Peace and Security
A Nuclear Juggling Act
Hillary Clinton’s Grim Legacy in Honduras
Who murdered Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres? While the identities of the killers remain unknown, activists, media observers, and members of the Cáceres family are blaming the increasingly reactionary and violent Honduran government. The authorities had...
Your Tax Dollars Enable Police Brutality Abroad
Ever since the Black Lives Matter movement exploded into the headlines, violence by American police officers has come under fire from activists and ordinary citizens alike. Less discussed, however, is how the U.S. government winks at the police brutality of its client...
Trump’s Impeachable Offense
For anyone who cares deeply about being informed, watching Republican presidential debates can feel like a form of torture. But the program becomes more terrifying altogether when their ignorance is hitched to an endorsement of actual torture. At the latest GOP debate...
6 Reasons Not to Reboot the Cold War
The Pentagon budget unveiled this week calls for quadrupling spending on efforts to counter Russia. The money would move more troops, tanks, and artillery into position near the Russia border. This last Obama budget would also fund another installment in a $1 trillion...
The Pentagon’s Pricey Culture of Mediocrity
When the tank crew under my command ran into trouble on the battlefield, I never doubted the ultimate success of the mission because the Marines I served with were among the finest people I knew. But if we want to keep it that way, the Pentagon must stop mismanaging...
Manna from Hell
War is hell. Unless, of course, you happen to be a global corporate peddler of rockets, drones, bombs, and all the other hellish weaponry of military conflict. In that case, war is manna from hell. So bring it on. Indeed, it seems as if Beelzebub himself is in charge...
Your Fear of Terrorism Could Get You Killed
One in 3.5 million: That’s the risk you’ll die from a terrorist attack in the United States, Ohio State professor John Mueller estimates. Rounded generously, that chance comes to 3 one-hundred thousandths of a percent. That’s not how most Americans see it, though. In...
A Formula for More Murder
Picture a world in which most of the people you encounter — on the street or at work, in stores or classrooms, at the movies or in church — are openly carrying guns. That’s the world Second Amendment absolutists are promoting when they repeat their mantra, "The only...
We Shouldn’t Take Their Oil
Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign ad pledges to “take their oil.” That’s what President (gasp) Trump would do after having “quickly cut the head off the Islamic State,” says the deep-voiced narrator. Along with political decapitation, there are many...