US Foreign Policy

In Syria’s Idlib, Turkey is trying to play middle man between Russia and the US – with little success

By Umut Korkut and Tarik Basbugoglu | – The recent turn of events in Idlib, an opposition stronghold in north-western Syria undergoing bombardment by the Syrian military, has put Turkey in a difficult position. Since the end of January, Syrian regime forces have killed 13 Turkish soldiers who were monitoring a tense ceasefire in Idlib. […]

Bernie Sanders

Can the Democrats’ Foreign Policy Visions clean up Trump’s Global Mess?

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – Democratic candidates offer a wide range of foreign policy views. These won’t decide the election, but they could have a huge post-Trump impact. The next presidential election will not likely hinge on foreign policy. Americans will go to the polls in November to express their fervent support, or disgust, […]

Featured

Rockets slam into US Embassy Compound in Iraq, as Base with US Troops also Comes under Fire

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Agence France Presse Arabic is reporting that early Sunday morning several rockets or mortars slammed into the area around the US Embassy in Baghdad. Warning sirens sounded, and fighter jets began patrolling the skies. Reuters reports an American military officer as saying that a base at which US troops are […]

Pentagon

Is America Addicted to War?

Tom Engelhardt

(Tomdispatch.com) – My first question is simple enough: After 18-plus years of our forever wars, where are all the questions? Almost two decades of failing American wars across a startlingly large part of the planet and I’d like to know, for instance, who’s been fired for them? Who’s been impeached? Who’s even paying attention? I […]

Iraq

As Warhawks Eye Iran, Iraq War has already cost the US nearly $2 trillion

The Conversation

By Neta C. Crawford | – Even if the U.S. administration decided to leave — or was evicted from — Iraq immediately, the bill of war to the U.S. to date would be an estimated US$1,922 billion in current dollars. This figure includes not only funding appropriated to the Pentagon explicitly for the war, but […]

Pentagon

The Art of the Deal, Pentagon-Style: Wars Without Victories, Weapons Without End

William J. Astore

By William J. Astore | – (Tomdispatch.com) – The expression “self-licking ice cream cone” was first used in 1992 to describe a hidebound bureaucracy at NASA. Yet, as an image, it’s even more apt for America’s military-industrial complex, an institution far vaster than NASA and thoroughly dedicated to working for its own perpetuation and little […]

China

With Visa Ban, has Trump’s US just Lost Nigeria to China?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump and his white nationalist pet Stephen Miller have placed Nigeria on their racist visa ban. But Nigeria is not Chad, and there could be serious repercussions for the United States of slapping around Africa’s most important country. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country at over 200 million persons, and […]

Constitution

A Pence Presidency and an Iran War? Why does John Bolton really want Trump Out?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Former National Security Adviser John Bolton may have singlehandedly stopped Senate majority Mitch McConnell from simply acquitting Trump in the Senate impeachment trial and adjourning without witnesses or documents. Bolton publicly announced his willingness to testify before the Senate, after having stiffed the House proceedings. And then a manuscript of […]

Donald Trump

American Apocalypse: The Rapture of a U.S. Foreign Policy Off the Rails

Danny Sjursen

By Danny Sjursen | – (Tomdispatch.com) – In March 1906, on the heels of the U.S. Army’s massacre of some 1,000 men, women, and children in the crater of a volcano in the American-occupied Philippines, humorist Mark Twain took his criticism public. A long-time anti-imperialist, he flippantly suggested that Old Glory should be redesigned “with […]