MARGARET KIMBERLEY—The Democrats like war, interventions and United States hegemony. They always have. If anyone wants proof they need only look at their collective hissy fit regarding the Trump and Kim summit. Part of the reaction is caused by fear of Trump getting credit for a foreign policy achievement. But Democrats are also true believers in imperialism. The last thing they want to see is any reduction in the American military presence in Korea or anywhere else.
IMPERIALISM
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GARY LEUPP—The Nordic countries had a reputation for charitableness and disproportionate donations to aid organizations. They had an independent often joint foreign policy; for example, all Nordic countries including Norway recognized the DPRK in 1974 and established embassies in Pyongyang. Norway has played a role in negotiations between the DPRK and Washington. And between Israel and its backers and the Palestinians; remember the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995?
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RAMIN MAZAHERI—Non-Iranians need to realize that any foreign invasion of Iran implies the mass, grassroots involvement of the Basij. Certainly not all of them, as only a small percentage of this volunteer group are involved daily in security operations (contrary to popular belief), but very certainly invasion would involve a lot of them. I think that if people learned about the solidity of this group – whether one condones or condemns them, and I remain 100% objectively neutral in my examination and refuse to either condone or condemn them on my part – one must simply accept that they are a huge force to be reckoned with in any war.
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PANKAJ MISHRA—merican liberals, Samuel Moyn wrote last year in Dissent, have never broken ‘with the exceptionalist outlook that cast the United States as uniquely virtuous’, but having Trump in the ‘cockpit of American power’ will reveal ‘just how terrifyingly normal a nation we are, with our populist jingoism and hawkish foreign policy’. The bipartisan support for the president’s bombing campaigns shows that little has changed in this respect, however. As Trump ordered strikes on Syria in April last year, Fareed Zakaria hailed the ‘big moment’: ‘Donald Trump,’ he said, ‘became president of the United States last night.’
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MIKE FAULKNER—With the single exception of his unlamented predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, Churchill was born before any other leading political figure holding power in the belligerent countries during the war. Stalin was four years his junior; Chiang Kai-shek was 13 years younger, De Gaulle 16 years younger, Hitler 15 years younger and Roosevelt eight years younger than Churchill. When Churchill was born in 1874 Disraeli was prime minister of Britain and Bismarck had recently become the first Chancellor of the new German Empire; Marx and Engels were still hard at work in London, Lincoln had been dead for only nine years and General Custer still awaited his fate at the Little Big Horn.