51 people in the US State Department who apparently call themselves "diplomats" have decided that enough's enough with this diplomacy shit: More than 50 State Department diplomats have signed an internal memo sharply critical of the Obama administration’s policy in Syria, urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President … Continue reading Diplomats Against Diplomacy

Don't look now, but oil prices are starting to rise again. After bottoming out around $26/barrel in late-January, they've come back up into the $50/barrel neighborhood in recent days. There are several reasons, but they all come back to basic economics: supply is down and demand is up. The latter is relatively simple: cheap oil … Continue reading Oil price ping-pong

If you've been watching TV news and/or listening to our political leaders, then you know one thing about Omar Mateen: he was an ISIS terrorist, or an "Islamic radical," or whatever magic combination of words we're all supposed to say. But the more we learn about him the clearer it is that his motivations for … Continue reading Selective focus

The New York Times' generally excellent ISIS reporter, Rukmini Callimachi, has been arguing that the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, doesn't look like a strictly "lone wolf" style attacker: While the extent of Islamic State involvement remains an open question, what is known is that Mr. Mateen followed the established ISIS protocol for carrying out an … Continue reading NEEDED: Better terrorism terminology

In case you've been away from the news all day, here's the summary: early this morning a gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing (at last count) 50 people and wounding another 53. The gunman was Omar Mateen, an American citizen whose parents immigrated from Afghanistan, and he was killed by police at … Continue reading The Orlando attack: What we know and what I think we can say

Later this month Britons will head to the polls to vote on whether or not the UK should remain in the European Union, AKA "Brexit." Some very recent pollingvery recent polling suggests that support for leaving the EU has surged to around 55% of the British electorate, so there seems like a pretty fair chance … Continue reading [ADVISORY: Adult Content] Why Brexit might, but probably won’t, lead to Sexit

Eli Lake, whose credibility fell off a wall and shattered sometime around 2003 and still hasn't been put back together, despite the best efforts of all the king's horses and all the king's men, is very mad today because the United States is sending military aid to Iran (when we should be sending cruise missiles … Continue reading Stealing money from Bad countries is OK, right?

So I'm writing that last post and I'm trying to make sure that I'm not out to lunch when I say that Iran, Cuba, and North Korea are America's three longest-running diplomatic antagonists. And it turns out that, with Cuba off the list, Iran and North Korea are two of the three remaining countries with … Continue reading The strangest thing about US foreign policy you’ll (maybe) learn today