Ted Galen Carpenter | The Libertarian Institute

Kamala’s Growing Flock of GOP Hawks

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Oct 21, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics

An especially notable feature of the 2024 presidential campaign has been the number of prominent Republicans who have endorsed Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris. The latest convert is former congressman Mickey Edwards, a 6-term representative from Oklahoma, who had been a member of the GOP’s leadership in the House of Representatives. Some Republican defectors have been even more prominent. The biggest coup of all for the Harris campaign was the decision by former Vice President Dick Cheney – along with his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) – to support Harris. Republican...

Pro-War Lobby Attacks Alleged ‘Russian Influencers’

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Sep 10, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In recent weeks, there has been a surge of allegations that Moscow has long orchestrated an illegal campaign to influence U.S. public opinion. On September 4, 2024, the U.S. Justice Department charged two Russian media executives with an alleged scheme that authorities say illegally funneled millions of dollars to a Tennessee-based company called Tenet to create and publish propaganda videos that subsequently racked up millions of views on American social media. In a separate legal action, prosecutors seized thirty-two Russian-controlled internet domains that were used in a state-controlled...

The Cato Institute’s Disgraceful Embrace of NATO

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Jul 2, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism

On July 9, 2024, the Cato Institute is holding a conference entitled “NATO at 75, Rebalancing the Transatlantic Alliance.” That title should come as a surprise to committed libertarians. When the modern libertarian movement emerged after World War II, one prominent feature was that those individuals embraced the traditional foreign policy of the Founding Fathers. The Founders’ vision was epitomized by two documents. One was George Washington’s Farewell Address, in which he stated, “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have...

How Washington Killed the Nuclear Arms Control System

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Mar 12, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

During the Cold War, world populations faced the ongoing nightmare of a nuclear attack coming out of the blue. All it would have taken was one miscalculation by either side. Such a trigger could even have taken the form of a false alert. We know that at least one such incident nearly led to catastrophe. In 1983, the Soviet Union’s alert system indicated that there were incoming missiles on their way. Fortunately, the alert commander ordered a double check to be sure the indications of a missile launch from NATO were genuine. That check confirmed that the alert was erroneous. Given the dire...

Ukraine and the Pretense of Democracy

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Mar 5, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

When Russian forces expanded their military presence in Ukraine in February 2022, U.S. officials and most of the Western news media portrayed the development as a brazen act of aggression by a dictatorship against a peaceful democracy. The reality was much more complex. Ukraine had allowed itself to become NATO’s pawn in Russia’s security zone. Such a move was bound to create severe tensions, not only between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia and NATO. In February 2022, regional tensions reached the point of being a full-fledged proxy war between the West and Russia. Moreover, the...

On Ethnic Cleansing, Washington DC Has Always Been the Hypocrite

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Oct 17, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

U.S. administrations have repeatedly condemned foreign adversaries for engaging in ethnic cleansing of minority populations. That has been an explicit grievance against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) because of Beijing’s treatment of its Uygur population in Xinjiang province, and against Syria and Iran because of their conduct toward Kurdish inhabitants. Serbian authorities in both Bosnia and Kosovo became high-profile targets of Washington’s outrage because of their alleged ethnic cleansing campaigns directed against Muslim populations. In the latter case, Bill Clinton’s...

One Western Official Finally Comes Clean About NATO Expansion

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Sep 21, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg likely surprised both factions in the ongoing debate about NATO expansion and its role in triggering the Russia-Ukraine War. He also undermined (perhaps fatally) the official cover story about the reasons for the Ukraine war. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Western officials and their allies in the corporate media have insisted vehemently that the alliance’s addition of Eastern European nations after the Cold War and giving a pledge to Ukraine that it would become a member someday had nothing to do with Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack his...

Nikki Haley, the Most Reckless Candidate for President

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Aug 28, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics

After the initial debate among GOP presidential aspirants, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is clearly the darling of the hawks who have given us debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. Indeed, the laudatory assessments of her debate performance among conservatives in the pro-war news media seemed to be a sophisticated, highly coordinated propaganda campaign. The key feature that Haley and her cheerleaders have in common is an unwillingness to consider any alternatives to the policies that have brought America and the world so much grief. Congenitally hawkish New...