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Although the Senate and House of Representatives have both passed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2018 at the gargantuan sum of $700 billion, most of the largesse has little to do with defending the United States and much to do
President Trump's recent rant to the United Nations was a rehash of George W. Bush's post 9/11 "Axis of Evil" fantasy in the 2002 State of the Union, which ultimately took the United States down the road to disaster with the ill-fated invasio
The U.S. needs to get out of Afghanistan for good and end its other primarily air wars in Muslim countries.
The president is letting his generals double down on disastrous foreign policies.
As President Trump escaped a Washington shocked by his efforts to nix an FBI investigation into his campaign's alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election, he landed in a Middle East in which endemic tension and conflict are far worse. It
In a partisan age, the American media likes to report on any seemingly bipartisan agreement, and has an interest in subtly cheering any US military campaign, despite its size or scope, because it almost always leads to increased ratings. Yet in their
The diametrically opposed styles of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson never have been more on display than they recently have been on North Korea, which has been testing its nuclear weapons and missiles a lot lately. The bom
After all the usual Washington confirmation theatrics, Neil Gorsuch, one way or the other, will likely be confirmed for service on the Supreme Court. Gorsuch has been advertised as a similar replacement for the deceased Antonin Scalia, who had styled
During his campaign, Donald J. Trump proposed to deal with the problem of North Korea by pressuring China to convince its ally to give up nuclear weapons and the missiles designed to carry them. Yet after North Korea's recent test firing of several
The recent North Korean missile tests raise questions about contradictions in President Donald Trump's national security policies. During his campaign Trump implied that the United States should fight fewer wars overseas and demanded that U.S. depe
Although Donald Trump had good inclinations on some foreign policy issues during his campaign and transition period--for example, staying out of unneeded brushfire wars, reexamining U.S. alliances, and pushing wealthy allies to do more for their own
On President Trump's first full day in office, he went to the CIA and promised to back the nation's spy agencies, but his time would be better spent downsizing the sprawling intelligence community
Originating from the dispute over whether the Russians hacked the U.S. election and tried to influence it, rumblings have come from the Trump transition team about reorganizing the intelligence community or parts thereof. That's not a bad idea at a
Despite their rhetoric, Republican presidents have been more the problem than the solution.
The world's media is touting the "coming out" party for China's lone aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. The carrier and its's entourage of escorting destroyers and frigates made a splash when they left the first island chain behind and sallied
The Obama administration has decided to stretch the 15-year old congressional authorization for war against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, or those harboring them, to include an illegal war against a group in Somalia--al-Shabab--that wasn'
Most Americans voted for Hillary Clinton, but Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States. It's the second time in the last 16 years, in a country purporting to be the world's greatest democracy, that a significant oddity has occ
President-elect Donald Trump, during his campaign, refreshingly criticized Republican George W. Bush's war in Iraq and Democrat Barack Obama's war in Libya; seemingly advocated a more restrained American foreign policy abroad; touted the need for
Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, couldn't catch a break in America, even before the U.S. intelligence community concluded that the Russian government had hacked the Democratic National Committee's e-mails and had given them to Wikileaks f
As a motley group attempts to retake Mosul from the Islamic State, it behooves America's presidential candidates to think about how they'd deal with the terrorist group should the push to liberate Iraq's second-largest city be successful.
The Cold War has been over for a quarter-century and Russia is only a shadow of the Soviet Union, yet old rivalries and ways of operating die hard. The Russians care more about Syria than does the United States -- and should -- because that country i
As President Obama gave his valedictory speech to the United Nations General Assembly and recently returned from a farewell tour of East Asia, it sure seemed like other countries were dissing him.
Fact is, terror has never been that big a threat, and would be smaller still but for our Middle East meddling.
The senseless murder of forty-nine revelers at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub has amplified our need for a long overdue national conversation this election season about the overall direction of U.S. foreign policy and our proper role in the world.
The mass shooting in Orlando, Florida at a gay nightclub, by a man pledging a seemingly last-minute allegiance to the ISIS terror group, leads to questions about whether the U.S. government has been adequately protecting its citizens.
Although it is customary to say nice things about a person who has died, Muhammad Ali has been rightly commended for not only his superb boxing career but also his principled opposition to the then-popular Vietnam War.
As the nation once again honors American war dead on Memorial Day, instead of spouting the usual nationalistic platitudes that that U.S. soldiers fought to keep the country "safe and free," perhaps we should analyze whether that is really true.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is at it again, horrifying the U.S. foreign policy elite by saying that he would speak to Kim Jong Un, the erratic North Korean leader, to discuss North Korea's nuclear program
As President Barack Obama's visit to Vietnam and the lifting of the arms embargo to that country represents his "pivot to Asia," his simultaneous killing of Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the Taliban leader in Pakistan, and the U.S.-backed Ira
As President Obama visits still-communist Vietnam, a former American rival, in his "pivot to Asia" to recruit more countries to shelter against a rising China, the trip only serves to illustrate the global American Empire's overextension.
Despite Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's reality-show candidacy, his recent foreign-policy speech put forth a realistic view of the world and a largely credible foreign policy to face it.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has convincingly advocated a reassessment of U.S. alliances around the world. President Obama's recent visit to Saudi Arabia should prompt such a re-evaluation of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
Although all of this is going a bit far, Ted Cruz, with only two years of Senate experience if he is elected president, has shown his amateurish grasp of foreign policy -- a significant deficit that impaired both George W. Bush and Obama when they t
President Obama's historic opening to Cuba has come under fire from Republican and even some Democratic hawks because Cuban President Raul Castro did not greet him at the airport and because the Cuban government arrested members of a dissident grou
President Obama's hosting of the leaders of the 10 members of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) shows that Obama regards that region as the hinge of what has turned out to be a sluggish "pivot to Asia" in American strategy.
The recent Democratic and Republican presidential debates have proven that anti-establishment candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, both of whom have little foreign policy experience, have better judgement on such issues than the supposed exper
After months of reality-show media coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign, the voting process is thankfully starting. As the voters begin to actually speak, perhaps the coverage will have more actual reality in it.
One day recently, the New York Times, following Donald Trump's lead, ran two articles that demonized China -- although the elite newspaper did so much more subtly than the crudities of "the Donald." One article talked about how China,
In the Republican and Democratic presidential debates, President Barack Obama's ultimate rejection of using force against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people, keeps being raised as an issue.
As the 25th anniversary of Desert Storm rolls around, historians are finally beginning to question whether this short-term victory was really a long-term triumph.
Some politicians, both Democratic and Republican, had criticized Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's advocacy of preventing Muslims from entering the United States, which had the odor of fascism.
In the U.S. Constitution, the nation's founders originally conceived of a very limited federal government that protected, rather than usurped, the liberty of its people (not just its citizens), and also defended those same people, their territory, an
As the crazy protracted carnival of the presidential election rolls forward with ever more outrageous rhetoric, spin, downright lies, and "gotcha" moments, it bears remembering what's on television usually has little to do with reality.
In contrast, to most Republican candidates, who have given us general platitudes about "getting tougher on terrorism" or vague promises to use more ground troops in Iraq or Syria, Hillary Clinton has proposed a more concrete program for battling ISIS
In the wake of the heinous attacks on civilians in Paris, the French are now prone to repeating the same mistakes the United States made after the even more barbaric 9/11 attacks.
Republican candidates have justifiably complained about sensational "gotcha" debate questions from the media designed to generate conflict in order to spike ratings, thus raking in cash.
Because more than 50 percent of voters are women and the United States hasn't had a woman leader in a long time, many want to re-elect Hillary Clinton.
Obama's recent decision to leave American troops in perpetuity in the Afghanistan War, despite a fourteen-year failed attempt to remodel the country, is as unsurprising as it is appalling.
As both parties hold presidential debates, issues in the nation's foreign policy inevitably will be discussed.
The villainous Vladimir Putin is pretending to hit ISIS targets in Syria, but instead has his aircraft striking other opposition groups in that country, including what U.S.-supported "moderate" rebels still exist, according to the Obama administratio
While the American media was enamored by the charismatic pope's "historic" visit to the United States (I seem to remember popes have visited before), more important earthly developments occurred.
Thus, unfortunately, the U.S. response to the Syrian civil war and resulting refugee crisis may be a warning to us about the decay of our own original principles and traditions: avoiding unneeded foreign wars while being a beacon of liberty and prosp
Since 9/11, the United States has flailed away and attacked or invaded at least seven Muslim countries. (I say "at least" because, in contravention of the U.S. Constitution, American presidents now run secret overseas conflicts, including the latest
After the hysteria stirred up by the Islamic State lopping off a few heads in a faraway land, including those of a very small number of Americans, Republicans running for president fell all over themselves in beating the drums of war.
It is nothing short of amazing that the Obama administration was able to get an ever-hostile Iran to drastically reduce its nuclear program, to which it has a right as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, for 10-15 years.
In March 2011, President Barack Obama succumbed to French pressure and led the NATO alliance from behind in bombing the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. At the time, Obama was criticized for not letting the United States remain in the forefront of e
In withdrawing from negotiations with Greece's international creditors and holding a referendum on whether Greece should adopt the further austerity required by the lenders' financial aid package, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras figuratively pull
Recently, the U.S. government has been dealt setbacks in five of the seven developing, Islamic countries in which its military recently has attacked or invaded since 9/11 -- Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen.
Although the 2016 election is a year-and-a-half away, the verdict is already in on the continuation of post-World War II interventionism as the policy of choice.
Recently making the news was the successful attempt by President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at the G-7 summit in Germany, to get all seven industrialized nations to continue economic sanctions on Russia in response to its annex
Although many in the United Kingdom thought that the Conservative Party would ultimately lose control of the government to a coalition of the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party in the recent election, Prime Minister David Cameron and his Co
Unfortunately, in the 24/7/365 media age, fear mongering has never been easier. The around-the-clock cable news coverage of an extremely rare event -- a co-pilot's alleged mass murder of passengers aboard one of 40 million flights worldwide annually
n the wake of the global recession, beginning with the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the British government of Prime Minister David Cameron took a different approach from the U.S. governments of George W. Bush and Barack Obama--eschewing massive gov
The Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram pledging allegiance, at least in theory, to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) should lead to a comparison of efforts in the Middle East and Western Africa regions to fight these threats.
The Islamist terrorists are winning and the U.S. government is helping them! Barack Obama just finished a three-day White House conference on countering "violent extremism" but did not want the event excessively focused on law enforcement.
Barack Obama, after six months of fighting against the brutal group ISIS, has finally decided to ask for congressional approval of his war. He, like the Bushes before him, maintained that he already had the authority to go to war but only asked for C
As the American cable news entertainment channels focus on the artificial American Sniper controversy, the Obama administration's issuance of its second and final national security strategy (the last one was done in 2010) was buried deep in the back
Although U.S. drones firing missiles at suspected bad guys in faraway places -- such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia -- have gotten much publicity in recent years, it was recently revealed that the CIA assassinated top Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mugniy
In a symbol of the broader sidelining of his "pivot to Asia" to attend once again to the recurrent quagmire that is the Middle East, President Barack Obama decided to cut out his visit to the Taj Mahal and leave India early to fly to Saudi Arabia --
Compare the worldwide saturation press coverage of the terrorist killings in Paris of 17 people, including 12 journalists at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, with the minimalist coverage of the even more heinous mass slaughter of innocent
If you have any spare cash laying around and need of a vacation, Chevy Chase would probably recommend that you go to Europe. The euro currency has dipped to a nine-year low against the dollar.
According to The New York Times, Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, the commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East, is trying to figure out why the brutal Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is such a dynamic force in Iraq and
In the latest exaggerated media frenzy over a news story, the North Korean hacking of Sony Pictures' computers has been called "cyberterrorism" against "who we are" as a country." First, "terrorism" is word that should probably be retired from public
On the news talk shows, everyone is talking about torture -- mostly defending the Bush administration's hysterical actions after the 9/11 attacks. Granted, 9/11 was a searing experience for the general public, which wanted action in retaliation.
Being a superpower has its drawbacks. One of them is being manipulated by smaller countries that know that America wants to be "Big Man on Campus" in the world, usually giving its taxpayers only vague "influence" around the globe for all the money th
One reason that Barack Obama is slumping in the polls is that Republicans have successfully painted him as weak on foreign policy. Yet, during his tenure so far, Obama has used air power to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, surged American forces i
After my recent appearance on the Fox News Channel's morning show, "Fox and Friends," Donald Trump, appearing after me on the same show, asserted that my ranking of Barack Obama 34th out of 41 presidents rated--in the new, revised edition of Recarvin
The breathless news coverage of the miniscule number of people in the United States that have so far contracted the Ebola virus has led to a typical irrational response in some quarters.
The questionable continuance of the NATO alliance after the Cold War ended is demonstrated by Turkey's reluctance to help against the rampaging group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
President Barack Obama's claim that he doesn't need congressional authorization for his current war in Iraq and Syria is troubling. The country's founders would pass out upon hearing his claim that the post-9/11 congressional approval of force in 200
U.S. government officials recently began hyping the threat from a very small and little-known terrorist group called Khorasan and then striking it in Syria. Several of President Obama's aides told the media that airstrikes were launched to foil an "i
After an intruder was able to jump over the fence and enter the White House, the Secret Service, an agency in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is talking about augmenting security procedures and widening the White House security perimeter t
My recent book, The Failure of Counterinsurgency: Why Hearts and Minds Are Seldom Won, which summarizes the lessons learned from many historical wars against irregular armies such as IS, concludes that is almost impossible to win against guerrillas b
As Iraq faces a governmental crisis and collapses into what looks to be a three-sided civil war, Republicans even other Democrats -- members of Congress and potential presidential candidates, such as President Obama's former Secretary of State Hillar
Although some of this condemnation is political -- because Obama has issued fewer executive orders since Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s -- Obama is almost certain to take more unilateral executive action late in his presidency when he is likely t
The American foreign policy elite should learn something from the recent humiliating evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, Libya--amid the chaos of tribal civil war in that country--but probably won't.
Much finger-pointing has occurred on the downing of Malaysia flight MH-17 over separatist-held territory in Ukraine. The American media -- still reflexively anti-Russian even though the Cold War has been over for almost a quarter-century and heaping
The issue that Perry chose is the U.S. reentry into the Iraq quagmire. Perry is for it and Paul is against it. Most Americans, tired of fruitless and never ending U.S. government wars, agree with Paul, but unfortunately, Perry's interventionist jingo
Recently, the world has focused on the fighting in Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine, all of which seem to be falling apart. Although the first two countries are in the Middle East and the last one is in the eastern part of Europe, they have the common proble
The 100-year anniversary of the most important event in the 20th century passed recently with predictably scant notice in the American media. The anniversary can't be that of the allied D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II, because that eve
Unbelievably, former Vice President Dick Cheney, after being wrong on every foreign policy issue for more than a decade, has again crawled out of his Wyoming cave and begun outrageously sniping at Barack Obama's performance in foreign policy.
Despite all of the hysteria surrounding the advances in northern Iraq of the brutal group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), no crisis exists for U.S. security, and the American people are wise in their skepticism of renewed U.S. military involv
As prisoners are exchanged and the combat portion of the long and exhausting U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan winds down, the brazen lethal attack on the Karachi International airport by the Pakistani Taliban graphically highlights the prin
It took awhile to find the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram, and during that time officials from Western governments--likely the United States, Britain, and France--anonymously criticized the Nigerian government
Although the Nigerian radical Islamist group Boko Haram has long made even the al Qaeda groups look moderate -- slaughtering entire villages and shooting or burning to death 59 school boys -- it apparently took the abduction of more than 200 schoolgi
During the Cold War, U.S. strategy was to contain Soviet expansion until the Soviets' inefficient communist economic system collapsed from within. Despite the perversion of George Kennan's original political, economic, and military containment strate
In the current crisis over the Russian "invasion" of Crimea (is it an invasion when the population seems to want to be invaded and no violence occurs?), U.S. protests seem rather hypocritical to the world. After all, recently, the United States has a
A United Nations panel recently spent a year and lots of money from contributing nations, including the United States, to arrive at an obvious conclusion already known to the world: North Korea severely abuses human rights. The question remains, "Wha
Lieutenant General James R. Clapper, Jr., the Director of National Intelligence, recently gave testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on his annual assessment of the threats facing the United States.
In his attempt to stanch the political bleeding from Edward's Snowden's revelations on National Security Agency (NSA) spying, Obama made a definite pledge to cease the spy agency's surveillance of leaders of "close friends and allies" but appeared to
All the hoopla in the media over Bob Gates' scathing criticism of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in his new memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, has missed the mark.
As their massive sacrifices in the future of Iraq go up in flames (more than 4,000 American lives lost and greater than $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars wasted), Americans watch pundits on TV argue that their government did too little and abandoned Ir
After 9/11, the U.S. Army, taking the lead among the military services in fighting counterinsurgency conflicts against guerrillas in Iraq and Afghanistan, did well in the inter-service wars in the Pentagon over budgets.
One of the most influential Saudi Arabian princes, Turki al-Faisal--the former Saudi intelligence chief who clearly reflects the Saudi royal government's view--recently criticized President Barack Obama for weakness in the Middle East. Although not f
The American media usually profit handsomely from "hyper-partisan" fighting -- finding, and sometimes creating, politically conflict-laden stories that get more viewers, listeners, readers, and thus higher advertising revenues.
The ever-mercurial Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, recently called a council of the nation's tribal elders (a loya jirga) to ratify a bilateral security agreement reached with the United States governing the up to 12,000 U.S. forces that would be
As the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination grows near, the media, always suckers for celebrity, will likely provide saturation coverage of the tragic killing and the emotion-invoking funeral.
Sending a shock wave through the U.S. military-industrial complex, NATO ally Turkey passed up the usually dominant American defense industry in favor of an obscure Chinese defense company for a contract on a long-range missile defense system.
Recently, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that they had agreed on key provisions of a security arrangement that could allow some American forces in Afghanistan to remain after the NATO combat mission end
lexander told the Times that, "Given where we are and all the issues that are on the table, I do feel it's important to have a public, transparent discussion" and that "they [the American people] need to understand the truth about what is going on."
The horrible carnage inflicted by the Somali Al-Shabab Islamist group on a Kenyan shopping mall should cause the U.S. government to reassess its foreign policy of profligate worldwide intervention.
What did Vladimir Putin get from the United States for saving President Obama from himself during the Syrian chemical weapons "crisis"? Only criticism and ridicule from a reflexive anti-Russian American news media.
No matter how the dust up over Syria ends, President Barack Obama should be commended for seeking congressional approval for any attack. Although such a strike would have bad repercussions for the United States in the Middle East region and violate i
Vexing the U.S. government again, basketball star Dennis Rodman has made a repeat visit to North Korea to visit its leader Kim Jong-un. After his last trip, which brought howls of protest from Washington’s foreign policy establishment and self-righte
When pundits debate military options for any of the many U.S. foreign interventions, most of them buy into some version of the "America-as-World-Policeman" approach to foreign policy.
A true cynic would question the timing of Middle East-wide U.S. embassy closings and a barrage of drone attacks in Yemen when the Obama administration is defending its intrusive spying on Americans after exposure by an intelligence agency contractor.
Americans, who recently have had their phone records vacuumed up by the National Security Agency spies, can now give the TSA their fingerprints, undergo government snooping into their backgrounds, and pay $85 to undergo this further erosion of their
