Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have written an excellent article on our government’s Iran obsession over the last forty years. They begin by observing that the fixation on Iran makes no sense when we consider the huge disparity in power between the U.S. and its clients on one side and Iran on the other: In balance-of-power terms, Washington’s obsession with Tehran is absurd. Iran’s population is one-fourth the size of the United States’, and its economy is barely two percent as large. The United States and its closest allies in the Middle East—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—together spend at…

President Trump has done what few thought was possible in Washington, D.C.—he’s gotten Democrats and Republicans to agree on something. Too bad it’s an inconsequential agreement that does not affect the American people like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, or maybe solving the healthcare crisis, or energy policy that will enable people to find abundant affordable energy, would. No. Instead Democrats and Republicans stand united in opposition to Trump’s decision to pull 1,000 or so troops from Syria and bring them home. Great job, folks. The American people are yawning at this latest inside the Beltway “sky is falling” charade.  Americans…

In these times of near civil war, Americans agree on almost nothing. Yet sometime in 2019, almost all of America finally got "woke" on China. For years, our leaders had yawned about Silk Road neo-imperialism in Africa and Asia, and gross abuses of human rights against Chinese religious minorities and political dissidents. Almost every assumption Washington made, both by Democratic and Republican administrations, was logically flawed at best. And at worst, these calculations were a weird mix of conservative commercial greed, liberal political correctness and shared screwball naivete. American trade and political appeasement were never interpreted by Beijing as magnanimity…

In his September 14 article, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius made a revealing comment about Donald Trump, writing: "The problem with Trump isn't (as some critics have argued) that he's a reckless and potentially genocidal aggressor. No, the danger is that he's precisely what he says he is — a dealmaker who thinks he could craft agreements with despots that could bring peace and security." [1] Since Ignatius's specialty is international relations — he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations — we can assume that he has some understanding of that field; in addition, we may expect him to avoid the contradictions that…

                The bombshell allegation was buried in a federal extortion lawsuit against Dmitriy Movsesyan, who worked on Nessel’s campaign at various points in 2017 and 2018. (Full disclosure: This columnist funded an independent expenditure against Nessel’s eventual 2018 Republican opponent, Tom Leonard, during the GOP nomination campaign.) The Detroit Free Press, a politically liberal newspaper that endorsed Nessel in 2018, published an extensive report on the lawsuit early Friday, but omitted any reference to the allegation of election manipulation. This columnist first reported the allegation. The lawsuit, filed by Executive Car Rental owner Maher Waad in the U.S. District Court for…