US Opinion and Commentary

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Patching Up Relations with Russia

Posted December 21st, 2016 at 10:56 am (UTC-4)
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NATO will celebrate its 70th birthday in 2019. Its original intent was to protect against a resurgence of Germany and to stymie the Communist bear. Times change and so must NATO. The United States and a new NATO must turn to de-escalating tensions with Russia.

Elie Wiesel’s Great Mission on Behalf of Soviet Jews

Posted July 5th, 2016 at 9:07 am (UTC-4)
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Wiesel first traveled to the Soviet Union in 1965 as a journalist from Haaretz, on a mission to meet with Jews there, and was shocked by what he saw….”For the second time in a single generation, we are committing the error of silence,” Wiesel warned…

Does NATO Need a Facelift?

Posted April 7th, 2016 at 1:00 pm (UTC-4)
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Republican front-runner Donald Trump would go farther, having described the 28-state alliance as “obsolete” more than once during his push for the GOP presidential ticket. Members don’t pay up their fair share, or at all, and the clunky security organization is ill-suited for the war on terror, according to Trump. After the deadly terrorist attacks on Brussels, which just happens to be NATO’s homebase, and moves by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and elsewhere, others have also raised questions about the relevance of the alliance in a shifting world order.

But this week while hosting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House, President Barack Obama declared NATO “…a linchpin, a cornerstone of our collective defense and U.S. security policy.” Still, influential pundits and columnists have raised legitimate concerns about NATO’s lack of agility, bloated bureaucracy and lopsided financing that leaves the military bills largely in the hands of the United States.

There have been other public figures (former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for one) to voice dim views of NATO, originally created in 1949 after the Second World War—a time when the Soviet Union was fully intact and on a mission to expand. Which raises yet another set of questions: has NATO evolved along with the world? And is the alliance equipped to respond to modern threats?

No, Donald Trump, NATO Is Not “Obsolete”

Posted April 5th, 2016 at 5:10 pm (UTC-4)
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By James Kirchick Listening to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump declare the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “obsolete” and that he would be indifferent to its dissolution, I am reminded of an exchange from director Whit Stillman’s classic 1994 film Barcelona. Set during “the last decade of the Cold War,” it follows the travails of Fred, […]

Antiterrorism After Obama

Posted March 24th, 2016 at 1:03 pm (UTC-4)
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Whatever one’s view of the Cold War…the world was united then in containing and defeating an ideology whose publicly stated goal was to displace the liberal values of the democracies. That unity was a “remnant” worth preserving. Instead, the world today is disunited in its opposition to the ideology of radicalized Islam.

American Hegemony Is Here to Stay

Posted June 11th, 2015 at 11:39 am (UTC-4)
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Is retreat from global hegemony in America’s national interest? No idea has percolated more widely over the past decade—and none is more bogus.