Section: Foreign Policy (USA)
A Dove Can’t Win a Hawk Fight
If you happen to be a Republican politician running for president in 2016, the day you announce your candidacy will most likely be the best day of your campaign. The cheering crowds, the adulation, the bunting and balloons, the hope and heightened expectations — the belief that for just one day, anything is possible. For all but one of these...
10 Friendly Questions for Rand Paul
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has made official his desire to be Commander-in-Chief. The media has already had a field day exploring the ways his foreign policy and national security views do or do not diverge from the Republican consensus. Here at Shadow Government, we’re curious about that, too. So we polled our bench and compiled a list of...
Tsipras Goes Hat in Hand to Moscow, Walks Away Disappointed
With Moscow facing increasing isolation by the European Union over its actions in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has in recent weeks pursued a canny strategy of attempting to undermine European solidarity against Moscow by picking at the weak points in his opponents’ armor. In February, he offered Hungary a generous gas deal....
Time and Cash Running Out For Greece
After Greece coughs up $504 million to make its next debt payment to the International Monetary Fund on Thursday, the country may soon face the difficult choice all bankrupt countries eventually have to make: Pay debts, or pay pensioners? Greek officials initially had threatened to delay the IMF payment, in hopes of getting the next installment...
Situation Report: North Korean nukes?; India and Pakistan to the rescue in Yemen; the mountain comes to Northcom
By Paul McLeary and Sabine Muscat Seeing is believing! The Department of Defense insists that a North Korean missile that has never been tested is nevertheless capable of being outfitted with a nuclear warhead and hitting the United States. Ever since the KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile was dragged around a Pyongyang parade ground in...
The U.N. Security Council. What’s Up With That?
Those of us who work on foreign policy like to think of ourselves as hard-headed, rational people who don’t easily succumb to myths, fables, or delusions. If only that were true! In fact, foreign-policy mavens as just as vulnerable to blindered thinking as any other human beings, and our community has its own set of odd beliefs and...
Some Sandinistas Never Change
So what do you do if you are the president of the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and you’re facing the worst drought since 1976? Why, you buy Russian fighter jets at $30 million a pop, and work out a secretive deal to trade private land and the patrimony of your citizens to a Chinese canal-building company, of course. Such...
Situation Report: Eyes on Spies; Snowden; Choppers for Pakistan; Sec Def on the economics of Asia; and much more
By Paul McLeary and Sabine Muscat Is the era of the passport-swapping international spy over? FP’s Kate Brannen delivers an absolute must read about a topic you’ll be surprised you never thought much about. The expansion of biometric data (fingerprints, iris scans and facial images) along with closed-circuit TV surveillance and...
Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, April 6, 2015
To keep up with Democracy Lab in real time, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Mohamed Eljarh looks at life in Derna, the Islamic State’s stronghold in Libya. Cenk Sidar and Emre Tuncalp ask whether anyone in Turkey’s government is prepared to take serious steps to save the country’s ailing economy. Juan Nagel explains why the...
10 best books about how the Plains Indians adapted their mode of warfare
By Lance R. Blyth Best Defense bureau of Indian affairs We typically think of the Plains Indian warrior mounted, usually on a painted pinto pony, wearing a breech-clout, long flowing feathered bonnet, and little else, with a bow and arrow or decorated Winchester in his hand, conducting a lightening raid, riding off, yipping, over the horizon; the...
