There is a nasty pattern in American political speech, going back into the 1980s at least: when a senior US official labels you a thug, often times wars follow. Thug is the safest word of American Exceptionalism. So it is with some concern that lots of folks are pushing each other away from the mic to call Putin a thug (fun fact: Putin has been in effective charge of Russia for 15 years. As recently as the Hillary Clinton Secretary of State era, the US sought a “reset” of relations with him.)...

As much as Washington may hate it, the fact is Beijing and Manila are diplomatically discussing the situation in the South China Sea. Champagne bottles are not popping yet, but Special Philippine envoy, former President Fidel Ramos, did go to Hong Kong, and on behalf of President Rodrigo Duterte, got together with Fu Ying, the chairwoman of the foreign affairs committee of the National People’s Congress. On the record, Ramos made sure that Manila is all in for formal negotiations. The starting...

Day by day the situation in Yemen becomes more difficult for the people on the ground. The Saudis have renewed bombing and seemingly hit everything in sight - no matter what. Food is running out. But Yemen now has a new legitimate government. And the Saudis will have to either follow the conditions it will set, or all-out lose the war. UN supervised negotiations between the former Yemeni president Hadi, supported by the armed forces of various Gulf countries, and a delegation of the Houthi...

The Cold War began during the Truman administration and lasted through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations and was ended in Reagan’s second term when Reagan and Gorbachev came to an agreement that the conflict was dangerous, expensive, and pointless. The Cold War did not cease for long—only from the last of Reagan’s second term and the four years of George H. W. Bush’s term. In the 1990s President Clinton restarted the Cold War by breaking America’s...

For all the hand-wringing about the threat to liberty and constitutional government posed by the major party presidential candidates, there is little discussion of how this threat is due to the political class’s long history of supporting expanded presidential power. There is also little talk of how the imperial presidency is just as much a creation of Congress as it is of power-hungry presidents. Since war is the health of the state, it is not surprising that presidential power expanded in...

Last week the US House of Representatives Joint Task Force released their initial findings on the intelligence analysis of the US Military's Central Command (CENTCOM). The report found that, among other things, CENTCOM leaders "distorted, suppressed, or substantially altered analytic products" to paint US efforts to combat ISIS in a more positive light. Moreover, 50 percent of analysts within CENTCOM said that the "procedures, practices, processes and organizational structures hampered...

Everything grows old. I’m told one day the stars and planets will turn to dust. So I suppose it’s no surprise that America’s arsenal of nuclear weapons is also showing signs of advancing age, and may have to be replaced.One would think that the growing decrepitude of our nukes would be a fine time to dismantle and junk these horrible weapons. President Barack Obama has fulsomely preached for the past seven years on the need to get ride of the nukes. Very nice.Yet once away from the...

If you haven’t already registered for the Ron Paul Institute’s Peace and Prosperity Conference, now would be a great time to do so. When I spoke to RPI’s executive director Daniel McAdams about the conference a few weeks ago, he said that tickets were going fast and that space was limited. The date is Saturday, September 10, 2016. The time: 10:00a.m. to 3:00p.m. The place is the Washington Dulles Marriott. Only $65, including lunch. Register here. Ron Paul has long been one of my real-life...

Feels good, doesn’t it, to slap water in the face of the rest of the world and go all jingoist? Lilly King kept America strong and pure when she sent a blast of chlorine into the eyes of that Russian criminal mastermind Yulia Efimova and prevented her from melting the earth’s core. Or something like that, right? But there is a disquieting aspect to the narrative going here at the Olympics. It’s not a moment of perfect American moral clarity. King, 19, is a swaggeringly great swimmer, but the...

In his September 20, 2001 address to a joint session of Congress, President George W. Bush laid out a defining principle of his nascent war on terror: “We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Even as he spoke those words, however, his administration had already embarked on a course that would mark them as a towering example of US foreign policy...

The Clinton Foundation has been the subject of long-standing allegations of questionable donations and reporting. It is also viewed by many critics as a massive shadow campaign structure that employed aides and funded Clinton trips. However, the most serious allegation was a type of pay-to-play scheme where foreign and domestic donors gave money in the hopes of currying favor or gaining access to the State Department. Now, Judicial Watch has released dozens of emails that were deleted...

“Germany calling, Germany calling, Germany calling.” During the Second World War, those words meant only one thing - that William Joyce was on the radio and spewing his unique brand of anti-British bile. Known as “Lord Haw Haw,” the American-born Joyce tried to convince the British public, in a sneering and sarcastic tone, that resistance to the Nazi military machine was futile and defeat was inevitable. From Berlin, he blasted out crude agitprop about the weakness of Britain, and its leaders,...

During my recent visit to my hometown of Laredo, Texas, as I was heading out of town toward Corpus Christi, I passed by the former site of Laredo Air Force Base. Serving as a training base for new pilots, the base was a prominent part of Laredo life when I was growing up.During that time, public officials and much of the citizenry were scared to death that the base might close. Like many people on the dole and like many other American communities with military bases, Laredoans were convinced...

Any police officer who shoots to kill is playing with fire. In that split second of deciding whether to shoot and where to aim, that officer has appointed himself judge, jury and executioner over a fellow citizen. And when an officer fires a killing shot at a fellow citizen not once or twice but three and four and five times, he is no longer a guardian of the people but is acting as a paid assassin. In so doing, he has short-circuited a legal system that was long ago established to protect...

The use of chemical weapons in Syria has absolutely no influence on the military situation on the ground. But it’s a good example of how propaganda wars are waged. Some Western media outlets seem to dance to the tune of terrorist groups. Here is the confirmation of this fact. Reuters reported on August 2 that a helicopter dropped containers of toxic gas overnight on a town close to where a Russian military rotary wing aircraft had been shot down hours earlier. According to the agency’s report,...