Section: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (USA)
US weakness gave Russia courage to act in Syria
Russia’s entry onto the Syrian battlefield was an avoidable development, a chess play to the game of checkers that has been US policy in the Middle East.As foreseeable as the lights of an oncoming train, Russia has doubled down on its sole Arab ally, Bashar Assad, and complicated enormously the US effort to counter both ISIS and the Syrian...
Links and quotations for September 23, 2015: Kids won’t eat government-mandated fruit, Sweden’s six hour workday, and more
Sweden is experimenting with the six-hour workday in its senior care facilities… Even there, there are major questions whether it’s workable. That and more, including how you can give kids an apple but not make them eat, and how history illustrates donor politics as part and parcel of human progress. Printing press, anyone?For China, a...
Sochi-2 (And not the Olympics)
As Russia constructs what a Pentagon spokesman called “a forward operating base” near the Syrian city of Latakia, complete with tanks, artillery, and housing of at least 1,500 troops, the White House is reported to find itself on the horns of two intellectual dilemmas. First, as Press Secretary Josh Ernest averred, “Putin’s true motivations...
Back to the drawing board
Read the PDF. Over the past five years, the U.S. Congress has been continuously browbeaten by the U.S. administration, as well as by a chorus of international leaders, for its failure to approve the G-20 International Monetary Fund reform agreement. Over the same period, however, there have been a number of major developments affecting the IMF...
Europe returns to the 1930s
Czech police intercepted a group of Syrian asylum-seekers on a train headed for Germany. Upon being detained, the 200 or so refugees were marked with ink numbers on their forearms. While clearly a mishap, it was not the first time that Europeans were reminded of a period many would rather forget.In July of this year, a Polish Member of the...
Rolling out the red carpet won’t make China play nice
Are GOP candidates “China bashing?” The claim has been made in outlets such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Bloomberg View. But, despite what the critics may say, it’s an overly dismissive — and slightly lazy — way of describing the Asia policy debate emerging on the Republican side. Here is another way of looking at...
Reviving America’s nuclear culture
Of all the exhibits of horror in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum—twisted bicycles, melted eyeglasses, burned rubble—one stopped me in my tracks. It was a small section of wall and steps. On it, a dark half-oval is burned into the stone, with vertical shading on the steps. It is the silhouette of a human being, vaporized by the atomic...
5 ways the US Air Force contributes to daily American life
When most Americans think about their independent Air Force, screaming fighter jets and stealthy bombers dropping precision-guided weapons in “shock and awe”-type campaigns flash to mind.Occasionally, we may be impressed by the Air Force’s amazing global logistical support for its sister services — like its fleet of aerial tankers, flying...
Fleeting Raptor
For the last several weeks, Air Force Secretary Deborah James has been touting the deployment of F-22 Raptor fighters – the best plane America owns – to Germany as “the strong side of the coin” in an effort to reassure Eastern Europeans who have seen their air space increasingly violated by Russian jets. “Russia’s military activity in the...
Why Georgia’s quest for Euro-Atlantic integration matters more than ever
Seven years after his invasion of the former Soviet Republic, Russian President Vladimir Putin is busy in Georgia again. Since early summer, Russian-backed security forces have been inching further into the country from the breakaway province of South Ossetia to install signs unilaterally creating a new border with Georgia. As a result of the new...
