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Whither the Atlantic Alliance?

DC-area reader? Care about foreign policy? See me and several actual foreign-policy professionals discuss the fate of NATO and the future of the West , tomorrow in town. Wink from the audience and I’ll reference space wars, though probably not Star Wars. UPDATE: hear the whole thing. . . . . Continue Reading »

Russia: Our Worst Enemy?

Over at The Atlantic , I explain why Russia isn’t — but would be if we made them. I then explain why we shouldn’t do that, engage in a rare bit of critical race theory, and make another plug for French leadership in Europe. . . . . Continue Reading »

Lookin’ Up to Big Brother

Over at The Atlantic, I give a synopsis of what I’m on about when talking of the ‘pink police state’ — Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ meets the big brother who drives a Camaro, goes to community college, and bounces at the local strip club. . . . . Continue Reading »

A Note on Tone; or, the Perils of Aphorism

Freddie responds to my tweet on Iran, solidarity, and fashion: I could imagine that James’s refusal to show solidarity with the protesters (or at least his discomfort in the same) is the product of apathy or fear of the other. I think, applied generally and not specifically, that’s a . . . . Continue Reading »

Uncanny Tweets

If Andrew can do it, so can I. Except these are all my tweets — Test of new era: clustered riot police having rendered physically mass politics impossible, ‘cloud’ politics succeeds Thought: above all, solidarity with the Iranian opposition has been *inspired* (not justified) by . . . . Continue Reading »

A Few Words on Iran

1. I like the Iranian reformers more than I like the mass politics of solidarity by symbolism. 2. Imitating the right things for a people to say or do does not make those things the right ones for a President to do. 3. If Iran really has imported 5,000 Hezbollah enforcers, a more robust official US . . . . Continue Reading »

Asked and Answered

It is not clear why a chunk of the blue-collar working base has swung almost overnight from Left to Right, but clearly we are seeing the delayed detonation of two political time-bombs: rising unemployment and the growth of immigrant enclaves that resist assimilation. — The Telegraph I am . . . . Continue Reading »

The Empire that Wasn’t?

How long before we look back on the American ‘imperial age’ as a hiccup, a fling with power never really actualized, stabilized, or formalized? Christian Brose at Foreign Policy ‘s Shadow Government points us to Andrew Schearer writing yesterday in the Wall Street Journal : . . . . Continue Reading »

Two Europes

Don Rumsfeld has left us with the momentarily illuminating but ultimately distracting vision of Old Europe and New Europe, a distinction that divides geographically along the aftershadow of the Iron Curtain, with snooty/fuddy Western Europe versus freedom-appreciating/US-embracing Eastern Europe. . . . . Continue Reading »

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