Your source for foreign policy news.
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June 30th, 2022
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Who speaks for peace in America?
Not many people in Washington. Which makes the role of Antiwar.com so important.
I am approaching the end of my 42nd year in Washington. The political and international environments have never been worse. It's the woke Left versus the MAGA Right, with the War Party in control of both the Democratic and Republican Parties.
Indeed, the international situation might be more dangerous than even during the Cold War. President Ronald Reagan applied significant pressure on the Soviet Union, but by 1983 he realized that the Soviets genuinely feared attack. He turned to negotiation and, contrary to many of his hardline advisers, realized that the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev offered an opportunity to defuse tensions and even end the long seemingly twilight struggle with Moscow. President George H.W. Bush continued to work with Gorbachev as the seemingly impossible happened, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact.
By Doug Bandow
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Washington's cowardly proxy war against Russia reached a new level of absurdity over the weekend.
To wit, the G-7 knuckleheads declared an embargo on imports of Russia-sourced gold and forced Russia into technical default on its foreign debts by forbidding US companies from collecting the payments which Russian debtors had deposited in their accounts at non-sanctioned Russia banks.
In a word, ordinary commerce has become so weaponized by Washington that the world's oldest money can no longer be freely exchanged on international markets. At the same time, interest payments made in good faith by Russian borrowers have been effectively seized and frozen in place by the US government.
And yet, where are the free enterprise Republicans?
By David Stockman
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"I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude."~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
It wasn't until 1969 that the Supreme Court's modern First Amendment jurisprudence made it clear that whenever there is a clash between the government and a person over the constitutionality of the person's speech, the courts will give every benefit and draw every inference to the speaker, and none to the government. This is so because the freedom of speech is a natural right, and thus it is always to be presumed constitutional and lawful.
I have argued elsewhere that because the essence of government is the negation of liberty, this presumption against the government should always be the case. Even when it purports to be protecting liberty, the government -- because its existence without unanimous consent is based on stealing liberty and property --should always be presumed wrong, immoral, unconstitutional and unlawful. But the courts have only made that so in the case of the freedom of speech.
By Andrew P. Napolitano
According to a report from CNN, White House officials are losing confidence that Ukraine will be able to retake all the territory Russia has captured since it invaded on February 24 as Russian forces continue to make gains in the eastern Donbas region.
Unnamed US officials told CNN that President Biden's advisors have started debating if and how the US should start convincing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should change his definition of what "victory" will look like.
Zelensky has repeatedly stated that Ukraine's goal is to drive Russia out of all territory it has captured since it invaded. He also has said he wants to expel Russian forces from Crimea, a territory Moscow has controlled since 2014.
By Dave DeCamp
President Biden and other G7 leaders announced on Sunday a plan to raise $600 billion in public and private funds for global infrastructure projects to counter China's Belt and Road Initiative.
Biden said that the US will contribute $200 billion to the project, known as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII). "I'm proud to announce the United States will mobilize $200 billion in public and private capital over the next five years," he said from Germany.
The US views China's Belt and Road Initiative as a threat to its influence around the globe and has been discouraging countries from participating in the project in recent years.
By Dave DeCamp
President Biden announced Wednesday during the NATO summit in Madrid steps that the US will take to increase its military presence in Europe, including the establishment of a permanent base in Poland.
The base in Poland will mark the first time the US will establish an official permanent military facility in the area known as NATO's "eastern flank." The US military presence elsewhere in Eastern Europe and in the Baltic states is technically on a rotational basis, although Washington has no plans to scale back its presence in the region.
Under the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, NATO agreed not to establish a permanent military presence east of Germany.
By Dave DeCamp
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