A More Complete Realism: Grand Strategy in a New Key

January 14, 2022
Mainstream academics are accustomed to viewing the moral-spiritual and cultural dimensions of the problem of war and peace as esoteric and insignificant. Studying these dimensions is actually indispensable to a full-bodied realism.
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Of Arms and the Men

July 20, 2020
Like modern America, Republican Rome was nearly always at war: between 415 and 265 BC, fewer than 10 percent of its years did not have at least one recorded campaign.
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Unconstitutional Wars from Truman Forward

February 12, 2020
From President Truman’s initiation of war against North Korea in June 1950, presidents have exceeded constitutional and statutory authority in exercising the war power.
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The Real Thucydides Trap

September 1, 2018
What we might learn from Thucydides today does not relate only to worries about the rise of China in its new role as Athens. The main lesson comes from Thucydides as an Athenian who reflects on his own city. Graham Allison and American policy makers need to be as self-reflective about America as they are about the rise of China.
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Populism, Elites, and National Security

September 1, 2018
It was an effective myth system that allowed the national security state to operate smoothly in the United States. This was not a “noble lie” on anyone’s part; it wasn’t a lie at all, let alone some grand, “deep state” conspiracy.
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Savior Nation: Woodrow Wilson and the Gospel of Power

January 1, 2018
Sixteen hundred years ago, St. Augustine warned against the inherent idolatry of empire. To assign to one’s earthly nation the mission that by right belongs only to the Kingdom of Christ is to be guilty of the worst of disordered loves.
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Roosevelt’s Failure at Yalta

January 1, 2018
The United States Government was fully warned, almost prophetically, by its diplomats who had studied the Soviet Union and understood what recognition entailed.
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Appetite for Destruction

September 8, 2017
During his recent visit to England, President Bush enunciated a “forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.” He pledged, “We will consistently challenge the enemies of reform and confront the allies of terror.”
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A Jacobin in Chief

September 8, 2017
Ever since 9/11, the president of the United States has been urging the use of American power to spread the allegedly universal principles of “freedom and democracy” throughout the world.
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