War and National Security
The Radical Lives of Abolitionists
Many took part in other radical movements—including Free Love, which promoted women’s independence and an end to traditional marriage.
Black Abolitionists Believed in Taking Up Arms
Long before the Civil War, black abolitionists shared the consensus that violence would be necessary to end slavery.
Rambo Politics from Reagan to Trump
Trump invokes a fantasy of poetic justice—positioning himself as Rambo, the avenger of American humiliation abroad.
Getting Counterinsurgency Wrong
Washington Post reporting exposed that U.S. operations in Afghanistan were horribly mismanaged, but even a well-run mission would have been doomed to fail.
U.S. Judges Admit Enhanced Interrogation Is Torture
They also acknowledged, for the first time, that the grounds for torturing Abu Zubaydah—who was detained in the wake of September 11 and is still languishing in Guantánamo—were mistaken.
The Country Without a Post Office
The tragically timely work of poet Agha Shahid Ali and his depiction of Kashmiri suffering.
Sleeping Through the Alarm
With virtually no democratic oversight and over 6,500 missiles in the United States alone, the use of nuclear weapons is almost inevitable.
Banking on the Cold War
The Cold War says more about how U.S. elites imagined their “freedom” than it does about enabling other people to be free.
Mass Starvation Is a Crime—It’s Time We Treated It That Way
The famine in Yemen is not simply “man-made.” Particular men are responsible, and they should be brought to justice.
American Extremism Has Always Flowed from the Border
Donald Trump says there is “a crisis of the soul” at the border. He is right, though not in the way he thinks.
Trump’s Foreign Policy Isn’t the Problem
It reflects, like a funhouse mirror, a twisted image of U.S. imperialism.
Citizenship v. The Surveillance State
We have surrendered the cherished value of “innocent until proven guilty” for the security logic that we are all “risky until proven safe.”
The Path Back from Hell
U.S. foreign policy disasters helped to fuel our current political crisis. But for a new approach to succeed, we must do more than point out past failures.
Monsters vs. Empire
Trump’s Space Force is a bad reboot of the old imperial fantasy of control from above.
Foreign Policy for the Twenty-First Century
It is time to develop a new geostrategy unencumbered by past traumas.
The U.S. Debt to Syria
With Assad preparing a major offensive on the last rebel stronghold, the United States must offer a path forward.
Left Behind by Korea’s Success
Hwang Sok-yong’s novel Familiar Things sounds a warning about the pitfalls of Korean reunification.
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