Author Archives: James W. Carden

How do we stop the neocons from starting another disaster in Ukraine?
By James W. Carden
Posted on December 16, 2021 by James W. Carden

If anything, Washington’s neoconservatives have an unerring instinct for survival. Having brought about multiple disasters in the two decades since 9/11—from the Iraq War to the twin debacles in Libya and Syria—the neoconservatives seem to have perfected the art of failing up. Continue reading →

What kind of a threat Is Russia?

On no subject is the bipartisan consensus more unshakable than on the Russian threat.
By James W. Carden
Posted on October 15, 2021 by James W. Carden

In his latest book, The Stupidity of War: American Foreign Policy and the Case for Complacency, American political scientist John Mueller demonstrates that since the end of World War II, American policymakers have developed a kind of addiction to threat inflation by “routinely elevating the problematic to the dire… focused on problems, or monsters, that essentially didn’t exist.” And with regard to the American foreign policy establishment’s current twin obsessions, Russia and China, Mueller, ever the iconoclast, counsels complacency. Continue reading →

Europe after Angela Merkel: Is the Atlantic era over?

Any answer must begin with France’s role in the EU and include the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
By James W. Carden
Posted on September 30, 2021 by James W. Carden

Just what shape Germany’s governing coalition will take is still unclear in the aftermath of the September 26 election, which saw the Social Democrats (SPD), led by finance minister Olaf Scholz, come away with just over a quarter of the vote, at 25.7 percent. The balance of power in Germany is now held by the Greens and the Free Democrats, which, taken together, received more votes than the victorious SPD or the Christian Democratic Union, the party of outgoing Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. Continue reading →

How AUKUS may damage NATO

The fallout over the AUKUS deal, as we are now seeing, has been a severe rift in relations between two historic allies, the U.S. and France. And the collateral damage may also include NATO.
By James W. Carden
Posted on September 24, 2021 by James W. Carden

Only weeks after U.S. President Joe Biden courageously ended the war in Afghanistan—in the face of bitter opposition from the media and Congress—came the announcement of the formation of AUKUS, a new trilateral security alliance between the U.S., the UK and Australia. Continue reading →

Legacy of failure in Afghanistan started in 1979, not 2001

Illusions and delusions that fueled the Cold War have ramifications to this day
By James W. Carden
Posted on August 25, 2021 by James W. Carden

A decade ago, John Lamberton Harper, a professor of US foreign policy and European studies at Johns Hopkins University, published an indispensable history of the first Cold War (The Cold War, Oxford University Press, 2011) in which he described the origins of what became known as “the Carter Doctrine.” Continue reading →