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.’
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.