The lumbering aircraft carrier known as the United States should be executing a pivot that lives up to its name: a shift from the martial to the pacific.
The Asia-Pacific Pivot: More Smoke Than Firepower
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Vietnam
Open Fire and Open Markets: The Asia-Pacific Pivot and Trans-Pacific Partnership
Thomas Friedman once said the hidden hand of the market needs the hidden fist of the military. The TPP and the Obama administration’s Pacific Pivot pack both.
Poem: Infinite Regress of War
Sepulchre of repeated images / Won’t someone shatter the pure reflection of glass?
Breaking the Cycle of Counterinsurgency
This September marked a potential turning point in America’s long and seemingly bottomless appetite for war. The Obama administration made a pitch for U.S. military intervention against Syria, and the American public didn’t buy it. Across the country, people...
Indonesian Mass Killings Should Have Shortened Vietnam War
In a lengthy piece for Slate, Errol Morris, the author and filmmaker, writes about a controversial new movie for which he served as an executive producer. Directed by Josh Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing is an examination of an atrocity, in this case, the 500,000 to a...
A Brewing Storm in the Western Pacific
A storm is brewing in the Western Pacific. As the Asia-Pacific region descends into a period of destabilizing conflict, the Philippines is quickly becoming a frontline state in the U.S. strategy to contain China—the central thrust of the Obama administration’s...
Nixon’s “Madman Theory” Was Not the Vietnam War’s Only Nuclear Weapons Test Case
Nuclear weapons vastly complicate foreign policy.
Frenemies
We won our independence from the British in a hard-fought revolutionary battle. Today, no hard feelings: the Anglo-American alliance is strong, we all love Downton Abbey, and our skirmishes are largely confined to disputes over which version of The Office is funnier and how to spell and pronounce the word “aluminum.”
U.S. Veteran Exposes Pentagon’s Denials of Agent Orange Use on Okinawa
Thousands of barrels of Agent Orange were unloaded on Okinawa Island and stored at the port of Naha, and at the U.S. military’s Kadena and Camp Schwab bases between 1965 and 1966, an American veteran who served in Okinawa claims.
The Afghan Syndrome
Take off your hat. Taps is playing. Almost four decades late, the Vietnam War and its post-war spawn, the Vietnam Syndrome, are finally heading for their American grave. It may qualify as the longest attempted burial in history. Last words — both eulogies and curses — have been offered too many times to mention, and yet no American administration found the silver bullet that would put that war away for keeps.