Believing in Nuclear Deterrence and Angels

“Despite the fact that deterrence remains an article of faith among the ‘realists’ who have orchestrated U.S. strategic policy and who continue to do so, despite its incoherence and instability, much of this faith is lip service only, analogous to deeply religious individuals who profess belief in heaven, yet rarely rejoice when a loved one dies. Thus, if the U.S. government really believed in nuclear deterrence — or in the billions of dollars spent on Ballistic Missile read more

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Early Signs of the Failure of American Global Power?

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

In his years in power, Joe Biden and his top foreign policy officials have come up with a distinctly more aggressive and militarized approach to a rising China and, in particular, its claims to areas of the South China Sea or the island of Taiwan. As an old Cold Warrior who lived through the era of “containing” Soviet power, the president has taken a strikingly similar read more

Tomgram: Juan Cole, Another American War in the Middle East?

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Though I was never in the U.S. military, my life experience has been American wars, wars, wars, and more wars. I was born during World War II. I was in grade school when the Korean War took place. I still have a faint memory of a photo of a gleaming American soldier’s face from that unsettled conflict. (It might have been on the cover of LIFE magazine.) I was a protesting read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Welcome to Heat-Dome America

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

The True Catastrophe of Our Times Or How to Be Destructive Beyond Compare By

I’ve been writing about climate change for so many years now but, in truth, it was always something I read about and took in globally. It was happening out there, often in horrific ways, but not what I felt I was living through myself. (It’s true that, in past winters, read more

Thank You to the SXSW Festival for Dumping the U.S. Army

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 27, 2024

South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It has been growing in size since 1987. The festivals just dumped weapons makers and the U.S. Army out the door: “After careful consideration, read more

Speaking Truth to Empire

On Speaking Truth to Empire on KFCF 88.1 FM independently owned and locally operated since 1975 in Fresno, Dan Yaseen interviews Alice Slater, she is on the boards of World BEYOND War and the Global

Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. As a member of the Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control, she travelled to Russia and China on numerous delegations engaged in ending the arms race and banning the bomb. The topics of discussion, an Illegal Proposal of European Nuclear Deterrent, read more