Few ideas have shaped the way Washington talks about Beijing more than the Thucydides Trap. The Harvard political scientist Graham Allison built the phrase on a single line from the ancient historian Thucydides, who wrote that "it was the rise of Athens and the fear...
“The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary.” That’s Thomas Jefferson—sounding the alarm over what he saw as the greatest threat to the Constitution and your liberty. He gave us four main warnings: Consolidation is death to freedom. Judges can be just as...
In what is the monetary equivalent of tearing down statues, the British have decided they must replace iconic images on their currency. Out of an apparent fear of offending the stampede of human beings who have chosen to abandon their own homelands to live in Great...
Since the end of the Cold War, Somalia has been a textbook case of the perils of foreign meddling. Once a pawn in superpower rivalry, it descended into state collapse, warlordism, and radical insurgency. Successive U.S. administrations, driven by shifting strategic...
The terrible siege of Lenningrad (St. Petersburg) lasted 872-days as German and Finnish military forces encircled the city. It was only when the harsh winters froze Lake Ladoga that the Road of Life could be established. A lifeline of trucks and mules and makeshift...
"The idea that deficits don't matter as long as you have your own currency is just wrong. In a world of scarce resources, someone always pays.”- N. Gregory Mankiw Some are calling recent political events America’s “socialist moment," as many libertarians have been...
By eliminating the political cost of military casualties, drone warfare has enabled four successive American presidents to expand executive power and wage permanent, undeclared wars around the globe. The United States has carried out tens of thousands of drone and air...
In a moment when global attention remains fixed on conflicts in the Middle East, political turmoil in Venezuela, Sudan’s ongoing war, and Cuba’s deepening humanitarian crisis, the unfolding situation in Albania has slipped out of view. That relative silence comes...
As Washington celebrates tactical wins against Islamic State affiliates in Nigeria, Americans should demand policymakers pause. What began as advisory support, intelligence sharing, and targeted strikes now risks expanding across the Lake Chad Basin. Americans should...
Allies and clients have frequently entangled their great power patrons in needless geopolitical crises and sometimes even bloody wars. The tragic events leading to World War I in 1914 are a classic example. Serbia helped drag Czarist Russia into that bloody maelstrom...
President Donald Trump, broadly speaking, is not at base a liar. Sure, almost every word out of his mouth is a lie. You don’t have to go back to his marriage vows to prove this; a simple survey of his 2024 campaign promises versus his results during the first eighteen...
The first time I met Vladimir, my Russian college roommate freshman year, we got to talking about politics and it turned out he was all for the free market, and in fact went on to join the college investment club. At that time Bill Weld was governor of Massachusetts...
Washington's yearly defense measure has ground to a halt, and one buried clause explains why a widening bloc of lawmakers wants the whole thing pried back open. Members voted down the procedural rule required to open debate on the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense...
Last week, on the sidelines of the NATO summit, Volodymyr Zelensky repeated his demand that Ukraine be invited to join NATO, which was bold, considering that Ukraine’s president wasn’t even invited to the NATO summit. Zelensky attended a leaders dinner but was not...
In 2026, the world’s first trillionaire—following the recent stock debut of SpaceX—Elon Musk has remained one of the most influential figures in American politics. After campaigning for Donald Trump in 2024 and initially playing a leading role in the Department of...
The China hawks are an industrious bunch. Full of ideas and financing, they are never short of time and fill it with lengthy publications from their comfy sinecures arguing about what Washington “needs” to do to confront the “China Threat.” One of the most notable of...
I am far from your typical, mainstream economist. Rather than focus on the broad aggregates that the state publishes in an effort to convince us that things are “just fine,” I choose to observe economic conditions at the most micro of levels. While my colleagues pour...
One of America’s most talented antiwar artists and political satirists passed away last week. Tom Blanton did one of the best daily roundups of government oppression and outrages stories on the Internet. His Project for a New American Revolution was an inspiration for...
