In the three weeks since Vice President Mike Pence's Republican National Convention speech, right-leaning broadcasters have given much play to his quoting of Robert Gates, the Obama-Biden secretary of defense who wrote in his 2014 memoir that then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
As the most powerful nation on Earth prepares to go to the polls in November, decisions will be made that will affect not only the next four years of American politics but also the lives of countless people around the world.
Within the context of a speedily devolving geopolitical roller coaster ride shaped by renewed Cold War era hostilities, an Aug. 5 Politico open letter authored by 103 American foreign policy experts calling for a reset to U.S.-Russia relations appeared to be just what the doctors of reason prescribed.
Last month saw a duo of "news" stories making the rounds about this or that Russia-based hacker group that's "almost certainly linked" to Russian state intelligence. Bloomberg.com and USA Today were among those running with "Russia Accused of Vaccine Hacking," while the AP had a second go at "Russia Behind Spread of Virus Disinformation," which originally surfaced in April.
Amid the intermittent riots and looting; the disbanding of police departments; the increase in armed disagreements between citizens; a four-year coup; an economy in turmoil; and talk of a geographic separation between Americans who have a race-based view of the human condition and those who don't, one would think our country's current upheavals -- unyielding even to a plague (itself partisan) -- would see us wanting to reduce our headaches, perhaps by making nice at least in the international sphere.
Looking at today's America, one would be hard pressed to say that the gods were not interested in destroying this great country. For who can argue that this once proud and noble nation has not fallen into the depths of madness in recent years? After all, what is madness but a self-delusion run amok, far removed from any semblance of reality?
Society values externals, but internally the president may be the least crazy person on Earth.
President Trump wanted to transform the G-7 to G-8, then to G-11, but are G-12 or G-5 the better choices?
For months after the attacks of 9/11, when people would be asked, "What did you learn?" they invariably responded, "Spend more time with family." That answer has reverberated in my mind throughout these two months of idyllic scenes of parents and children jumping on trampolines, riding bicycles and walking dogs.
In times of major crisis, one always hears two familiar questions: "Whom to blame?" and "What to do?"
The coronavirus pandemic is in the full swing around the globe and no one can predict when it will be over or at least largely contained. We can only hope and pray that this happens sooner rather than later.
When the Antonov cargo jet departed from Reno on April 1st, it kicked up such a cloud of dust that locals called the fire department reporting a wildfire. While there's no official confirmation, it's possible the Russian AN124 carried a delivery similar to the ventilators, masks and respirators that landed the same day in the same kind of plane at JFK International, an offer accepted days earlier by President Trump from President Putin. Or, as U.S. media call it, "a public relations coup for the Kremlin."
One would assume that in times of major upheavals all of us realize how fragile this beautiful planet Earth and its entire living species are.
One side effect of the SARS Coronavirus-2 appears to be a diminished appetite among Americans for war with Russia. Given the overreaction by my fellow Americans, thanks to whom I may have to go back to Soviet toilet paper (newspaper) -- and am once again getting into any line I see -- one would hate to see how they'd react in a real crisis
It would take desperation to find something heartening in the Russian portion of National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien's comments last week at the Meridian International Center, which were replete with the typical projections and inversions between us and them. But amid Washington's unhinged nonseriousness (President Trump selling Alaska to Russia as a bargaining chip, Rep. Adam Schiff?), a desperate grab for sanity is better than none at all.
Now that President Trump has been acquitted after the three-year-long impeachment ordeal, some of us expect him to start this dialogue that he pledged to initiate during the past electoral campaign and kept repeating many times over without following up.
Not to add to apocalyptic associations with the year 2020, but we now find ourselves officially in the Year of the Rat, according to the Chinese calendar -- characterized by chaos. Thanks only to my obscure interest in the Balkans, sparked in 1999 by the shock that a war could be started by the world's superhero nation and my family's refuge from inhumanity, I learned the Serbian word for war: rat.
While U.S.-Russian relations keep sinking in a seemingly bottomless ditch, optimists aren't ready to give up and wonder whether there is anything to reverse or at least to stop this process before Armageddon.
At a time of one of the greatest political upheavals in American history that could spill over into foreign affairs, especially U.S.-Russian relations with unpredictable and devastating results, I thought Christmas might offer a chance for all of us to take a pause and search for an exit from the megacrisis.
On a recent episode of "Life, Liberty and Levin," Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson told host Mark Levin, "The problem at the moment is partly that we are on a kind of permanent war footing with respect to Moscow ... It's also partly that President Putin simply cannot bring himself to trust the United States."
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