Section: Institute for Policy Studies (USA)
We Need to Cut the Military Budget, But Don’t Trust the Far Right to Do It
This article was jointly produced by Foreign Policy In Focus and InTheseTimes.com. Since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives earlier this year, the so-called “Freedom Caucus” — the badly misnamed right-fringe of the congressional GOP — has been flexing its influence. Caucus members are deeply invested in an agenda that would...
Seven Things We Could Do If We Cut the Pentagon by $100 Billion
What would be possible if we had an extra $100 billion to spend on urgent human needs? Just weeks ago, Congress and President Biden agreed to a $858 billion Pentagon and war budget. That’s the highest the military budget has been since World War II. About half of the Pentagon budget every year goes to corporate contractors who pay their...
Maybe the World Isn’t Falling Apart
The international community is not in great shape. The war in Ukraine pits two entirely different conceptions of the global order: authoritarian Russia and its supporters versus the more-or-less democratic world. This war is currently mired in a stalemate that could, nevertheless, escalate into a nuclear conflict very rapidly. At the same time,...
From the Unsustainable Here to the Sustainable There
In 1972, the Club of Rome released a report called The Limits to Growth that laid out the damage to the planet and to human beings of unrestrained increases in economic production and population. It was a straightforward extrapolation from then-current trends that took into account limited resources like water, fertile soil, and fossil fuels....
The Rise of Self-Hating Politicians
Some politicians just hate politics. They get into the game in order to disrupt it. They have such a visceral hatred of governance that, like suicide bombers, they’ve smuggled themselves into government in order to blow it up from within. Much of the coverage of the multiple attempts to elect Kevin McCarthy as House speaker treated the...
Changing My Mind on Ukraine
In the early 1990s, as the war in Yugoslavia spread to Bosnia, I took what I considered to be a principled position. I backed the UN-imposed arms embargo to the region. I urged friends and colleagues not to support actions to escalate the war. I believed that I was in the pro-peace camp. I hoped for a ceasefire. I yearned for more resolute...
What Climate Debt Does the North Owe the South?
To keep the planet from overheating, there’s just so much more carbon that humans can pump into the atmosphere. From the onset of the Industrial Revolution until today, humanity has used up approximately 83 percent of its “carbon budget”—the amount of carbon the atmosphere can absorb and not exceed the Paris climate agreement’s...
NO TIME FOR A CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE
Vladimir Putin is playing the long game. The Russian leader believes that he can outwait all of his adversaries. Since he has ruled over Russia for more than two decades, he obviously has sound political instincts (as well as a well-deserved reputation for ruthlessness). He is gambling that the Ukrainians, the Europeans, and the Americans will...
IT’S TIME FOR A CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE
There is a desperate need for a ceasefire in Ukraine. Russia’s war continues to bring death to thousands, displacement of millions, and the destruction of towns and cities across Ukraine. The war, now entering its ninth month, has been illegal from day one. It violates both the UN Charter and international humanitarian law. Years of...
Phyllis Bennis on Democracy Now on Ukraine
Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New Internationalism Project at IPS, spoke on Democracy Now! on October 27, 2022 about the ongoing situation in Ukraine, the human cost of the war, and what it means to urge diplomacy in this moment. Phyllis has been urging the need for diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine since the day Russia invaded. In this...
