It used to be that prospective politicians chose law school as the first step in their career path. Future politicians may skip law school altogether and try out for the Saturday Night Live team instead.
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A Fat Budget for Weapons, Thin for Diplomacy
In their first debate, Barack Obama and John McCain will audition for the role of change agent. Here’s one thing the moderator needs to ask: how they would change the military-led foreign policy of the past eight years.
Book Review: Spies for Hire
If you think you’ve even got a vague notion of how the shadowy side of the U.S. government operates, do yourself a favor and read Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (Simon & Schuster, 2008). This book is a wide-open window into the creepy new corporate world of spydom that may keep you awake at night.
The VP Debate: Dishonest Foreign Policies
The October 3 debate between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Delaware Senator Joe Biden was disturbing for those of us hoping for a more enlightened and honest foreign policy during the next four years. In its aftermath, pundits mainly focused on Palin’s failure to self-destruct and Biden’s relatively cogent arguments. Here’s an annotation of the foreign policy issues raised during the vice-presidential debate, which was packed with demonstrably false and misleading statements.
South Korea: Still Dreaming of Regionalism
North-east Asia is a critically important locus of geopolitics, but it lacks a regional security structure.
Scorched-Earth Presidency
The Bush administration has been putting fuses in place for some time now. The Iraq War is the biggest booby trap. The next administration will be saddled with the bulk of the costs — up to $3 trillion, according to estimates by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. It will also have to figure out how to pull the knife out of the bleeding country of Iraq without letting the victim die.
U.S. Should Boost Nonmilitary Security
At a time when national consensus on anything is rare indeed, here’s one example: The balance between our spending on military forces and other security tools – like diplomacy, nonproliferation, foreign aid and homeland security – needs to change.
Surrounding China’s String of Pearls
In 1919, the English geographer Halford Mackinder argued that control of the “Eurasian heartland” was the key to world domination. Mackinder believed that Eastern Europe was the gateway to controlling this huge landmass stretching from his home country to the far shores of Asia. And indeed, Eastern Europe proved pivotal in the next conflagration, World War II, as well as in the US policy of containing the Soviet Union in the Cold War era.
Review: Broken Immigration System
Immigration reform advocates still disagree over the Senate’s failed 2007 attempt to push through legislation that would have provided a path to legalization for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Unions and big business had briefly allied in supporting a legalization program combined with an increase in visas. But the partnership collapsed after an ill-begotten attempt to secure the bill’s passage, which added so many noxious provisions that it lost many of its supporters while failing to win over implacable opponents.
Of Coffee and Capitalism
The rise of Starbucks also seems to correspond with the expansion of the go-go economy. We used to pay spare change for a cup of coffee. At some point in the 1980s, we decided to go into credit card debt to buy essentially the same thing. Okay, the coffee was better, but those lattes were some seriously leveraged beverages. The profit margins were killer, and Starbucks expanded accordingly.