Joseph Solis-Mullen

Examining the Foreign Policy Establishment’s ‘British Connection’

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jun 12, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In 1877, before he had made his fortune via the founding of De Beers Consolidated Mines and the British South Africa Company, the imperialist par excellence Cecil Rhodes had dictated a part of his will thusly: “[To make provision] for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world.” This was to include, “The ultimate recovery of the United States of America.” This grandiose vision was pragmatically tempered in the...

A Few Thousand Years of Chinese Foreign Policy (In a Nutshell)

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | May 23, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

An examination of Chinese foreign policy historically lends little support to those who depict China as secretly plotting to take over the world. Rather, it points to an entity preoccupied with managing its complex, local strategic environment and internal security concerns. While no single article devoted to the subject can comprehensively make such a case in detail, a few general observations are worth pointing out for their relation to the present. Despite what proponents of the New Red Scare would have us believe, China and its nominally communist leadership have for decades acted in a...

Taking Notes Out of Rothbard’s Taiwan Playbook

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | May 16, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Writing pseudonymously in a series of articles for Faith and Freedom in the 1950s, Murray Rothbard took on the question of whether or not the United States should defend Formosa (Taiwan) from attack by mainland China. While his conclusions will surprise no one familiar with his work (that war is the health of the state, that individuals concerned with the fate of Taiwan should do as they will privately, but that their lives and property are not for the government to command), a review of the articles’ contents are worthwhile, nonetheless. For apart from such typically memorably Rothbardian...

Sino-Japanese Relations Are Deteriorating, But Western Media Ignores It…

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | May 8, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Apart from its well-practiced habit of uncritically repeating whatever the Pentagon, State Department, White House (or really any other government agency) have to say on a particular subject, of equal importance in any indictment of the so-called Fourth Estate is what the corporate media does not report at all. Admittedly, to borrow from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a dog that fails to bark is not as readily noticeable as one which does; but when it comes to the fake China threat, several recent examples are particularly instructive. First, U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s loudly applauded...

What the China Literature Gets Wrong

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | May 1, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

For more than a decade it's become expected for books peddling the "China threat" to pop up as best sellers. From Martin Jacques' When China Rules the World (2009) to Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred-Year Marathon (2015), the best response has been to just shrug and move on. Talk in serious policy circles and major media were still primarily focused on Beijing’s integration into the “liberal world order” as a “responsible stakeholder,” and of the gains in trade made (and still to be made) in exchange between the United States and China. The transformation of China from global partner to enemy...

War with Spain Changed America for the Worse (And We Knew It Would)

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Apr 17, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In his 1899 essay "The Conquest of the United States by Spain," America’s foremost classical liberal William G. Sumner put forth a critique of the Spanish-American War that, in retrospect, was more horrifyingly accurate than he could have imagined. Reflecting on the defeat of Spain in Cuba and elsewhere by the United States, it is worth quoting at some length: "We have beaten Spain in a military conflict, but we are submitting to be conquered by her on the field of ideas and policies...We have self-government...if you mean by it acquiescence in what a little group of people at the head of...

So Much Hot Air: The (Fake) China Threat Strikes Again!

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Feb 13, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Now that a few days have passed and the hysteria has come down slightly, perhaps a few sane thoughts might be added to what has otherwise been a microcosm of everything that is wrong with America’s warmongering media and political class. As everyone is by now well aware, a data-gathering balloon of Chinese origin passed over the continental United States last week. According to the Pentagon, it is not the first. They say China has launched some two dozen over the past five years, several of which passed over either Florida, Texas, or Guam during that time. Far from being cause for alarm,...

Instead of Saving Face, Let’s Save Lives in Ukraine

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jan 18, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Whenever asked about whether the U.S. will change its policy regarding the conflict in Ukraine, to start pushing for Kiev to enter negotiations rather than apparently providing as much money and as many weapons as they ask for, the Biden administration’s refrain has been a consistent variation of “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing as long as it takes.” As long as it takes for what? For Ukraine to “win” its war against Russia, taking back all land occupied or annexed by Russia since 2014. While it isn’t clear this is possible, and even less clear that pursuing such a maximalist...