The Hegemon’s Handbook China has a goal. It’s a pretty straightforward one. It wants to take over the world. Not quite like Dr. Evil …, but not so different either. It wants to be the one and only global hegemon, a position it held for most of the past...
The Autocrats’ Playbook You have to hand it to Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Although he didn’t write The Autocrats’ Playbook, he has most certainly – and successfully – followed it. Of course, you also have to hand it to Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi...
America’s Forthcoming Foreign Policy Crisis “We’ve got a health crisis and an economic crisis. The only thing missing is a foreign policy crisis.” – Robert Kagan, Washington Post, March 27, 2020. Not so fast, Mr. Kagan. All the ingredients for a foreign policy crisis are...
Axis of the Sanctioned, a Part 2 Postscript It was almost as if President Trump had read the January 2nd TLR, “Axis of the Sanctioned, Part 2,” and taken its message to heart. That night he made the decision to temporarily suspend America’s pacifist/do-nothing foreign...
Axis of the Sanctioned, Part 2 “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” the catchphrase in the June 21st TLR, is attributed to a 4th Century B.C. Sanskrit treatise on statecraft. It has unfortunate important applications today as America’s enemies find comfort and security...
The Authoritarian’s Playbook As explained in prior TLRs, Turkey was once the shining example of a secular Islamic republic with an 80+-year history of Western-style democracy. It unfortunately has become the shining example of how to distort a Constitutional democracy, subvert secularism and install an...
