Section: Ron Paul Institute (USA)
Are There, or Will There Be, US Negotiations with Iran?
The short answer is “no.” Trump was confabulating when he said that he was already in negotiations with “important” Iranians. There is a back history to the US’ “negotiations narrative.” In earlier rounds of “negotiations” centred on the Ukraine conflict, Trump regularly would suggest that political negotiations with Russia were ongoing,...
The War as the Trade
WSJ: UAE preparing to formally enter the war, the first Gulf state to become a combatant lobbying for a UN Security Council resolution authorising force to open the Strait of Hormuz. Emirati diplomats racing across Washington, Brussels and Tokyo. Abu Dhabi wants US troops to seize Abu Musa island. Dubai wants to mine-sweep for America. The once...
Who Gets a Seat at the Multipolar Table?
The unipolar club is closed. The United States no longer holds the only key. A new table is being set in global politics, and the question isn’t whether the world is becoming multipolar. It aleady is. The question is: who actually gets a seat? Not who is invited. Not who is hoped for. Who earns it. For decades, there was no table. There was...
Introduction: Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment
When Gülçin and I, in May of 2006, opened the Karia Princess for the first meeting of the Property and Freedom Society (PFS), many questions, organizational as well as substantive, had been still unresolved in our minds. It took years of experimenting and learning: of defining, refining and fine-tuning the very product that now is the PFS and its...
There Is No GOP ‘Civil War’ Over Iran…
The reaction to Joe Kent’s principled, patriotic resignation from the Office of National Intelligence—and the numerous MAGA obituaries that appeared shortly thereafter—seem to share in common the idea that Donald Trump’s decision to go to war on behalf of Israel is both (a) surprising and (b) will cause a fissure within the Republican...
Free Speech for Me But Not For Thee
Last week, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission threatened to rescind the broadcast licenses of media entities that do not relate events in Iran or Ukraine as the Trump administration would like them to be related. He also attacked The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for the same reasons. This followed by one day a verbal...
Choke Point: The Global Economic Consequences of The Persian Gulf Shutdown
The Persian Gulf is the most consequential body of water in the global economy. Its narrow exit — the Strait of Hormuz, just 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest point — acts as a valve through which flows an extraordinary share of the world’s energy and agricultural inputs. A sustained closure of that valve by Iran will trigger an economic...
Republicans Prefer War to the US Constitution and to Truth
The Republican-controlled House and Senate rejected a war powers vote that would have granted Congress the ability to decide whether Trump could continue serving Israel’s conflict with Iran. Apparently 77% of Republicans have fallen for the propaganda that Iran is a terrorist state developing nuclear weapons. The same Republicans fell for...
Russia Serves a Cold Dish to the GCC and India
The proverb “revenge is a dish best served cold” traces to French (“La vengeance se mange froide”), appearing in English literature by the 19th century. Most Americans do not know the French orign of the proverb… It entered popular culture thanks to Star Trek. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Khan Noonien Singh delivers the line during...
The $300,000 Question Nobody in Washington Can Answer
LNG shipping rates have gone from $40,000 to $300,000 per day — a 650% vertical climb in less than a week — and the men who ordered the strikes that caused this are still strutting around the Oval Office talking about “strength.” That is not strength. That is the economics of catastrophe unfolding in real time, and it will reach every kitchen...
