Director of defense and foreign policy studies, @CatoFP. Review wines at @WinesFromLatAm.
Washington, DC
- Tweets 36,358
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More convinced than ever that if we had our current political elite and Twitter during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world would have ended.
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“For eight months after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, she refused to speak to her husband, until, in March 1999, she phoned him with a directive to attack [Serbia].
‘I urged him to bomb,’ she later explained.” cato.org/commentary/who-woul…
.@HillaryClinton asked what is the biggest challenge to women’s peace and security around the world:
“I think the biggest challenge is men starting wars,” she said. “It seems like they don’t have enough to do.”
@giwps #HRCAwards
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Henry Kissinger on why he supported the Iraq War: “because Afghanistan wasn’t enough.” In the conflict with radical Islam, he said, they want to humiliate us. “And we need to humiliate them.”
Unspoken option three seems like where we wound up: humiliating ourselves.
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Just putting this down for posterity: both of these people are at the commanding heights of policymaking:
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People who think the politics of the lab leak theory today are anti-Chinese are behind the times. vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/…
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“One side is to blame for everything the other side does” doesn’t have a lot of grounding in just war theory, international law, or much outside the WSJ Ed Board break room.
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Yes, Cut the Federal Government and Its Workforce cato.org/blog/yes-cut-federa…
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Zelensky is in deep trouble. This could even set things up for a broader US distancing from Europe and handing the Ukraine War off to them.
Major European capitals need to be moving much faster than they are.
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Biden sought "outside-the-box thinking" on the state of democracy so the WH convened Michael McFaul, Richard Haass, Fareed Zakaria, Ian Bremmer, Fiona Hill, James Stavridis, Jon Meacham, Anne Applebaum, Sean Wilentz and Michael Beschloss, and Allida Black. washingtonpost.com/politics/…
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We *are* afraid to get into a conflict with the Russians in Ukraine because it would risk nuclear war and we would likely lose if it didn't.
NEW: Did Biden’s vocal unwillingness to send US troops to Ukraine embolden Putin? Some NatSec observers think so. “The message we’re sending … is that we’re afraid of getting into a conflict with any Russians,” @KoriSchake says. #russia #ukraine politico.com/news/2022/02/23…
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NBC reporting Biden likely to green light extending Afghanistan stay till November: "President Joe Biden is considering keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan until November, rather than withdrawing them by a May 1 deadline." nbcnews.com/politics/nationa…
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The accumulated consensus of the transatlantic relationship is so pathological that the Americans suggesting the Europeans should lead in Europe is coded as anti-Europe and even anti-transatlantic relationship.
Ike really would be horrified.
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Strong opening sentence: "The U.S. government under four presidents misled the American people for nearly two decades about progress in Afghanistan, while hiding the inconvenient facts about ongoing failures inside confidential channels"
#Afghanistan 20/20: The 20-Year War in 20 Documents
- Primary sources published today by @NSArchive contradict Pentagon optimism over decades
- Pakistan sanctuaries, Afghan corruption enabled Taliban resurgence #FOIA
nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-b…
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Josh Shifrinson and I have a piece in Foreign Affairs today arguing for closing NATO's door to Ukraine. A thread explaining our argument: foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/d…
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Tell me something else Mattis invested in until it was revealed to be a fraud.
"Former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said he believed in Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes so much that he not only became a board member but also invested a “significant” amount of his own money into the company before it failed."
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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“I would not be surprised if” is a good way of making an allegation without evidence while absolving yourself of having alleged anything at all.
.@LTGHRMcMaster to @jimsciutto: "I would not be surprised if ISIS-K... was used as a cutout by the Taliban, so they can humiliate us on the way out and continue to play us."
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We moved troops out of northern Syria because it wasn’t safe for them there. We’re moving troops into Saudi because it might be unsafe for them there.
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So Bret Stephens linked to Fitzpatrick’s work as a citation for the claim that Iran repeatedly violated the JCPOA. Fitzpatrick called it out, then @nytopinion quietly changed the link to a David Albright piece? Is that how this works?
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Periodic reminder that Don Rumsfeld thought about striking Iraq on 9/11 after the Pentagon had been hit, Paul Wolfowitz advocated for it 9/15/01, and President Bush asked Rumsfeld to start working on plans November 21, 2001.
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The future of any effort to resolve the Iran nuclear issue diplomatically is going to struggle because of two facts:
1) Iran has learned it cannot trust US adherence to an agreement, and
2) Iran has learned the US cannot constrain Israel.
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The Bernie Madoff of foreign policy has some opinions he’d like to share with you.
We could have kept 3500 troops in Afghanistan and kept a decent status quo. The Biden Administration chose withdrawal. We’re seeing a humanitarian catastrophe and geopolitical disaster unfold, and now, humiliatingly, have to send 3000 troops in to get the remaining Americans out.
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What happened during this part right here? This part looks pretty good.
Facts are stubborn things. Iran’s nuclear expansion has occurred under the Biden administration’s failed Iran policy of maximum concessions - @StrickerNonpro
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The esteemed @dandcaldwell and I have a piece in @FDRLST today warning that the Europeans are trying to get Trump to bite on security guarantees to Ukraine even though they aren't willing to pay the butcher's bill themselves. It's classic buck-passing, and Trump should reject it.
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Good piece on how unimpressive Russia's performance has been so far, but *Estonian* generals saying "If you look at what’s on the other side, you’ll see that there isn’t really an opponent anymore" seems a bit much. nytimes.com/2022/03/07/us/po…
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The Washington Post editorial board says that leaving Afghanistan is the "easy way out," which explains why so many presidents have done it.
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When El Chapo was there: “tougher than Gitmo.”
When Epstein hung himself there: 🤷🏻♂️.
nytimes.com/2017/01/23/nyreg…
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Bob Gates on George W. Bush, as of February 2022: "I think if you take Iraq and Afghanistan out of the equation, he managed foreign policy very well." smu.edu/-/media/Site/Dedman/…
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The barbarity that Hamas inflicted on Israel on October 7 is not evidence its very existence is at stake.
Its very existence is not at stake. Encouraging a belief that it is promotes maximalism and recklessness.
President Joe Biden at last night's fundraiser in New York: "But we can't forget, Israel is in a position where its very existence as at stake... All those people. They weren't killed. They were massacred. They were massacred. And imagine if that had happened in the United States...tying a mom and her daughter together, pouring kerosene on them, burning them to death."
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The 90s were a trip. Disney got Danny Glover, Ray Liotta, and Denis Leary to play Vietnam War soldiers delivering an elephant to a village as a means to maintain the village’s cooperation with US forces.
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The Biden administration says it does not want a wider war.
They know that every day US troops are dotted across Iraq and Syria while the Gaza war rages, a variety of groups will attack them.
Yet they refuse to remove those troops.
It's a matter of time until this escalates.
BREAKING: The number of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria rose significantly over the weekend, from 30 to 38 in total, according to @PentagonPresSec
# of service members wounded also rose, to 46 in total, as troops continued to report injuries from the Oct 17-18 attacks
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Here @mrmaitra and @dandcaldwell argue that Republicans should stop giving Ukraine blank checks.
It's such a reasonable presentation of facts that you would hope the new Republican majority would agree. newsweek.com/house-republica…
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This piece could be summed up, “the government lied to the people for decades in order to keep a losing war going.”
Just astounding stuff. Zero accountability. nytimes.com/2025/01/02/opini…
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Al Qaeda’s second in command was killed—never take that job, very dangerous—and it gets a three paragraph Reuters blurb on A25. Times have truly changed.
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WSJ editorial board urging a foreign country to intervene in US politics.
In 2006, the Journal's chief foreign affairs writer called the idea that pro-Israel advocates push US policy in the direction the Israeli right wants an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
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Just heard a law professor advise the House of Representatives that aid to Ukraine is in our interest so that “they stay on the front lines fighting the Russians there so that we don’t have to fight them over here” and I quit.
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Why do natsec journalists love writing ledes like this? Could be “Good News: US Is Not at the Center of a Spiraling Proxy War!” washingtonpost.com/national-…
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To be very clear: The Blob operates like this *constantly*, every day. It is the opposite of unbelievable. The logic is that if the policy is right and good there is nothing unethical about profiting while advocating.
Unbelievable: "at the same time Volker was pushing Trump to arm Ukraine, he also held positions with a major lobbying firm, BGR Group, and a think tank, the McCain Institute, that each had financial ties to Raytheon, which manufactures the Javelin system" politico.com/story/2019/09/2…
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Kids these days wouldn't believe it, but there was an era when if you referred to the US occupation of Iraq as an "occupation," people would get incensed and inform you that it was not an occupation, we were doing a freedom over there.
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Big self-own here. It’s just going to increase productivity at any banned group. foxnews.com/politics/slack-b…
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I never doubted Niall Ferguson’s brazenness, but seeing him try to reinvent himself as some kind of conservative opponent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is too much. cato.org/blog/consider-some-…
However, I was skeptical about the neoconservative project to reorder the “Greater Middle East” under the cover of a “Global War on Terror” in retaliation for 9/11. I particularly doubted that the United States would be able to achieve its goals of transforming the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq into its allies — or at least satellites. Had Britain’s imperialists succeeded in taming the wild lands north of the Khyber Pass — much less ancient Mesopotamia? 2/10
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“We were laser-focused on the mission in Afghanistan and definitely didn’t look away from hard truths while trying to make the mission about us.”
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Column: On foreign policy, Bernie Sanders is the best chicagotribune.com/columns/s…
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As Rich Lowry leaves the editor's chair at National Review, it's a good time to remember my favorite article during his tenure: his May 2005 cover story declaring "It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq."
The aughts were a crazy decade.
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Not even in the country of which Joe Biden is president? Land of the free? Home of the brave?
A truly peculiar, and truly anti-American, argument. Come on, man.
“Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world that is safe,” Biden says at the White House Hanukkah party as he reaffirms support for Israel against its war against Hamas.
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Has been obvious for a long time, but Jim Jeffrey “told the Kurds on multiple occasions, ‘we’ll manage Turkey, don’t make a deal with the [Assad] regime,’” according to a source familiar with the matter. thedailybeast.com/the-us-spo…
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“The Case for Putting 2,500 US Troops in Literally Every Country” by Walter Russell Mead and Eli Lake
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John Bolton may be America’s most prominent public intellectual. Op-eds in both WSJ and WaPo just this week.
The ideological gatekeepers on both sides agree: *Here* is a person Americans need to hear from.
Something is badly broken.
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As Iran announces the resumption of enrichment at Fordow, remember: those who pushed Maximum Pressure are happy with this development. Their strategy is working. They did not want the JCPOA to prevent an Iranian bomb. They view the nuke issue as a sideshow from regime change.
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But again, that shouldn't be surprising. The underlying policy disagreement hasn't changed. Zelensky doesn't want to stop the war without US security guarantees. Trump wants the war to stop now, and isn't giving US security guarantees.
That disagreement is the root of the fight.
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Why would sports teams or athletes or corporations ever say to themselves, “you know who we need here? That guy who kept saying everything was going great in Iraq in 2004”?
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IR Twitter: “Look at the realists with their stupid single-factor explanation of the invasion of Ukraine! Simpletons…”
Also IR Twitter: “Putin’s ideology explains everything and we know this from reading certain selections of his speeches.”
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Has the Catholic side of the conservative civil war uttered even a syllable of sympathy for their co-religionist immigrants? Honestly interested to hear.
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It is slightly possible that the combination of Ukrainian resistance and western arms and sanctions could lead to an outright Russian defeat instead of horrifying escalation.
But if you think it’s unlikely, you definitely want to think about off-ramps.
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We rightly withdrew from the JCPOA, as it provided a clear pathway for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. We kept Iran under max pressure while fostering new relationships among those who partnered with us. Now, the Biden Admin wants to re-enter the JCPOA. aclj.org/foreign-policy/on-i…
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“Thank goodness we’re getting out of this Middle East snakepi—I’m sorry, what’s that?” reut.rs/2VG3wlK
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This #Veterans Day, President Biden should bring home the small numbers of U.S. forces dotted across vast expanses of remote territory in Iraq and Syria.
They have no clear, attainable mission and serve as sitting ducks for militia attacks. reason.com/2023/11/10/why-ar…
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Not to rain on everyone’s parade, but these same people termed the regime change bombing campaign in Libya a “kinetic military action” to avoid admitting it was a war, so definitions are going to matter here.
Biden will announce an end to support for offensive military actions in Yemen, NSA Jake Sullivan announces
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Great piece on a maddening subject:
"The price of oil, the principal cost in gasoline, can shoot up or tumble depending on events halfway around the world. And no president, no matter how powerful or competent, can do much to control it." nytimes.com/2022/06/05/busin…
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In @amconmag, @brandan_buck and I have a piece urging POTUS not to regime-change Venezuela.
First things first: Credit to the TAC photo editor:
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One problem with encouraging a Cold War with China is that huge chunks, maybe most, of the original Cold War were a mistake.
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People who are reeling at the idea the US could lose a war game should glance at the US track record in actual wars.
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People get queasy about the enormous concentration of wealth and power in Silicon Valley, but what they fail to realize is how tech companies take tasks that were once arduous and menial and make them worse and inscrutable.
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I'm old enough to remember when they used "pro-Saddam" as a way to smear the people who didn't want to invade Iraq.
It isn't hard to hold two views at once: One, that a government is bad, and two, that we shouldn't start a war with it.
It is one of the great ironies of our contemporary media landscape that the outlet calling itself the “American Conservative” is more pro-Iran and pro-Muslim Brotherhood than any Arab country not named Qatar.
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Foreign minister of NATO member Lithuania now calling for "unconditional surrender" of Putin, dramatic ramping up of arms supplies to Kyiv, and fast-track NATO accession for Ukraine.
Putin’s genocidal plan to wipe Ukraine off the map has failed. He is in no position to negotiate. The war must end with his unconditional surrender. 🧵
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I was on an interview right after this scheme was announced and got a question about how they’re going to do this without boots on the ground.
“It appears they’ve discovered how to suspend the laws of physics,” I said.
Stands up.
Pentagon has no idea how aid would be delivered to Gaza from the pier it pledged to build.
"In terms of how the distribution of aid is going to happen once it gets into Gaza, that's not something that we're handling...I just don't have that for you right now."
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Find someone who will stick with you through thick and thin like the Washington Post will stick with John Bolton.
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“Just as the Founders intended, our system makes executive war-making easy while making normal diplomacy impossible. I learned this at Harvard Law.”
Democrats are trying to tie the hands of the Commander-in-Chief and our troops as they face down Iran. They want Congress to debate how to respond while American forces are at risk.
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Ask yourself: Why is this man still in charge? Why does he have Biden's confidence? How badly would his ideas have to fail for him to be shown the door?
The Adam Neumann of Middle East politics.
EXCLU: Biden aide Brett McGurk's 90-day plan for Gaza focuses on a Saudi-Israel deal, sidelining Palestine & alarming US officials
-McGurk envisions a "Jerusalem-Jeddah Pact" & a "victory tour"
-Blinken raised one aspect to top Palestinians & was rebuffed
huffpost.com/entry/biden-sau…
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Tom Cotton and Lindsay Graham keep citing the "Libya model" as a deal Iran should take.
They are taking you for an idiot. The Libya Model is a poison pill, and they know it.
They know how the Libya Model ended, and they know that Khamenei knows how it ended:
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Oh thank goodness US officials are “expecting the Houthis to retaliate and [are ready to] launch more strikes against Houthi targets if needed.”
The officials said the U.S. is expecting the Houthis to retaliate and stressed that while the U.S. isn’t seeking an escalation U.S. forces in the region are ready to defend themselves against further Houthi attacks and launch more strikes against Houthi targets if needed
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This analysis of what Israel was up to is bonkers. Solve the *nuclear issue*? The whole Bibi/Trump/FDD play has been to make the nuke issue worse. washingtonpost.com/world/mid…
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Isn’t Vox’s whole shtick putting bright young people in charge of becoming instant experts on anything, then Explaining them to the rest of us?
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“It’s important to remember that not one Democratic lawmaker who voted for the Iran deal in 2015 lost their seat to someone who opposed the deal in 2016. Not one." -@dylanotes politi.co/3wNXgN9
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Why do people keep airing Rory Stewart’s argument that the 2020 status quo could be extended forever? Are editors not asking him to deal with the obvious (true!) objection that it wasn’t? TB stopped fighting us partly because we committed to leave! washingtonpost.com/outlook/2…
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Look, I’ll take it.
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There is literally nothing Blobbier than thinking, “hold on everyone, let’s consider Bill Kristol’s call for regime change in China with the utmost charity and care.”
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You hear the phrase "the Blob" often. If you want to define it, just reflect on the amount of eye-wateringly dumb stuff that has been said over the past week by people paid to analyze US foreign policy. That's the Blob.
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Nahal, respectfully: you hung a whole news article on a Kori Schake op-ed and on Senator Wicker, who said a nuclear first-use should be on the table?
We couldn't even get there in time to be militarily relevant. This is dorm room Stratego stuff.
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The NYT reports that "Israel could decide to strike Iran with little warning.... And some Israeli officials close to Netanyahu believe the US would have no choice but to assist Israel militarily if Iran counterattacked."
POTUS should clarify our choices. nytimes.com/2025/05/28/us/po…
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A US think tank that was founded to improve Israel’s image in the United States hired away the IDF spokesperson and it took him just days to begin advocating for a US attack on Iran.
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America is already great. usatoday.com/story/life/ente…
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Two beliefs people hold simultaneously:
"Even in peacetime, nukes are so dangerous we should get rid of all of them"
"In a proxy war with the world's largest nuclear state run by a dictator who also may be insane, we should escalate until he sues for peace"
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So it's $395 and 80 minutes one-way from DC to the East River, plus there's no security screening and you show up 10 minutes before your flight with free parking? These folks are gonna do numbers. washingtonpost.com/travel/20…
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