Edison Jennings: The Cats of Rome
The cats of Rome sleep, feed, and breed
among the tumbled travertine, and slip,
tails high, across the flag draped avenues.
Ali A. Olomi: The history of the Taliban is crucial in understanding their success now – and also what might happen next
The rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban left many surprised. A key to understanding what is happening now – and what might take place next – is looking at the past and how the Taliban came to prominence.
Aviva Chomsky: Migration Is Not the Crisis
What Washington Could Really Do in Central America
William Astore: Tough Truths Are Desperately Needed About America’s Lost Wars
Americans may already be lying themselves out of what little remains of their democracy.
Tracey L. Rogers: Palestinian Lives Matter | We Must Reject Crimes Against Humanity
Just as Black Lives Matter, so do Palestinian Lives Matter. We cannot campaign for racial healing and justice on stolen land in our own country while simultaneously backing a campaign to occupy and displace people abroad.
Patrick Gathara: Colonial Powers Have Long Demanded the ‘Right to Self-Defense’ Against the People They Have Colonized
Colonial occupiers have long claimed a “right” to defend themselves from the resistance of native communities, including by committing mass murder.
William Astore: Back to the Future at the Pentagon
‘It hardly occurs to us to question how the Pentagon’s mad military scenarios about near-peer wars could indeed end in nuclear annihilation.’
John Feffer: How Biden Looks at the World
The Biden administration’s approach of “multilateral restoration” has many virtues compared to the last four years of MAGA. But it has considerable shortcomings as well.
Alfred McCoy: Washington’s Delusion of Endless World Dominion
China and the U.S. Struggle over Eurasia, the Epicenter of World Power
Rebecca Gordon: It’s Almost Twenty Years Since 9/11
Perhaps the horrors of 2020—the fires and hurricanes, Trump’s vicious attacks on democracy, the death, sickness, and economic dislocation caused by Covid-19—can force a real conversation about national security in 2021. Maybe this time we can finally ask whether trying to prop up a dying empire actually makes us—or indeed the world—any safer.
Mike Schneider: Photograph in TIME, 1985
A man in battle camouflage holds a machete
at the throat of a peasant farmer on his knees
genuflecting in a shallow grave he just dug.
Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J.S. Davies: Ten Foreign Policy Fiascos Biden Can Start Fixing on Day One
Biden can immediately reverse some of Trump’s most disastrous decisions. And each one can set the stage for broader progressive foreign policy initiatives.
Neta Crawford, et al.: Biden wins – what it means for race relations, US foreign policy and the Supreme Court
Three scholars discuss what a Biden presidency may have in store in three key areas: race, the Supreme Court and foreign policy.
Vox Populi 