In The Turkey and the Eagle: The Struggle for America’s Global Role, Caleb Rossiter takes as his central metaphor an argument in early American history over what bird the nascent United States ought to take as its symbol. Eschewing the lazy, thieving eagle, Benjamin Franklin wryly advocated the turkey, that “vain & silly” bird “untainted by symbolic association with European expansion, and indeed, with expansion of any kind.”
The U.S. is ill-served by its paranoia about Chinese moves to enter its market. It needs Chinese savings to energize its economy.
Five decades after the adoption of the (revised) US-Japan Security Treaty, and two decades after the end of the Cold War, Cold War assumptions still underpin the relationship between the world’s leading industrial democracies. A belated Japanese attempt to change and reform the relationship in 2009-2010 ended in failure and the collapse of the Hatoyama government. Whether the Kan government can do better, remains to be seen. The “Client state” relationship proves difficult to transcend. The “Okinawa problem” has emerged as a crucial bone of contention, not only between the US and Japanese governments but between the people of Okinawa and both governments.
Which is it, Senator Kyl? Is New START “relatively benign,” as you’ve called it, or ideologically unacceptable to you and other Republicans?
They had to eat spam and Pop-Tarts. They had to shower in the dark with cold water. The toilets overflowed. When the Carnival Cruise ship finally docked in San Diego last week after three days on the high seas without electricity, CNN interviewed two of the youngest passengers in an attempt to play up the drama of the ordeal. Frankly, the kids didn’t look particularly discomfited by the 72-hour experience. They got bored playing board games. They didn’t like the smelly toilets. The cheese sandwiches really sucked. Still, if given another opportunity, they would go on a cruise again.
What effect will Bout’s extradition to the United States by Thailand have on recent efforts by both Washington and Moscow to “reset” US-Russian relations”?
Foreign policy not producing “favorable outcomes?” First step: stop.
The continuing failures in Afghanistan and Iraq have seriously eroded public perception of U.S. military dominance. The U.S. economy has been transformed from the “engine of economic growth” into the source of the global financial meltdown. American failures to address key global issues such as poverty, disease, and global warming have tarnished our image as protectors of the weak; our inability to protect our own citizens from unexpected disasters has become an international embarrassment. By all accounts, America’s unipolar moment has passed.
The staggering amount of money that the Obama administration is throwing at the nuclear weapons industry in return for ratification of START proving hard for the Senate to resist.
The Bush-negotiated, NAFTA-esque trade agreement with Korea that President Obama is pushing makes him look more Clintonian than ever.