On November 8, 2016, in the wake of Donald Trump’s first triumph, I wrote “It is, appropriately enough, gray and wet in Washington, DC this morning. Brilliant sunshine would be almost more irony than one could bear.” Today, we are not so lucky. What I had to say in my earlier post, which bore the…
Tag: Military Intellectual Complex
The Coalition of the Swilling
Here are two questions that few today can answer, to wit: “During the Vietnam War, what could you buy in a Filipino PX that you couldn’t buy in an American PX?” “Johnnie Walker Black Label and Chivas Regal.” “What else could you buy in a Filipino PX?” “Nothing.” After Lyndon Johnson sent American ground troops…
F*ck yeah I’m a Wikipedia-surfin’ Kissinger wannabe! Ugottaproblemwitdat?
My old buddy/bête noir Dan Drezner brings me this message, Are "Wikipedia-Surfing Kissinger Wannabes" Killing the Political Risk Field?, jumping off a fulminatin’ post by one Tina Fordham, a serious, totally non-amateur political risk chick who now runs her own company, Fordham Global Foresight. Writing in the Financial Times, Tina ripped a new one for…
Who won the Cold War? Why, Jimmy Carter, of course!
At least, that’s the way Chris Miller tells it in Chip War The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, his best-selling but not always convincing story of the computer chip and how it “changed the world”. It seems that in 1977, Silicon Valley entrepreneur William Perry was brought in to serve as undersecretary of…
Shorter India: “The United States of ‘America’? Isn’t that one of those little western countries?”
That’s the perspective from New Delhi, Varanasi and Chennai, as reported by NYT guy Roger Cohen in his long post, Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World, suggesting that the Biden administration’s moralizing attempt to turn the current world situation into Cold War II isn’t playing too well beyond the Atlantic community of nations, almost…
I did not see this coming! The B-21 bomber is so dumb, even the Washington Post is making fun of it!
Hell no I did not! The Washington Post, not known for its skepticism regarding America’s military intellectual complex—because it’s a charter member!—just can’t stop snickering at the B-21 “bomber”, sounding a hell of lot like me! Noting that Congress has kept the big boy’s budget secret, and that the plane’s recent roll-out was as primly…
George Packer, Packin’ the Con in “Neocon”!
I’ve never actually met George Packer, but I have read him, in the current issue of the Atlantic, so I’ll go out on a limb and say I can probably throw him farther than I can trust him. Yes, I am hip to old Georgie’s jive, right from the get-go—right from his “head”, as a…
Joe Biden’s foreign policy: regressin’ to meaninglessness and following the path of greatest stupidity
Gee whiz but I wish I wasn’t so prescient. A whole six months ago I wrote a post Joe Biden likes being a Cold War President, moaning a bit theatrically about Uncle Joe’s “senile swagger.” Well, it seems like Joe was just getting warmed up. United States Enters a New Era of Direct Confrontation With…
Another $2 trillion down the rathole
“Another $40 billion down the rathole,” Secretary of the Treasury Gordon Humphrey used to sigh, contemplating the Defense Department’s annual budget requests under the Eisenhower administration.1 But that was then. Now we’re up to $2 trillion! Well, on the one hand, that $2 trillion, to update our nuclear deterrent, will be spread out over 25…
Congressional Progressive Caucus speaks common sense to power: DC goes insane
If you live within 200 miles of our Nation’s Capital, you probably heard that enormous squeal of terror last week when, on October 22, 2022, the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to President Joe Biden making the not too remarkable suggestion—one would think—that the current bloody war in Ukraine can only be brought to…