ISSN 2562-9948
Surely we have heard and seen enough by now that any lingering “optimism” about Trump governing as an anti-interventionist in foreign affairs has totally evaporated. What Trump promised in foreign policy terms in 2016, and what he instead delivered, are two radically different things—the same could be said of Obama, the so-called peace candidate of […]
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Finally, on Monday, July 16, 2018, the Helsinki Summit bringing together Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump took place, despite shrill demands that it be stopped, canceled, or turned into a platform for more aggression. “President Trump should cancel his meeting with Vladimir Putin until Russia takes demonstrable and transparent steps to […]
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Both leaders arrived in Singapore, with significant excitement greeting them. Trump, arriving from a bitter G7 meeting, after which he attacked Justin Trudeau personally, flew into Singapore on Sunday, June 10, as did Kim Jong-un, who took serious precautions in his travel arrangements. By this point Trump had already significantly lowered expectations, saying that it […]
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Getting Past the Propaganda We are routinely told that Mexico has grown into the “one of the more robust emerging economies with exports of about $1 billion a day”, more than 10 times what they were in 1994. CBC News, like Trump, thinks Mexico is “the big winner” of NAFTA. If it sounds improbable that […]
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Canada, Mexico, and the US: we could argue that any one of these nation-states “lost” because of NAFTA while the others “won”. That is Donald Trump’s position: that the US’ trade partners have “won” from NAFTA, at the expense of the US (which would also validate NAFTA as a “good thing” for both Canada and […]
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“These tariffs are totally unacceptable. For 150 years, Canada has been America’s most steadfast ally. Canadians have served alongside Americans in two world wars and in Korea. From the beaches of Normandy to the mountains of Afghanistan, we have fought and died together. Canadian personnel are serving alongside Americans at this very moment. We are […]
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North Korea is an exceptional state, but unlike an imperial power it lacks a doctrine of exceptionalism. It is exceptional in that it is willing to suffer any cost to protect its independence, and it relies on no one to assure its sovereignty. One fact stands out as unambiguous: today, North Korea stands alone as […]
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What if the Chinese “economic miracle” were proven to be, like so many other alleged miracles, a mass of illusions? What if savvy American investors were actually shown to be quite naïve and gullible, even after everything suffered by so many during the 2008 financial crisis? What if American politicians were revealed to be sleepy […]
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Has anything out of the ordinary happened to the US as an imperialist power since the ascent of Trump to office? While the continuities between Trump and his predecessors are considerable, have there been any significant discontinuities that mark the first year of this presidency? Is there any reason to think that the rise of […]
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Is there a genuine debate taking place about Islamophobia? When and why did the “concern” about Islamophobia reach the highest levels of government in North America and western Europe? On which particular goal do all governmental parties fundamentally agree in this alleged debate? What does the nature of the debate, and the interests that are […]
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“Hey, I’m a nationalist and a globalist,” Donald Trump recently declared, “I’m both”. The only way in which the two (seemingly contradictory) positions can be reconciled is by introducing a third term, one that is absent from Trump’s vocabulary: imperialism. Trump might not be conscious of the implication of his statement (nor would he be […]
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If an alien were to land on Earth, and listen only to Donald Trump, the impression the alien would get is that a great, powerful, and cruel nation–Mexico–was dominating its neighbours unfairly, robbing them of their resources, cheating them through trade, and invading them with gangsters. “Mexico is killing us at the border”. “Mexico is […]
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“We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world — but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone…” ~ Donald Trump, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2017. Yet […]
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How Orthodoxy, Professionalism, and Unresponsive Politics Finally Doomed a 19th-century Project What a sight to behold. These are the dying days, counting down soon to the final hours, of the defeated political project of liberalism, inherited from the 19th-century. The centre—if there ever was one—could not hold after all. What a thing it is to […]
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“There is something unseemly about a nation conducting a foreign policy that involves it in the affairs of most of the nations of the world while its own domestic needs are neglected or postponed, just as there is something unseemly about an individual carrying all the burdens of the Community Chest and the PTA while […]
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ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY 