Military intelligence threat assessments are like a counterterrorism version of fantasy football ratings.
Why Not a Fantasy Foreign Policy League?
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North America
Governments Kill
Governments kill on our behalf. This arrangement is a form of social contract, which means that governments are basically contract killers. Some states, like Nazi Germany, use the tremendous power of arms and bureaucracy to transform their territories into slaughterhouses. Regimes that are merely authoritarian can be equally brutal but display a greater selectivity in their tyranny. In our more decorous democracies, meanwhile, we perfume our conversations with words like “justice” and “national security” to mask the odor of death.
Washington Needs a Progressive Drug Policy
Mexico’s drug war is spiraling into bedlam. Within the past month, local Ciudad Juarez authorities deemed 15-year-old girls attending prison parties “impossible to control,” a 14-year old was accused of beheading and kidnapping for cartels, and masked guerilla groups continued to avenge their countrymen’s deaths. The war has no end in sight. Atrocities plague northern Mexico and other Central American countries, including Guatemala and El Salvador.
Feeding the World
Come October, Atlas won’t be shrugging, he’ll be groaning as global population passes the 7 billion mark. Until very recently, demographers predicted that these numbers would peak in 2050 at just over 9 billion and then start to decline. The latest research, however, suggests that despite declining fertility across much of the world, population will continue to rise through this century to over 10 billion people. With famine spreading in Somalia, another food crisis gripping North Korea, global food prices near a record high, and climate change threatening to reduce future harvests, the question continues to nag: are we outstripping our capacity to feed ourselves?
Most Asylum Seekers Are Not Cheaters
Allegations have surfaced that the Guinean woman who accused the former executive director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, of sexual assault had lied during her asylum proceedings. This story has fed into a larger narrative that desperate immigrants, assisted by unscrupulous enablers, cheat their way through the system to gain asylum. Some media outlets played their part to further advance this impression.
Nye’s Future of Power
In his new book The Future of Power, co-founder of neo-liberalism theory Joseph S. Nye outlines a synthesis of his more than two decades of scholarship on the future of world power politics.
Revisiting the Atlantic Charter
The world once again teeters on the brink of catastrophe, just as it did in the middle of the 20thcentury. Today, we face much more subtle threats – such as economic instability, climate change, weapons proliferation, and food shortages — than simply an axis of World War II adversaries. However, as with Hitler a half century ago, these issues constitute a tremendous threat to international security and world stability. They require the United States to once again broaden the purview of its foreign and military policy objectives and engage with its international partners to seek solutions.
Review: The Interrogator
Glenn Carle has spent his whole professional life operating in the grey world of intelligence. As a case officer for the CIA for over two decades, he spent time in many of the Agency’s most critical outposts, from Nicaragua to Lebanon to Iraq. Yet at the end of his career, when he was “surged” to direct the interrogation of a suspected high-level member of al-Qaeda, he was confronted with the policies of an administration that crossed a line that made him certain that he must stand up against what he knew to be wrong.
Con Game
I’m sitting in Starbucks the other day eavesdropping on the conversation at the next table. A man in a suit is trying to sell something to a couple. I’m having a difficult time determining the product. But the pitch is familiar enough. By buying a large number of these items and selling them to their friends, neighbors, and colleagues, the couple will unleash their inner entrepreneur. They’ll make a modest investment and, in no time, score a lot of money. The man in the suit produces a lot of shiny, colorful pamphlets from his briefcase. He tells the couple about how much money he’s made. He tells stories of other lucky couples. He exudes confidence.
The Defense Industry: The Albatross Hanging From the Neck of America’s Economy
No one thinks that Republicans are truly concerned with excessive military spending, but with their posturing about spending cuts, they may have unleashed something they can’t control.