Part I in a two-part series
In December, the rapid fall of the Syrian government to Western-backed jihadists stunned the world and sparked a wide range of reactions amid the fallout. Unsurprisingly, the collective West was quick to celebrate the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, a long-time U.S. foreign policy objective...
Headquartered in San Francisco, The Asia Foundation is a non-profit organization receiving public and private support that coordinates development projects, educational programs and cultural exchanges across Asia, in part with the aim of facilitating better relations with the U.S., according to its website.
Put in slightly different terms, The Asia...
On September 18th 1947, the main provisions of the National Security Act of 1947 went into effect. One of these was the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency, perhaps the most infamous part of the US national security state. While we pay a lot of attention these days to digital surveillance and the agencies that focus on signals intelligence like the National Security Agency and National Reconnaissance office, the CIA has and continues to play a crucial role in establishing and maintaining global US hegemony via human intelligence as well as through its covert actions, including coups, terrorism and sabotage...
With the confirmation of Gina Haspel as CIA director, there’s rightfully great interest in her record regarding torture. Contrary to the rhetoric--and with barely a word about the utility of torture in rigging the case for the Iraq invasion--the actual ends of torture are incredibly worse than the gruesome means.
Of course, there...
In this episode, we highlight the struggle of the workers at the Ford Cuautitlán Assembly Plant, just outside Mexico City. On January 8, 1990, workers at the plant were attacked by police and private hired thugs wearing Ford jackets. This happened during a prolonged period of labor action by the workers, and kicked off an occupation of the plant. This attack didn’t happen in a vacuum and the CIA played a role in squashing labor at the plant.
Dusko Doder’s case has ominous reverberations in the era of Cold War 2.0
Late one February night in 1984, Dusko Doder, The Washington Post’s Soviet correspondent, noticed hundreds of lights blazing at the Soviet Defense Ministry and KGB offices in Moscow.
He surmised that the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, who had...
Like the proverbial cat, some concepts have several lives. Or, like the mythological phoenix, they can be reborn from the ashes. This is certainly the case of the Intermarium, a geopolitical concept that envisaged an alliance of countries reaching from the Baltic Sea over the Black Sea to the...
For over seven weeks, events in Nicaragua have devolved into an increasingly common scenario for leaders who find themselves at odds with Washington: the country’s president, Daniel Ortega, stands accused of “killing his own people” after authorities have used “lethal force” in quelling recent protests. The unrest, which has resulted in...
I had the great fortune recently of addressing a gathering of Greek parliamentarians in Athens and with meeting members of the European Parliament to discuss national security whistleblowing. The European Union has drafted, and will soon release, a new whistleblower protection law that would be the finest and most comprehensive...
Mike Pompeo, CIA Director and Secretary of State in the first Trump administration, has long been a Ukraine war hawk, calling Russia’s actions genocide, stating that Crimea should be returned to Ukraine (when its people voted overwhelmingly to be part of Russia) and consistently advocating for increased...
