Tag Archives: US policy

I have been saying something like this for some time. The American Empire is overextended and the strategic need is to withdraw to the core, which is the Western Hemisphere. Owing to logistics, and war is largely determined by the parties with logistical advantage, the US is disadvantaged by operating away from the Western Hemisphere, but it can easily control its own hemisphere militarily owing to logistical advantage. This is especially the case now that both Russia and China have...

I spend most of my time on this blog mocking all the exaggerated nonsense which passes for political commentary nowadays. It’s a rare day that I come across something which is both stimulating and well-written. Fortunately, this is one of those days. Via Facebook (which has its uses), I was pointed in the direction of an excellent article by Patrick Lawrence in this summer’s edition of the magazine Raritan Quarterly, of which I had not previously been aware. I can recommend it to you all,...

This article is adapted from the German edition of Super-Imperialism (2017).… It's a fairly long article. Here are some highlights in summary. The U.S. response has been to extend the new Cold War into the financial sector, rewriting the rules of international finance to benefit the United States and its satellites – and to deter countries from seeking to break free from America’s financial free ride. Aiming to isolate Russia and China, the Obama Administration’s confrontational diplomacy...

Add the Trump tax cuts to the list of policy mistakes if it becomes law.Calculated RiskPolicy MistakesBill McBride

If indeed Clinton were right that Trump was Putin’s “puppet,” then he would have agreed to negotiations to address the North Korean crisis; would have accepted constructive diplomacy toward Iran; and would have ended all U.S. support for the Syrian militants and encouraged a quick end to the bloodletting. Instead, Trump is moving in opposite directions, lining up with Netanyahu and the neocons, whom some European allies refer to as “America’s Israeli agents.” Although dressing up his...

It seems Americans can’t rally support for something without declaring a “war” on it. The war on poverty. On drugs. On gangs and crime. On terror. And these wars have become open-ended, or “generational” in Pentagon-speak, with a dynamic of crisis-surge-“progress”-new crisis-new surge-repeat that sustains large bureaucracies and huge government spending. To these “wars” we must add a new one, notes Michael Klare at TomDispatch.com: the climate change war.... So, two things are most...