Foreign Affairs
Whenever I express concerns about the odd and threatening behavior of such regimes as that currently ruling Iran, our comment sections become host to statements of blame-America relativism. No doubt, the same will prove true upon my posting this bit of news from the benighted region: A Christan pastor in Iran has been sentenced to…
David Samuels’ insightful commentary addressing a day at the United Nations — the day President Obama and Ahmadinejad of Iran spoke — is definitely worth a read: This odd fusion of religious dogma with the rhetoric of the Frankfurt School is characteristic of Ahmadinejad’s speeches to Western audiences. The historical dialectic as he understands it…
In the wake of its most recent release of US classified documents, WikiLeaks lost its domain name (though the website is still accessible via its IP address), Amazon kicked it off their cloud servicer and WikiLeaks lost a cash flow source when Paypal discontinued its account. Meanwhile, Sweden’s highest court cleared the way for the…
So far, I’ve only found a single reference in the recently released batch of Wikileaks diplomatic cables to a member of Rhode Island’s Federal Congressional delegation, in a report on a February 2009 meeting involving Syrian President Bashar al-Asad and RI Junior Senator Sheldon Whitehouse among others, where Senator Whitehouse takes a reasonably hard-line on…
Megan McArdle makes some interesting points about China’s potential for economic growth that may quickly find it more susceptible to competition: The endless acquisition of US currency is unsustainable. The sterilization transactions required to keep their foreign exchange operations from turning into inflation have left the banking system positively gorged with low-interest government bonds; and…
How about a frightening assessment of our relationship with China: Why would China so brazenly challenge the world’s economic powers like this? Because the country’s leaders know what our leaders are only beginning to understand — that China would probably win a global trade war. It’s certainly worth reading Eric Weiner’s entire essay for the…
Elsewhere in the world, conditions akin to slavery: Forced labour and human rights abuses involving African crews have been uncovered on trawlers fishing illegally for the European market by investigators for an environmental campaign group. The Environmental Justice Foundation found conditions on board including incarceration, violence, withholding of pay, confiscation of documents, confinement on board…
One wonders whether the days of international comity are coming to an end: The European Commission has announced that it will negotiate deals to prevent countries like Pakistan from providing travel data to the United States — except when the US already suspects a particular traveler or is otherwise investigating a particular case. In other…
As part of my continuing effort to work through right-leaning arguments for and against the sorts of foreign (especially military) efforts under the umbrella of “nation building,” I can’t but point out something that strikes me as a contradiction in reasoning in an essay by Justin Logan and Christopher Preble (emphasis added): What was needed…
Bing West takes a look at counterinsurgency in the era of Obama the Weak. Here’s the critical part: Our battalions are spending too much time on nation building: Every battalion gives a briefing that shows security as only one of its four Lines of Operation, or LOOs. Security, they say, is no more important than…