Senegal’s peaceful democratic change sets a model for governing with humility and trust in a region beset by military coups and violence. In early April, the military-run regime in the West African country of Mali banned all political activity. The reason given? For the sake of “public order.” Yet the timing suggests another factor. In neighboring Senegal just the month before, citizens voted out an incumbent president after his unlawful attempt to stay in office. This peaceful transfer of power through democracy did not go unnoticed in a region overrun in recent years by military coups and violent jihadism. In…

The job of commanding a nuclear submarine should go to smart and well-qualified officers. Or at least that's the case in Western navies. Not so in the Chinese navy. Except for engineers, Chinese submarine officers tend to come from military academies with the lowest college-entrance-exam scores, a US military analyst said. This suggests that People's Liberation Army Navy sub commanders are not the "best and the brightest" officers who may be most equipped to cope with the stresses and challenges endemic to submarine warfare. Based on China's college-entrance exam — called the gaokoa — the People's Liberation Army Navy engineering…

I’ve been writing about Iran for more than two decades. In 2005, I made a trip to Iran to ascertain the “ground truth” about that nation, a truth which I then incorporated into a book, Target Iran, laying out the US-Israeli collaboration to craft a justification for a military attack on Iran designed to bring down its theocratic government. I followed this book up with another, Dealbreaker, in 2018, which brought this US-Israeli effort up to date. Back in November 2006, in an address to Columbia University’s School of International Relations, I underscored that the United States would never abandon my “good…

Since the horrific atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, Israel has been engaged in a devastating military operation in the Gaza Strip. Over 25,000 Palestinians have been killed, 70% of whom have been women and children, and tens of thousands injured. About 85% of Gaza’s 2.2 million inhabitants have been internally displaced with no safe place to go. Israel has systematically targeted Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including hospitals. Over 60% of Gaza’s housing units have been damaged or destroyed. As a result of Israel’s siege of Gaza, which has blocked all but a trickle of humanitarian aid, half of Gazans are starving, and the entire population…

By “class system” we mean the basic workplace organizations—the human relationships or “social relations”—that accomplish the production and distribution of goods and services. Some examples include the master/slave, communal village, and lord/serf organizations. Another example, the distinctive capitalist class system, entails the employer/employee organization. In the United States and in much of the world, it is now the dominant class system. Employers—a tiny minority of the population—direct and control the enterprises and employees that produce and distribute goods and services. Employers buy the labor power of employees—the population’s vast majority—and set it to work in their enterprises. Each enterprise’s output…