Green Climate Fund — now there are three words guaranteed to raise the hackles of Republican members of Congress. The fund is little known outside the world of climate skeptics and policy wonks. Yet the $10.3 billion fund, to which the United States has pledged $3...
It is easy to impute the worst motives to those advising increased intervention in Syria, such as the 51 diplomats who called for “a more muscular military posture” against Syria in a State Department memorandum shared with the New York Times. Sure, they may be trying...
Two recent close encounters between US spy planes and Chinese jets spell trouble for relations between Washington and Beijing. The first, between a US EP-3 spy plane and two Chinese jets over the South China Sea (SCS) near China’s Hainan Island, was strikingly similar...
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the recent tragedy that left 49 dead at a gay bar in Orlando. The shooter, Omar Mateen, declared his allegiance to ISIS in a 911 call he made during the massacre. President Obama and much of the news media have declared...
With all the discussion and debate these days about intersectionality and the need for progressives to link our movements against racism and against war, the name of Muhammad Ali belongs right up in our pantheon with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Harry Belafonte,...
China’s domestic Internet censorship, sometimes called the Great Firewall of China, is considered the most comprehensive web screening established by a state anywhere in the world. Is there any chance it can be taken down? Yes, but under less-than-ideal circumstances....
In the last days before the California primary, where Democratic primary polls showed her neck-and-neck with Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton delivered a campaign speech in San Diego. Though her campaign billed it as a "major foreign policy address," it looked more...
‘Charisma’ is usually what most people think of when recalling the German theorist Max Weber (1864-1920), leaving his original deliberation on ‘Caesarism’ (1917) ignored. Weber conceptualized Otto von Bismarck’s plebiscitary leadership as a sort of Caesar-type...
Donald Trump first shared his analysis of the climate crisis in a now infamous 2012 tweet-rant: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” he claimed. The Republican presidential hopeful has...
Of all the accomplishments and disappointments of the Obama presidency, his nuclear weapons policy is the greatest. Yes, you read that correctly. Obama’s approach to nukes will be his most significant legacy as well as his most salient failure. Obama promised "hope...