As the January 6 hearings commenced, an old and trusted friend commented to me that he thought only the production of a smoking gun would be likely to change any minds in our current calcified, hyperpartisan political climate. Many pundits have echoed that opinion. Yes and no, say I. We…

In the immediate wake of the horrific events in Texas eleven days ago, a friend said to me, “I take it you’re going to write about Uvalde this week.” I said, “Why don’t I just re-run my essay from the last mass shooting?” (There are several.) After all, it’s not…

Where would you like to begin with the horrific events in Buffalo last week? Let’s start with the most obvious and urgent aspect. There is an epidemic of right wing domestic terrorism in the United States — especially against people of color — one with no analog anywhere else on…

Funny story. Early one morning last week, the wife and I were awakened around 6am by what sounded like an enormous explosion, followed by a burst of light. It speaks to the collective jumpiness of the current American moment that as New Yorkers, immediately flashing back to 9/11, the first…

The New York Times’s Peter Baker called this week’s leak of an Alito-penned draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade “one of the biggest earthquakes in American domestic politics in a generation.” (Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward of Politico broke the story.) No doubt about that. It’s early days to say…

When last we met, I was pondering whether Vladimir Putin was rational enough to recognize his losing situation in Ukraine, and — given his almost total control of the information available to the Russian public — simply declare victory and go home. The question was partly rhetorical. He has not…

When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, most of the Western world assumed that his army would readily conquer the nation within a few weeks. I was among them, putting me in the company of almost all informed military strategists, foreign policy experts, and laymen alike, who expected…

As I wrote two weeks ago, it’s almost an obscenity — and the height of parochialism — to think about the war in Ukraine in terms of domestic US politics. But there is an aspect to that discussion that goes beyond tribalism. Because I hasten to remind you, dear reader…

Foreign policy debates are often framed as a fight between realists and idealists. The very terms are self-flattering; the former are more often cynics and the latter aspirationalists. In the American response to the war in Ukraine we are seeing the weaknesses of both, most glaringly in the ways that…