I. Introduction: The Graveyard of Empires In discussions of Afghanistan in today’s world, the assertion that the country is a “graveyard of empires” is often made. While the statement is correctly accepted as a caution against overconfident intervention by foreign...
After nearly two decades of bloodshed, meaningful progress is finally being made towards a conclusion of the war in Afghanistan. Negotiations with the Taliban in Qatar have achieved an uncommon consistency. On the domestic front, a bipartisan resolution matching the...
It never goes away – the myth of absolute federal supremacy. I got an email from a Tenth Amendment Center volunteer in Illinois last week. He has been working to get the Fourth Amendment Protection Act introduced there. Passage of the bill would end state cooperation...
Max Blumenthal’s new book, “The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump,” is over 300 pages and wastes not a word. It also does far more than it claims. “This book,” Blumenthal writes, “makes...
Given President Trump’s trade wars against China and other countries, the natural tendency is to focus on Chinese and American producers and consumers as the victims of Trump’s destructive trade folly. Keep in mind that in every trade, both sides benefit by improving...
Russian gun rights activist and graduate exchange student Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for “conspiracy to act as a foreign agent without registering.” Her “crime” was to work to make connections among American gun rights activists in...
Senator Marco Rubio made the common argument for the Combating BDS Act in an opinion piece in the New York Times. He argued that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is an international campaign that embraces discriminatory economic warfare against...
American economic sanctions may have killed up to 40,000 people in Venezuela between 2017 and 2018, according to a new study. The finding only underscores the lethal realities of “soft power,” all too often presented as a humane alternative to open armed conflict....
