The bilateral military alliance between South Korea and the United States has become increasingly unproductive and needlessly perilous for both countries. Astute American analysts have argued for decades that the arrangement is not a good deal for the United States. The Republic of Korea (ROK) has been one of the most blatant security free-riders among Washington’s roster of “allies”—or more accurately, Washington’s clients and dependents. U.S. officials have repeatedly pressed South Korea to spend more on its defense and pay a greater share of costs for U.S. forces stationed on the...
Is the United States Pursuing a Permanent Cold War with Russia?
There is growing speculation about how the Russia-Ukraine war might eventually end. Three competing scenarios are strong possibilities. The most likely outcome is a definitive Russian victory after a grinding, bloody struggle lasting several more years. As time drags on, Russia’s larger population and military will confer greater and greater advantages in the fighting, despite the lumbering, inefficient nature of the Kremlin’s forces. The second most likely outcome is a frozen conflict roughly along the current battle lines. Fighting would end with an armistice rather than a formal peace...
By Gambling on Deterrence, Washington Must Prepare for Failure in the Pacific
It has become increasingly apparent that any notion of U.S. “strategic ambiguity” with respect to Taiwan is dead. Both the Joe Biden administration’s rhetoric and U.S. military deployments in the western Pacific indicate that the United States will come to Taiwan’s defense if the People’s Republic of China (PRC) uses force against the island. The logic underlying this more confrontational stance is that it will deter Beijing from taking rash actions. It is far more likely to produce a potentially catastrophic military collision between the United States and China. The reliability and...
Paul Krugman’s World War II is a Propagandistic Fairy Tale
In his June 6 New York Times column commemorating the 79th anniversary of the D-Day landing, Paul Krugman manages to regurgitate nearly every self-serving Western cliché about World War II. According to Krugman, “World War II was one of the few wars that was clearly a fight of good against evil.” It is safe to assume that the vast majority of Americans would agree with him, but his description is wildly inaccurate. Unlike some analysts who confer sainthood on the Allied powers, Krugman at least concedes that “the good guys were by no means entirely good. Americans were still denied basic...
Washington’s Never-Ending Love Affair with Sanctions
One of the more puzzling features of the U.S. approach to world affairs is how officials persist in their enthusiasm for economic sanctions as a worthwhile policy tool despite massive evidence regarding their futility. More than three decades ago, Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliot debunked the notion that sanctions were effective in their seminal book, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered. Subsequent historical scholarship and contemporary studies by other experts have largely confirmed that conclusion. Sanctions have a nearly unique quality of being simultaneously both...
On Korea, Joe Biden Is Choosing Every Bad Option
Joe Biden has managed to embrace nearly all of the worst, most dangerous options with respect to U.S. policy on the Korean Peninsula. Washington’s policy toward North Korea is utterly sterile and ineffective. The glimpses of hope during Donald Trump’s administration that the United States might adopt a fresh approach instead of clinging to its longstanding, unattainable demand that North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons program have vanished. Biden abandoned even Trump’s modest policy deviations. Instead, his administration has resumed the insistence on Pyongyang’s complete...
Samantha Power, High Priestess of Insidious Authoritarianism
Most people who remember Samantha Power know her either as a pro-war propagandist masquerading as a journalist in Bosnia or as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s loyal servant in helping to orchestrate the Obama administration’s disastrous military interventions in Libya and Syria. However, she now has an important policy perch in Joe Biden’s administration from which to promote and implement a new round of destructive policies. As the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, she has a multi-billion-dollar slush fund with which to bribe foreign governments and subsidize...
Washington’s Dangerous Ukraine Entanglement
Dangerous tensions between Russia and Ukraine are spiking again. The latest catalyst was a November 25 clash between Russian and Ukrainian warships in the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. That narrow strait separates Russia’s Taman Peninsula from Crimea. Despite Moscow’s annexation of the latter in 2014, Kiev still considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory, a position that the United States and its allies back emphatically. Moreover, passage through the strait is the only maritime link between Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and those on the Azov. Kiev views the...
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Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty
Americans today have “freedom” to be fleeced, groped, injected, harassed, surveilled, vilified, disarmed, beaten, detained, and maybe shot by federal agents. From hapless homeowners hit by SWAT raids to pandemic lockdowns pointlessly paralyzing lives, government...
The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger
Today the front pages and bookstores are filled with tales of the so-called "China Threat." From spy balloons to Fentanyl pipelines, genocide to dreams of world domination: CHINA! But is it all true? Is any of it? Now, for the first time, the speciousness of these and...