Section: Institute for Policy Studies (USA)
What’s Going to Happen to Taiwan?
Much of international relations is pretense. The leaders of countries pretend to like each other, shaking hands with smiles and manufactured bonhomie. International treaties, which countries solemnly ratify, are often honored only in the breach. Then there are borders, the cement that holds together the international order. Nation-states are the...
Pentagon Pollution Is a Global Embarrasment
World leaders just wrapped up 2023’s international climate forum, COP28, held in Dubai. The forum opened on November 30 with an embarrassment for the host country, the United Arab Emirates, when the president of the gathering—who also leads the UAE’s state oil company—was caught using the platform to secretly push fossil fuel deals....
Rescuing Realpolitik from Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger wrote his doctoral dissertation about Europe’s “long peace” after the defeat of Napoleon, focusing on how conservative statesmen negotiated the Concert of Europe through a mixture of diplomacy and military power. Kissinger was enamored of this approach to achieving an “equilibrium of forces.” The lesson he absorbed, and...
The Return of the Far Right
Panic does not produce prudent politics. Panic produces provocative populists. And it reduces pundits to Seussian spluttering. How can voters choose such…panic-peddling panderers?! The defeats of Donald Trump in the U.S. elections in 2020 and Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian elections in 2022 were supposed to prove that the wave of right-wing...
Pentagon Fails Its Sixth Audit
The Pentagon has failed its audit, again. For the sixth time in a row. The agency that accounts for half of the federal discretionary budget does not know what it did with the money. For a brief recap, the Pentagon has never passed an audit. Until 2018, it had never even completed an audit. Since then, the Pentagon has completed an audit every...
How Long Can America Maintain a War Economy
The U.S. economy is in reasonably good shape, according to conventional measurements. The official unemployment rate is below 4 percent, and the productivity of U.S. workers is surging. In the last quarter, economic growth was nearly 5 percent, and Inflation has been levelling off. Americans are buying things, throwing parties, and going on...
Congress Divided on Funding Wars
Inside the halls of power and outside on the campaign trail, U.S. politics is a mess. The leading Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump, faces four criminal indictments. The leading Democratic candidate, President Joe Biden, has dismal favorability ratings. The presidential race has so far generated as much positive...
The Enduring Limits of American Power
The United States is the most powerful country on the earth. If you add together its nuclear arsenal, its unmatched array of conventional weaponry, and its global economic reach, America might be the mightiest country in the history of the planet. The United States has been responsible for destroying countries (Germany, Japan) and raising them...
Israel, Ukraine, the Border: What’s in Biden’s $105 Billion Military Bill
Last week, the White House released President Biden’s request for $105 billion in military and related aid related to wars ongoing in Ukraine, Gaza, and wars not yet begun, as well as a request for additional border funding. An extra $105 billion in mostly military spending is no small matter, especially on top of the $886 billion military...
A Series of Ups and Downs for Immigrants in the U.S.
I rejoice in being an immigrant. I find beauty in not tying myself to a single place or identity having been born in the Philippines and growing up all over the United States. I am multilingual, I am keen on adventure and adaptation, and I’ve developed a sense of purpose with those who grew up like me. And for much of the last few weeks, I...
