Washington’s Tolerance of Death Squad ‘Democracies’

 Ted Galen Carpenter

May 21, 2022

The U.S. government has had a long, dishonorable history of forging and sustaining close relations with murderous dictatorships – as long as they supported Washington’s foreign policy. Such authoritarian US allies as the Shah of Iran, Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, the Saudi royal family, and a succession of South Korean and Guatemalan military rulers (among others) were confirmation of that cynical approach throughout the Cold War. US administrations (especially Ronald Reagan’s administration) also looked the other way or even offered quiet support as the dictatorships in Chile and Argentina executed brutal, indiscriminate crackdowns.

Biden and the Democrats pivot to proxy war

James Carden

May 12, 2022

WASHINGTON – The Russian war on Ukraine has seen ‘the Blob’ reassert itself with a vengeance in the 11 weeks since Russia announced the commencement of hostilities on February 24.

This article will examine the forces shaping President Joe Biden’s approach to the Ukraine crisis, and then move on to explore the state of foreign policy debate, or lack thereof, within Biden’s Democratic Party.

Former high-ranking military officials, intelligence analysts and diplomats who served at various points during the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations paint a picture in recent conversations with Asia Times of the likely policy options being presented to President Biden as he faces the gravest crisis on the European continent since the Second World War.

Finland and Sweden will join NATO at the expense of everything

 Anatol Lieven

5/13/2022

There is a sad and rather pathetic irony about the expected application of Finland and Sweden to join NATO.

Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a military superpower, it occupied most of central Europe, its troops were stationed in the heart of Germany, and Soviet Communism— for a while at least  — seemed to be a genuine threat to Western capitalist democracy. Throughout those decades however, Finland and Sweden remained officially neutral.