Section: Cato Institute (USA)
Say No to NATO’s Expansion Parade: Adding Georgia, Finland, and More Would Make America Less Secure
Doug Bandow NATO, the alliance informally known as North America and The Others, remains committed to expansion. Powerhouse Montenegro, with 2080 men in uniform, will be the next entrant. Other governments knocking at the alliance door include Finland, Georgia, and Serbia. Adding these states would violate the purpose of an organization intended...
We’re Seeing a Trend Toward Less Violence in the World
Emma Ashford At an event in May, President Obama noted: “The world is less violent than it has ever been.” It might seem difficult to reconcile this sentiment with daily horrors in the Middle East, terrorist attacks and other media-hyped doom and gloom. But he’s right: Though violent conflicts still happen around the world, the broad trend...
Why Washington Is Addicted to Perpetual War
Doug Bandow The last two administrations have followed a bipartisan policy of constant war. Unfortunately, the consequences have been ugly: every intervention has laid the groundwork for more conflict. Yet the architects of this failure claim that all would be well if only Washington had acted more often and more decisively. In their view, the...
NATO is an Institutional Dinosaur
Ted Galen Carpenter Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has managed to gain unprecedented attention for stating in his usual flamboyant fashion something that many respected foreign policy analysts have maintained for years: that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an obsolete security arrangement created in a vastly...
Lack of Reforms Has Turned Ukraine into a Vulnerable Basket Case
Marian L. Tupy Ukraine is back in the news. The country’s conflict with Russia, which has been ongoing since 2014, is heating up again. There is a real possibility that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will try to grab even more Ukrainian territory in the months to come. The Russians are suffering from an economic downturn caused by Western...
Hillary Clinton Could Easily Push America into Open Conflict with Russia
Ted Galen Carpenter One especially disturbing trend in global affairs is the marked deterioration in relations between the United States and Russia. Much will depend on the outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump has staked out a reasonably conciliatory policy toward Moscow. And in the highly improbable event that...
Denmark Lectures America on NATO
Doug Bandow Denmark is a shrimp in the European ocean. A pleasant place to live, it is a geopolitical nullity. No one much cares what the Danes think about the world because, they can’t do much to change it. Of course, not unless they gain control of another nation’s military, most notably, that of the United States, the biggest whale...
Turkey Is Descending into Repression and Conflict, Taking Its Value to NATO with It
Doug Bandow Turkey’s brief democratic moment is ending. The rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Development and Justice Party (AKP) in 2002 signaled the collapse of the militarized secular republic created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The recent failed coup effectively killed the semi-liberal democracy that briefly replaced Kemalism. NATO is...
Toss Turkey out of NATO: U.S. Doesn’t Need Civilian Dictatorship or Military Junta
Doug Bandow Turkey’s brief democratic moment is ending. The rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Development and Justice Party (AKP) in 2002 signaled the collapse of the militarized secular republic created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The failed coup of two weeks ago killed the semi-liberal democracy that briefly replaced Kemalism. NATO is an...
U.S. Needs Robust Debate on Foreign Policy Choices
Christopher A. Preble and Emma Ashford In October, America’s longest war, the war in Afghanistan, will enter its 16th year. With American troops fighting not only in Afghanistan, but in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere, foreign policy should be a major topic of discussion during the Democratic National Convention and overall this election...
