In the old days, America’s top spies would complete their tenures at the CIA or one of the other Washington puzzle palaces and segue to more ordinary pursuits. Some wrote their memoirs. One ran for president. Another died a few months after surrendering his post. But today’s national-security establishment retiree has a different game plan. After so many years of brawling…
Formally speaking, the level of abstention during the Presidential election in Venezuela does not allow us to validate the democratic character of the victory of Nicolás Maduro. However, the amount of participation is easily sufficient, in the middle of an economic war, to illustrate popular support for national institutions. Indeed, far more than the Chàvists’…
Facebook and other social media were supposed to foster community and give a voice to the greater masses. This was the appeal of social media in the first place. In case Mark Zuckerberg or Twitter’s Jack Dorsey forgot – we made you, and we can break you. The recent move by Facebook to censor ads…
Technology gives us the opportunity to wage war from afar at a greatly reduced risk to our armed forces. But is removing the horror of war a slippery slope to reducing the threshold for conflict? Going to war usually boosts a politician’s approval ratings and can be a useful distraction from domestic problems. Yet public…
“This time, they think they have it right.” So declared an Associated Press story reporting an upbeat assessment by this country’s top military officer at the end of a five-day visit to Afghanistan earlier this spring. Marine General Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was heading home from the war zone,…
Nero played his fiddle, Obama shot baskets and Trump twittered while their empires burned. What makes empire decay and what makes empires expand has everything to do with their relations between rulers and the ruled. Several factors are decisive. These include: (1) rent, land and housing, (2) the direction of living standards, (3) the rise…
