curtain, and was shocked to find East Germany more third-world shambles than first-rate threat.
Toward a Defensible Climate Realism
It’s a tough time to be an American climate realist. After all, which realism will you choose? The Beltway realism that limits U.S. commitments, and even U.S. initiatives, to those that are immediately sustainable by veto-proof congressional majorities? The internationalist realism that begins instead with the recognition that – as the recent multilateral climate talks in Bali clearly indicated – a viable global accord will necessarily require substantial rich-world financial commitments? How about a straightforward scientific realism that proceeds differently, ignoring the politics of the moment and stressing instead the physical demands of the climate system?