

The book arrived yesterday in solid shape—still wrapped in its library cover, barcode intact. I ordered a bookmark for it too.


The book arrived yesterday in solid shape—still wrapped in its library cover, barcode intact. I ordered a bookmark for it too.

Nailing the neocon myth (excerpt from “Neoconservatism” edited by Irwin Stelzer aka “The Neocon Reader”)
Read More »Russia’s gradual advance in the Donbass region appears to be forming an operational encirclement of Ukraine’s last major defensive line—its “fortress belt”—a development that could decide not only the fate of the war but also the shape of the emerging global order.
Related:
Russia’s Swift March Forward in Donbass [Pokrovsk is the prize]
Battling for Dominance: Board Games and Bottlenecks
Originally titled, Board Games and Bottlenecks
by Tina Antonis



Off to the side was a more youthful Wolfowitz. He told me that this picture, which had pride of place in his office, was of exactly the moment when the Reaganites had narrowly voted to dump the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in 1986 and to recognize the election victory of his opponent Cory Aquino.* “It was the first argument I won,” said Wolfowitz proudly. “I said that if we supported a dictator to keep hold of a base, we would end up losing the base and also deserving to do so. Whereas,” he went on, “by joining the side of ‘people power’ in Manila that year, we helped democracy movements spread through Taiwan and South Korea and even I think into Tiananmen Square in 1989.“
* See, for the best account of this upheaval in real time, James Fenton’s book The Snap Revolution.
Related:
*The Snap Revolution (Part One: The Snap Election) | James Fenton
*The Snap Revolution (Part Two: The Narrow Road to the Solid North)
*The Snap Revolution (Part Three: The Snap Revolution)
Previously: PH’s EDSA1 AKA People Power Revolution
Google Document: PH’s EDSA1 AKA People Power Revolution & Chile’s 1988 Plebiscite
As the Donald Trump administration and the Russian government agree to work together on ending the Ukraine war and lay out potential terms without Ukrainian and European input, I thought it would be interesting to revisit an essay from 16 years ago.
The incoming Trump administration is poised to pick up where the Biden administration has left off on the decades-spanning centerpiece of US foreign policy ‒ the encirclement and containment of China.
US Foreign Policy vs. China Continues Under Trump (archived)
Related:
AFPI: America First Policy Institute
The Walton Family Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and a coalition of fishermen’s associations and environmental institutions join forces to promote responsible fishing practices.
China’s A2/AD (ACE Concept/Joint All-Domain Operations)
– The US realizes its window of opportunity following the Cold War to assert itself as sole global superpower is closing (if it hasn’t closed already);
– It seeks to find a way to match or exceed the military capabilities and industrial capacity of both Russia and China through “innovation;”
– The US refuses to recognize the fundamental flaws in its own system as well as the premise upon which it seeks primacy in the first place;
– Start-up companies seeking to out-innovate and/or out-produce China propose unrealistic measures that either won’t work or that China is already employing itself on a much larger scale;
References:
Previously:
The US openly declares that it seeks to maintain a monopoly over shaping the “international order” following the Cold War and America’s emergence from it as the sole superpower.
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