“How does America change if our intelligence agencies were more accurate in their assessment of Saddam Hussein’s chemical and nuclear weapons programs?”The question was posed, just the other day, in “Make America Competent Again,” by David French, at the Dispatch, a neoconservative website. The tract is an agony aunt’s meander that calls on shoring-up competency in state and civil society.But first: Dissecting, deconstructing and exposing the neoconservative mindset and machinations matters. The reason is this:Thanks to President Trump, neoconservatives are not exactly having a moment—they’re down in the doldrums. But they’ll be back. For neoconservatives and liberal interventionists make up…

Tens of thousands of people get sick. More than 2,900 die. Fear spreads faster than the virus. Factories are closed. Roads are blocked. Villages are sealed off. Cities are locked down. The outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is the most severe sociopolitical crisis Chinese leaders have grappled with since the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. And the crisis is not confined to China. The spread of the virus across borders—and the panicky reaction to that spread—will have profound effects on the global economy, politics, security, and governance.  The virus’s novelty leaves many unknowns. We still don’t have a clear idea of…

There was a time when it seemed possible for the world to contain COVID-19—the disease caused by the new coronavirus. That time is over. What began as an outbreak in China has become a pandemic, and as a growing number of countries struggle to control the virus, talk of “flattening the curve” is increasing. That is, a lot of people are going to get sick, and delaying infections as much as possible is imperative, so that cases occur over a long period of time and health systems aren’t suddenly inundated. Almost every country is trying to achieve this goal through…

U. S. forces in Iraq continues to come under fire with another rocket attack Saturday that targeted the same base that was hit earlier in the week. Iraqi officials are insisting that our troops withdraw from the country: The U.S. retaliation prompted protest from the Iraqi government, which called it a “violation of national sovereignty.” Iraqi officials said the attack killed five members of local security forces. The government on Saturday repeated its appeal against unilateral U.S. military action targeting actors in Iraq. “We also refuse that the American forces or others take any action without the approval of the Iraqi government…

As the gulf between the haves and the have nots continues to widen, the roiling debate over economic inequality has become a political prime mover in the U.S. and across Europe. French economist Thomas Piketty’s 2013 landmark analysis of Western economic inequality, “Capital in the 21st Century,” became a must-read in both popular and academic circles. Now, he’s back with “Capital and Ideology” (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020), a global look at the history of the problem, how institutions and ideologies reinforce it, and how it can be remedied. Piketty will visit Harvard on Friday to give the Stanley Hoffmann Lecture…