
Opinion: US intervention leaves rifts that take years to heal
By Brian Berletic
With so many countries around the globe still subjected to US influence, either literally occupied by US military forces, or ruled by a government helped into power by significant US assistance (or a combination of…

Opinion: Millions Dead from Post-9/11 US Wars: An Unconscionable Cost
By David Kanbergs
Last week, researchers working with Brown University’s Costs of War project released a substantial report detailing the number of indirect deaths caused by the various wars in which the United States has been involved…

Opinion: Why the dollar’s dominance is declining in the Middle East
By Cathrin Schaer
Iraq has just banned US-dollar transactions, the Saudis and Emiratis plan to sell oil without it and there are plans to establish a whole new currency to bypass it. To know why, first have a look at the war in Ukraine.
Anyone…

Opinion: US Sanctions Are Brutal and Inhumane. And They Don’t Work
BY BRANKO MARCETIC
Sanctions are a form of collective punishment. Their costs are overwhelmingly borne by innocent people rather than governments. And they are just another form of war, not an alternative to it. The US’s many sanctions…

Opinion: How to Withdraw From Iraq Within Five Years
By Steven Simon and Adam Weinstein
Two decades of intervention
March 2023 marked two decades since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein is long gone, memories of the post–invasion civil war are fading (from the American mind,…

Opinion: The Graveyard of Promises: The Case of Afghanistan
By Arezo Farah
For the last twenty years, the leading narratives surrounding foreign intervention in Afghanistan have painted the country as a state-building project. Common buzzwords such as “nation-building”, “fighting terrorists”…

Opinion: The failure of NATO to subdue Afghanistan
By Shane Quinn
By 2008 US President George W. Bush was no longer talking about winning in Iraq. Around 500,000 American soldiers had been sent to Iraq between 2003 and 2008, but the US military was unable to overcome the Middle East…

Opinion: Mission Accomplished? The Iraq War 20 years later
By Clint Van Winkle
May 1, 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of former President George W. Bush’s Mission Accomplished speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a crew of about 5,500 US…

Opinion: No, Afghanistan has not become a ‘staging ground for terrorists’
By Robert Wright
Thanks to the Washington Post blowing comments out of proportion, GOP critics of the withdrawal will use this exaggeration as a cudgel.
“Afghanistan has become a terrorism staging ground again, leak reveals.”
To…

Opinion: China vs US: Making of the Second Cold War?
By Sedat Laçiner
The Cold War order, despite all its risks, offered numerous advantages to both the United States and the Soviet Union. During the Cold War era, the world was split into two opposing camps, and the US and the USSR…