“Tariffs,” President Donald Trump is fond of reminding us, “is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary.” It’s the most beautiful word “because tariffs are going to make us rich as hell. It's going to bring our countries businesses back that left us.” And that’s how it started. On “Liberation Day,” on April 2, Trump announced a 10% minimum tariff on goods from all countries with some countries being hit with higher “reciprocal tariffs.” “For decades,” he explained, “our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike.” But...

There are many metrics by which U.S. President Donald Trump’s first year back in office can be measured. Some will measure it by tariffs and the economy, some by ICE and immigration, and some by civility and democracy. But, from a foreign policy perspective, the best metric by which to measure Trump’s first year is the one he set for himself. Trump promised to be the “president of peace” and stated in his inaugural address, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy...

At 4:21 in the morning of January 3, U.S. President Donald Trump posted, “The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country.” No one had anticipated such a military operation prior to the announcement, and no one anticipated the comments Trump would make later that morning in his press conference. The press conference, and the comments that followed shortly after, contained several shocking statements. The first was the announcement...

A key reason that Russia went to war in Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO; a key reason that Ukraine went to war with Russia was to defend their right to join NATO. On December 14, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave up Ukraine’s right to join NATO. He presented the concession as a compromise. But it is not really a compromise. Zelensky may intend the non-compromise to leverage concessions from Russia, but it may not really change anything. That blocking Ukraine accession to NATO was Moscow’s primary motivation has been confirmed by NATO, by Ukraine and by the...

There was a time, not long ago, when the United States had the social etiquette to conduct its coups clandestinely. That is important because it means they recognized that it is wrong. Coups were carried out by the CIA, and we often only found out years later. Now, they are carried out by the U.S. Navy for the world to watch on television. The change is a reflection of Washington’s hubris and the belief that they can do what they want. There may never have been a more public and obvious coup than the coup attempt unfolding in Venezuela. Hardly under cover of the dark of night, the largest...

Anchorage is not dead, and Budapest is still alive. Between the Trump-Putin meeting in Anchorage Alaska and the proposed Trump-Putin meeting in Budapest, the diplomatic track that the United States and Russia were on seemed to die. In October, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had a “very productive” two hour phone call that led to a phone call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov that was to lay the groundwork for a meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest. But, by the time Rubio had hung up the phone, the Budapest meeting was off....

There is much of significance happening in Ukraine right now that is being reported either lightly or not at all by the mainstream Western media in an apparent attempt to harmonize their reporting with Kiev’s narrative in order to keep hopes high and economic and military support flowing. Though the mainstream media has begun to report on the Russian encirclement of the Donetsk city of Pokrovsk, it is failing to report on how dire and how ominous the situation is. The reporting suggests that the battlefield situation is being stabilized, that the Russian losses are enormous, and that the...

In the waters of the Caribbean, a surprisingly large U.S. fleet sits with Venezuela in its sights. It includes over 10,000 troops, Aegis guided-missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, F-35B jet fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 Poseidon spy planes, assault ships, and a secretive special-operations ship. The fleet is built for war on Venezuela or its drug cartels, but it is engineered to put enough pressure on Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to push him from power. The justification for the war is stopping the flow of drugs into the United States by Venezuelan drug...