Despite Biden’s best efforts with South Korea, the summit declaration merely puts a band-aid on a festering wound in the bilateral alliance. 

The post Has Joe Biden Repaired U.S. Relations with South Korea? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

It is that arrogance that produced the Iraq War and Washington’s other military misadventures. Until U.S. leaders finally comprehend the inevitable, toxic effects of that mentality, the United States will sink ever deeper into the quagmire of Iraq-style follies. 

The post Iraq War at 20: Have U.S. Elites Learned Anything? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Defenders of Washington’s various military interventions in the Muslim world carefully ignore the many damaging effects of those crusades. Proponents of the Iraq war, for example, disregarded warnings that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would likely heighten instability in Iraq and the wider region. That clearly has been the outcome, yet some analysts still defend the invasion […]

The post America’s Regime Change Wars Created Europe’s Refugee Crisis appeared first on 19FortyFive.

At the 1-year mark of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, expectations about the final outcome run the gamut from the belief that a definitive Ukrainian victory is imminent to warnings that Russia will ultimately prevail. The United States and NATO are doubling down on their strategy of military assistance to Kyiv, believing that Ukraine can win […]

The post Could the Ukraine War Become the Mother of All Frozen Conflicts? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

American supporters of Washington’s Ukraine policy often portray Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky as a noble champion of democracy who deserves even more U.S. military assistance than he has already received. The political and media love-fest accompanying Zelensky’s address to a joint session of Congress in late December 2022 was a recent example of such hero […]

The post Volodymyr Zelensky: Not Exactly a Champion of Democracy appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Since the twilight of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s, the United States has meddled militarily–or even waged outright wars–in numerous regions for a multitude of reasons.  The roster is a lengthy one: Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and, most recently, Ukraine.  Moreover, that list does not include Washington’s […]

The post Why Can’t America Accept An Imperfect World? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Beginning with his 2016 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, Donald Trump has attracted the allegiance of some advocates of a new U.S. foreign policy based on realism and restraint.  The source of that appeal was not hard to discover. Except Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Trump was the only prominent Republican to criticize Washington’s promiscuous, […]

The post Foreign Policy Realists Need to Disown Donald Trump appeared first on 19FortyFive.

For more than three decades, the United States has sought to make the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) an international pariah. The primary goal of that strategy of isolation has been to force Pyongyang to abandon its ongoing nuclear weapons program, but an important secondary goal is to throttle the country’s ballistic missile program. […]

The post North Korea’s New ICBM Is A Nuclear Game Changer appeared first on 19FortyFive.

An especially ugly development taking place in the United States lies with the intelligence agencies and the FBI using social media platforms and other private organizations to stifle criticism of U.S. foreign policy or the conduct of policymakers. The standard argument has long been that violations of the First Amendment take place only when a […]

The post The National Security State’s War on the First Amendment appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Washington’s Fraudulent, Rules-Based International Order: Among the many deceptive arguments that Joe Biden’s administration has made about the Ukraine war is that Russia’s invasion is an attack of unprecedented severity on the liberal, “rules-based international order” established at the end of World War II. That allegation has been a constant theme of administration officials and […]

The post Ukraine: A War to Save the Rules-Based International Order? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Blueprint for Disaster; Confusing a Proxy War and a Direct War with Russia in Ukraine: The United States has been waging a proxy war against Russia since Vladimir Putin’s government launched its “special military operation” in Ukraine in late February. Washington has spent billions of dollars to flood Ukraine with increasingly potent weaponry. At the […]

The post The NATO vs. Russia Proxy War in Ukraine Could Become a Real War appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Washington Must Learn to Bargain with a Nuclear North Korea: Kim Jong-Un’s statement in early September that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons should be the last nail in the coffin of Washington’s strategy toward that country. Since Pyongyang has officially declared that it is now a nuclear-weapons power, the United States […]

The post North Korea Is A Nuclear Weapons State. America Needs a New Strategy appeared first on 19FortyFive.

The response of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan confirms Beijing’s mounting anger at Washington’s growing diplomatic and military support for Taipei. As much as U.S. leaders insist that the United States still adheres to a “one-China” policy and does not support an independent Taiwan, U.S. actions—with […]

The post China Could Start a Mini ‘Island’ War with Taiwan appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Tip of the Iceberg: Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit and Surging U.S.-China Tensions – Defying Beijing’s objections and warnings, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has fulfilled her plans to include Taiwan as a stop on her trip to East Asia. She is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the island in 25 years.  Beijing’s warnings about […]

The post Yes, China Would Go To War Over Taiwan appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Biden’s Latest Defense Pledge to Taiwan: Gaffe or the Real U.S. Policy? President Joe Biden has once again roiled the geopolitical waters of East Asia with his latest statement on U.S. policy toward Taiwan. At a May 23, 2022, news conference during his visit to Japan, Biden strongly indicated that he would go further on […]

The post Strategic Ambiguity On Taiwan Is Dead appeared first on 19FortyFive.

More Evidence that Donald Trump Was Dangerously Impulsive on Foreign Policy – President Donald Trump’s last Senate-confirmed secretary of defense, Mike Esper, has made a shocking charge about the conduct of his boss toward Mexico. In his forthcoming memoir, Esper contends that in 2020, the president asked him at least twice about the possibility of […]

The post Dangerous: Why Did Donald Trump Want to Attack Drug Labs in Mexico? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

North Korea’s ICBM Test Underscores Futility of U.S. Policy – Pyongyang’s March 24, 2022, ICBM missile test has created agitation in both Washington and East Asian capitals. If it were not for the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, this development would easily be the top concern of U.S. foreign policy officials. Evidence indicates that […]

The post Hawasong-17 ICBM Test Proves America’s North Korea Policy Has Failed appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Biden administration officials frequently boast about NATO’s unprecedented unity regarding its policy response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. To some extent, that attitude is warranted. The allies have agreed to impose sanctions of unusual severity against both Russian leaders and the overall Russian economy. Germany even put approval of the nearly complete Nord Stream 2 […]

The post Just How United Is NATO (And the World) Against Russia? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

NATO Expansion – The Trigger for Russia’s Attack on Ukraine? – Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine is an act of aggression that will make already worrisome tensions between NATO and Moscow even more dangerous. The West’s new cold war with Russia has turned hot. Vladimir Putin bears primary responsibility for this latest development, but NATO’s arrogant, […]

The post Ignored Warnings: How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine Tragedy appeared first on 19FortyFive.

An especially egregious sin that a foreign policy team can commit is to send inconsistent signals to a potential adversary about a prominent issue. From its earliest days, Joe Biden’s administration has been guilty of that sin with respect to Washington’s Taiwan policy; the president’s advisers have found themselves “clarifying” (i.e., walking back) Biden’s more […]

The post How Joe Biden Helped Create the Crisis over Ukraine appeared first on 19FortyFive.

December 31, 2021, marks the thirtieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The decades that followed could have been the era in which enlightened U.S. policymakers facilitated Russia’s full political and economic integration into the democratic West. Instead, beginning with Bill Clinton’s administration, the United States pursued arrogant and clumsy policies that ultimately […]

The post Why Didn’t Russia Join the West After the Soviet Union Died? Blame Bill Clinton appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Rumors are flying once again that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine. The latest flurry of concern intensified when Brig. General Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s director of defense intelligence, asserted in a November 20, 2021, interview with Military Times that Moscow already had plans in place to launch an invasion by the end of January 2022. […]

The post A Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Hype or Horror? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

For nearly three decades, the United States and its European allies have endeavored to make Bosnia a viable, united country. When Yugoslavia began to unravel in the early 1990s, U.S. leaders looked on with generally benign detachment as Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia (and ultimately other territories) declared their independence and exited the federation. However, when […]

The post When Will America Realize Bosnia Is a Zombie State? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

There is an understandable surge of international attention on the Taiwan Strait as a possible flashpoint that could trigger a great power war. However, worrisome developments about another flashpoint in Europe have received far less attention, and that situation needs to change. Dangerous tensions are growing along the border between Russia’s principal political and military […]

The post The Belarus-NATO Flashpoint: Path to A U.S.-Russia War? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Anyone who witnessed the horrors of the 9/11 attacks recalls the wrenching grief and anger that gripped the American people. The collective desire for revenge was entirely understandable.  However, the response that George W. Bush’s administration and its successors adopted inflicted serious, perhaps irreparable, damage on America’s position in the world and on domestic civil […]

The post America’s $8 Trillion Dollar 9/11 Response: A Historic Disaster appeared first on 19FortyFive.

With the withdrawal of the last U.S. ground troops from Afghanistan, America’s longest war supposedly has come to an end.  That assumption, however, is one of several falsehoods that characterized Washington’s mission in Afghanistan. If the United States is to avoid repeating the Afghanistan debacle in some other locale a few years down the road, […]

The post How America Can Avoid Another Afghanistan appeared first on 19FortyFive.

The dust is still settling from the Taliban’s blitzkrieg victory, but the blame game is already well underway in the United States.  Republicans paint President Biden as an incompetent leader who has betrayed America’s Afghan allies and caused the United States to be humiliated on the global stage. Democrats assert that President Trump was irresponsible […]

The post Three Lessons U.S. Leaders Must Learn from the Afghanistan Debacle appeared first on 19FortyFive.

There is a growing realization that efforts by key scientists, political leaders, and most of the mainstream media to stifle debate about the origin of the coronavirus are failing rapidly. Until a few weeks ago, allegations that the virus may have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology rather than in nature were widely dismissed […]

The post What Happens if the Coronavirus Wuhan Lab Leak Thesis Is True? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

It is bad enough when the United States incurs grave risks to defend even indisputably democratic allies, if those countries lack sufficient importance to America’s economic and security interests.  Too many U.S. allies, such as the Baltic republics, fail that crucial risk-benefit calculation. However, it is even worse when the United States incurs excessive risks […]

The post Why Is Joe Biden Risking War with Russia Over Ukraine? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Washington’s relations with Moscow have been deteriorating for more than two decades. The decision by Bill Clinton’s administration to expand NATO, the most powerful military alliance in world history, eastward toward a weakened, demoralized Russia was a fateful, provocative step. George W. Bush’s attempt to bring Georgia and Ukraine into the Alliance deepened the suspicions […]

The post Joe Biden Seems Destined to Start a Crisis with Russia appeared first on 19FortyFive.

The U.S. government has taken on an abundance of highly questionable security commitments over the decades. That trend has become even worse during the post-Cold War era than it was during the Cold War itself. Washington’s growing political and military ties with Ukraine epitomize an especially reckless policy. President George W Bush strongly lobbied to […]

The post Since When Did Ukraine Become an Important U.S. “Ally?” appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Just 36 days into his presidency Joe Biden has launched airstrikes against Iranian‐​backed militias in Syria. It is an ill‐​advised move for several reasons. Perhaps most troubling, it deepens U.S. military involvement in Syria’s murky civil war. Unfortunately, the latest step is symptomatic of the administration’s overall policy. In one of his first actions as president, Biden dispatched some 200 troops and […]

The post It Only Took Joe Biden 36 Days to Bomb the Middle East appeared first on 19FortyFive.

One important arena in which soon-to-be President Joe Biden must resist the temptation merely to emulate the Obama administration’s foreign policy is regarding North Korea. Barack Obama merely kept on autopilot the longstanding, sterile U.S. strategy of trying to isolate the North Korean regime and compel it through ever-escalating economic sanctions to relinquish its growing […]

The post Joe Biden Must Avoid Strategic Patience on North Korea appeared first on 19FortyFive.