Attempting to forget is the only way to guarantee failing to learn. The United States still hasn't reckoned with the strategic logic that brought it into Iraq twenty years ago — and raises the risk of great-power war today. My essay in :
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Stephen Wertheim
@stephenwertheim
America in the world, past and present. Senior Fellow . Lecturer and . Historian and author of .
Stephen Wertheim’s Tweets
It was so simple when she was growing up that, per her own memoir, she wasn’t allowed to be in a child beauty pageant because it was divided into Black kids and white kids and she was neither. The good ol’ days!
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Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country. We can have that again, but to do that, we must vote Joe Biden out. #RTM2023
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In some sense, Putin really is the best ally China could hope for: at enormous personal cost, he’s demonstrated by example, time and again, exactly how not to manage geopolitical and military policy in a non-democratic regime. How many of your friends would do that for you?
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For all the studios that passed on my script about a caterer-warlord’s halfway joy-coup, the joke’s on you.
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I spent the last months talking to Russia experts about a possible coup. None of our scenarios included Prigozhin. The idea that the guy with a giant private army who went around talking about revolution would actually act was just too obvious--so we dismissed it.
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U.S. leaders should also call China, India, to discuss common interests in the crisis.
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Biden spoke with the leaders of the so-called E3 - France, Germany and the UK - on the situation in Russia
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More like BHL and Michael Walzer
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Hearing unconfirmed reports that NATO has put Slavoj Zizek and Terry Eagleton in a sealed train to the Finland Station.
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Nice to see a non-woke military playing some hardcore 11-dimensional chess!
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Here are a few insights into the situation surrounding Prigozhin:
1️⃣ For a long time, Prigozhin has been out of direct contact with Putin, yet he's believed he was acting in Putin's interests "by default". His significant contributions in the war enhanced his sense of… Show more
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Despite the inflammatory title, this is more of an explainer, as I try to put in context the information we've learned about Nordstream, and explain why it fits neatly into the history of energy security in the post-Soviet space.
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Caterer-warlord, historian — close enough
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Didn’t have to wait long.
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Quite something write a book about the Iraq War and conclude that “insufficient prudence” was the problem. One wonders if Russian historians in twenty years will say the same of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.
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“When NATO weighs Ukraine’s prospects for membership at its summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month, it must recognize that the war has more complex causes than this popular narrative suggests.”
writes for :
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This is how I learned in college that 1. non-academic reviews are often the most penetrating and 2. professional incentives and norms within academia seriously impact the quality and tenor of academic debate.
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Finally, I'm not sure who has in mind when he says "Please stop making everything about NATO enlargement." The best critics of enlargement are explicitly not doing that.
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"The chancellor also promised that Germany would 'as of the following year' finally meet the NATO goal of spending at least 2 percent of its economic output on defense."
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"German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Thursday that next month's NATO summit should focus on strengthening Ukraine’s military power instead of opening a process for the country to join the transatlantic alliance."
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Most important with respect to Ukraine, after NATO made its 2008 pledge that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members,” it becomes difficult to isolate Moscow’s fears of a democratic and Western-oriented government in Kyiv from fears that Ukraine might join NATO in time.
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I agree with this. Still, over time these other factors fed into Russia’s perception of NATO enlargement and vice versa. It is very hard to disentangle enlargement from other variables (which, like the Kosovo War, often directly involved NATO).
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In 1999, Yeltsin cared way more about Kosovo War than NATO enlargement. In 2004, Putin cared way more about color revolutions than NATO enlargement. After Bucharest declaration in '08? Russia joined US in reset a year later. Please stop making everything about NATO enlargement.
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