I‘m busy reading final papers for the grand strategy seminar at Bard this spring, and the students are finishing up their exams and thinking about summer.  It’s already time to start reading and thinking about the syllabus for the fall course in Anglo-American grand strategy.  British and American strategic thinkers and policy makers developed a […]

The news that George Mitchell is resigning as US special envoy closes a chapter in the greatest international failure of the Obama administration to date.  The President’s foreign policy team has some real successes under its belt — the reset with Russia, a marked reduction in global levels of anti-Americanism, steady progress in Iraq, and […]

I don’t want to make this a habit, and I suspect he doesn’t either, but Paul Krugman and I are once again in (very) partial agreement.  We both think the American elite has intellectually and morally lost its way, and we agree that the problems our country faces today have more to do with elite […]

The taking of Osama was a defeat for Al Qaeda.  It was a disaster for Pakistan. The Assassination in Abbottabad was a strategic catastrophe for the military rulers of this slowly and painfully failing state.  On the one hand, it leaves the reputation of Pakistan as an effective partner against fanatical terror groups in ruins.  […]

George Monbiot of the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian has a must-read column in which he admits that because of a whole series of intellectual mistakes, the global green movement’s policy prescriptions are hopelessly flawed.Read the whole piece for a thoughtful and brutally clear expose of the intellectual bankruptcy of the green movement from one […]

President Obama has been able to announce the news that Americans have longed to hear for the last ten years:  Osama bin Laden is dead, his corpse flung into the sea.Better, he is dead at America’s hands.Better yet, he died a beaten man.  His bid for the leadership of global Islam had failed, and Osama […]

Those following the Stratblog posts know that we’ve been looking at sixteenth century grand strategy for a few weeks this spring.  Garrett Mattingly’s The Armada and Machiavelli’s The Prince both address the politics of that eventful period, but the worlds the two books describe can seem radically different.  Understanding the underlying similarities between Machiavelli’s apparent […]

President Obama is now passing through what one must hope for both his sake and ours are the worst moments of a presidency no longer young. Abroad, the intervention in Libya has not had the quick and clear results he had hoped.  While things may still go well, and one devoutly hopes that they do, […]

I had to fly over to London last week for a meeting and to see some old friends; I lucked into one of those rare spring days when the English weather was perfect.  The sky was blue, the sun was warm, and the flowers and fountains in St. James Park were at their absolute best.  […]

The long-brewing crisis in Syria has entered a critical phase and it is changing the rules of the Middle East.  If the people keep marching and the regime keeps shooting, the Obama administration could face its toughest Middle East choices yet.  Will Samantha Power bomb yet another country in the region, or will she try […]