Tag Archives: neoconservatism

Backgrounder on neoconservatism and its marriage of convenience with liberal internationalism (Wilsonianism). Does the permanent warfare of today's neocons differ in any real way from the Trotsky idea of permanent world revolution? Socialism has been replaced by democracy-promotion but that difference is small, particularly as the consequences continue to play out on the world stage. This prompts the question as to why Donald Trump has appointed neoconservatives like John Bolton when he is a...

Prof. Harry Targ, in his important piece “United States foreign policy: yesterday, today, and tomorrow,” (MR online, October 23, 2919), reminds us of the factional dispute among U.S. foreign policy elites over how to maintain the U.S. empire. On the one hand are the neoliberal global capitalists who favor military intervention, covert operations, regime change, strengthening NATO, thrusting China into the enemy vacuum and re-igniting the Cold War with Russia. All of this is concealed behind...

US President Donald Trump has managed to attract support for his "America First" isolationism not by dint of his own arguments, but because the US foreign-policy establishment abandoned its own values. After decades of thoughtless military interventionism, it is little wonder that Americans would seek an alternative.… A grownup speaks on semi-official channel. The voices of the grownups have been suppressed in the corporate media and only found expression in alternative media.One can be for...

The justification for these destructive “regime change” campaigns is “democracy” and “human rights.” However, it’s no secret that plenty of human rights violating, oppressive regimes are on very good terms with Wall Street and London.... The not-so-hidden agenda.NEOKeeping The World Poor: The Monopolistic Agenda Behind “Regime Change” Chaos Caleb Maupin

The co-optation of the so-called US left, which is really the center in comparison to "the left" in the rest of the world. In the Obama years the marriage of the neocons and the humanitarian interventionists was effected. The neocons, with their doctrine of American Exceptionalism are always ready for an intervention and their justification is always the same: "American moral leadership":Our world needs a policeman. And whether most Americans like it or not, only their indispensable nation...

Useful backgrounder on international relations and the different schools of thought in the US, particuarly liberal internationalism, neoconservatism and realism.  QuilletteThe World According to RealismRyan Zielonka is an independent consultant and incoming PhD student at the University of Washington

In the normal run of affairs, scholars working on Russia and Europe, or even on international affairs in general, would not comment of domestic US politics. But it is clear that the whole ‘Russiagate’ affair, alleging collusive behaviour between the eventual winner of the presidential election, Donald J. Trump, accompanied by charges of a systematic Russian attempt to help him through ‘hacking’ and media propaganda, is far from normal. As far as many international observers are concerned,...

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has been in Florida to meet Venezuelan opposition leaders, capping off his tour of Latin America last week where he sought support against the government of President Nicolas Maduro.... Pence, for his part, continued to repeat the White House position that the democratically-elected government in Caracas resembled a “dictatorship,” and that there was “more to come” in terms of sanctions. Soon after visiting the house of worship, Pence also made his presence...

Global disorder is on the rise. What can the US do about it? There are two fundamentally different approaches one can take—it all depends on your philosophy of how the world works.The first school thinks primarily in terms of law, order and authority: it accepts the need for a global policeman. The second school is more willing to let regional nations take the initiative to eventually work things out among themselves. Both schools possess advantages and disadvantages. Something called...

New sanctions are coming, whether he wants them or not. NATO expansion and the West’s Ukraine meddling will continue. Encirclement is firmly in place. It’s difficult to envision where this could lead, short of actual hostilities. Russia’s fundamental national interests, the ones Trump was prepared to accept, will almost certainly render such hostilities inevitable. The National InterestStop poking the Russian bearRobert W. Merry | Editor of the American Conservative