Section: The Huffington Post (USA)
The US Is Still Manipulating the UN After 70 Years
Although President Barack Obama said he opposes “endless war” and “America’s combat mission in Afghanistan may be over,” he announced that the 9,800 US troops presently there will remain. Obama had previously stated that he would cut the US force in half, but he has decided to maintain the current troop level until...
Do US & EU Now Need Bosnia as Partner Even More Than Vice Versa?
Initially, most Bosnian-Americans were welcomed as refugees, including I who came in 1967 as a refugee from then a more authoritarian Yugoslavia. More recently, there has been more of a tidal wave of those from Bosnia & Herzegovina who came after being torn away from their homes through a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing that in more...
Bring Russia, Syria and Iran to the Table to Defeat ISIS
In 1939, as the USSR made land grabs in Poland and Finland, Franklin Roosevelt declared that the Soviet Union was a “dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world” and called for an embargo. Not long after, when America entered the war, we were formally collaborating with Josef Stalin — a man who had...
Russia Follows Disastrous U.S. Script to Intervene In Syria
Vladimir Putin opened a new game of high stakes geopolitical poker. He is using military force to support Syria’s President Bashar Assad and counter U.S. backing for Assad’s opponents. Russia’s intervention almost certainly will turn out badly — apparently losing an airliner likely is just the start — but Washington...
A Grand Bargain With Putin Against ISIS?
What follows is not very pretty. But it may be the best option available in a crisis without good options. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made no secret of the fact that he would like some kind of political settlement with the West. The German magazine Der Spiegel has just published a leaked official Russian memo outlining a proposed grand...
Paris Massacres: Terror, Grief and Political Analysis
Frank Bruni published an excellent article in the New York Times only a few hours after the terror attacks in Paris in which he denounced “The Exploitation of Paris”. His targets were mostly the pro-gun lobby and the reactionaries such as Ann Coulter or Newt Gingrich who tried to hijack the emotions caused by the attacks to promote...
A Last Goodbye to André Glucksmann
What is a philosopher thinking about when he decides, as André Glucksmann did, that he wishes to be cremated? Resolute atheism? Residual Platonism? The uselessness of this body, of which nothing need remain? Confidence in books, the philosopher’s real tomb, the only one that counts, the only memorial worth putting his name on? Nothing...
Things That Can and Cannot Be Said
This post originally appeared as a four-part series at Outlook India.__________Part I: Things That Can And Cannot Be SaidJohn Cusack__________Every nation-state tends towards the imperial–that is the point. Through banks, armies, secret police, propaganda, courts and jails, treaties, taxes, laws and orders, myths of civil obedience,...
Russian News Stations Air ‘Secret’ Plans For Nuclear Weapons
MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said plans for a new submarine-launched nuclear torpedo shown on Kremlin-controlled television were secret and should never have been aired.NTV and Channel One showed a large document — filmed over a military officer’s shoulder during a meeting with Putin — with drawings and details...
Robert Legvold on Russian Foreign Policy Decision-Making, Interview with Columbia University Professor and Leading Russia Expert Part II
Robert Legvold is a Marshall D Shulman Professor Emeritus at the Columbia University political science department. He is one of the world’s leading experts on the foreign policy of post-Soviet states, and a book reviewer for Foreign Affairs magazine. Previously, he served as the director of Soviet studies on the Council of Foreign Relations...
