The NATO brings to mind the classic paradigm of someone all dressed up and nowhere to go. It has to constantly reinvent a reason for its existence. The NATO is a lucrative hunting ground for the American arms industry. The bigger the NATO’s threat perceptions, the greater the scope for …
Read More »Biden Should Think Big on the U.S.-EU Trade Agenda
When U.S. President Joe Biden participates in his first summit between the United States and the European Union tomorrow in Brussels, he should keep the focus on the big picture. While easing bilateral irritants would improve the tone of relations in the short term, the real test will be whether …
Read More »An Anxious Erdogan Tries to Make Nice With the West
Weeks before U.S. President Joe Biden met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit, Erdogan vowed that the meeting would be transformative. In a virtual gathering with American investors last month, he predicted that the encounter would “herald a new era.” It was no …
Read More »Biden’s Tour of Europe Leaves a Lot of Unfinished Business
“America is back at the table,” President Joe Biden said at a press conference Sunday in Cornwall following his first G-7 summit. That statement perhaps best encapsulated Biden’s message during his maiden voyage overseas. While he didn’t mention his predecessor by name, the contrast with Donald Trump couldn’t have been …
Read More »Iran’s Engineered Election Leaves Reformists With No Good Options
Iranians will go to the polls this Friday to choose the successor to centrist President Hassan Rouhani, who is winding down his second four-year term and cannot run for reelection. The polls will take place in an atmosphere of widespread public apathy, as voters choose from a list of presidential …
Read More »Geneva Summit: Leading from the front while dealing with media
Two leaders of two great nations meet at a neutral venue known for its peaceful locales and absolute neutral position world over. President Joe Biden of the United States and President Vladimir Putin of Russian Federation came to Geneva for their first face to face meet after the United States …
Read More »Modest results of the meeting in Geneva
Presidents Joseph Biden and Vladimir Putin met in Geneva on Wednesday, June 16. Both separately noted that the talks went well. “There’s been no hostility,” Putin said. “On the contrary, our meeting took place in a constructive spirit.” Biden meanwhile declared “the tone of the entire meeting… was good. Positive.” …
Read More »Takeaways from Biden-Putin summit
Putin said, “..We can see attempts at destroying the relationship between Russia and China. We can see that those attempts are being made in practical policies. And your questions, too, have to do with it. This is, perhaps, the salience of the Geneva summit…” Russia and China have congruent interest …
Read More »That Little Power Elite Moment is Already Over
Concerns over the white-supremacist neofascism of the Republican Party were overblown, a “Marxist” told me last January, because Trump had never won the allegiance of all but a small fraction of the nation’s corporate and financial ruling class. Had I not read the latest Noam Chomsky interview, the “Marxist” said, …
Read More »Anti-Critical Race Theory and Neo-McCarthyism
On June 15, the “Promoting Education Not Indoctrination Act” was introduced in the Ohio legislature by Sarah Fowler Arthur, a first-term representative from the overwhelmingly white district of northeastern Ohio that includes both the rustbelt lake towns of Ashtabula and Conneaut and the Cleveland suburb of Chardon. Like many other …
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