Tomgram: Mattea Kramer, All Empire Is Local

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The request arrived by email, but read as if it were from another age. Would I be open, an executive assistant asked, to having tea with the president of an Ivy League university? A longtime éminence grise, the president, still new to the job, was interested in discussing with a select group of young scholars how to guide this renowned educational institution into read more

Tomgram: David Vine, Biden Builds Back Worse (When It Comes to China)

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Let me make my own position on China all too clear. I’m distinctly “soft” on that country. I always have been. After all, it represents a remarkable civilization, one I studied in graduate school. Among my greatest regrets is never having visited there, never having made it to the Great Wall or any of its other memorable historical landmarks. China has indeed “risen” read more

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Burning Future of U.S.-China Relations

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Hey, these days the world really is a barrel of cheery news, isn’t it? Take the U.S. and China. How much more swimmingly could relations between them go on this planet of sickness and heat? Just in case you missed it, despite the attack on the Capitol on January 6th and his read more

Tomgram: Karen Greenberg, Apologies All Around (Unfortunately, Not)

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Just in case you didn’t realize it, the lost war in Afghanistan was their fault, not ours. If we had any fault at all, as Secretary of Defense and former Iraq War commander Lloyd Austin pointed out at a Senate hearing last week, it was not fully grasping how bad our Afghan allies — in other words, the very government and military we had created there — were. read more