This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com. Voters went to the polls last Sunday in Burma to elect a new parliament. The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) — Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s party — scored...
In medieval Europe, the king had two bodies. He sat on his throne in his own personal body, which suffered from the same sicknesses and infirmities that afflict all corporeal beings. But he also possessed a second body, the body politic, which represented the entire...
Let’s say the car stops and we get our teeth around the tire. Let’s say that we bite down hard enough to let out all the air from the U.S. empire. Now what? Those of us who have campaigned for a radical reduction of the U.S. military footprint overseas, for a major...
In his new film Taxi, Iranian director Jafar Panahi is having a conversation with his young niece. They're sitting in the cab Panahi is driving. The Iranian government has banned the director from making films, so he's ostensibly found an alternative means of making...
Nixon lied. Surely this is not a shocker. But what’s interesting about the latest revelation concerning Nixon and Vietnam is that the most duplicitous president in U.S. history actually knew that the U.S. air war in Southeast Asia was a dismal failure. Even as Nixon...
Barack Obama was, in 2008, the anti-torture candidate. It’s a sad comment on the state of U.S. democracy that such a thing ever existed. After all, it would be startling to hear appeals from a pro-oxygen or an anti-apocalypse candidate (though, of course, if the...
After midnight on August 15, 1947, India and Pakistan became separate countries. What should have been a joyous occasion — a celebration of independence from three centuries of British colonial rule — quickly turned into one of the greatest tragedies in modern...
In the 2014 World Cup, Germany not only ousted Brazil from the semi-finals. It gave the legendary team a drubbing, 7 goals to 1. For most of the match, Brazil faced a shutout: Only in the last minute did Brazilian striker Oscar manage to put the ball in the net. The...
Last week, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton gave a major foreign policy speech that provided a glimpse of one possible post-Obama future. In many ways, it was not a pretty picture. But let’s first look at the good points. Clinton endorsed the Iran deal...
“The upcoming summit between China and the United States will feature a major plan for reducing the military arsenals of the two countries, an initiative to stabilize and grow the global economy, a follow-up effort to further reduce carbon emissions, and a brand new...