In 1899 Joseph Conrad published his fictional account of a trip up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, nineteenth century Africa’s colonial “Heart of Darkness.” In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola adopted Conrad’s work to his film Apocalypse Now, which moved the story from the Congo to Vietnam and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. […]
The American historian Daniel J. Boorstin (1914 – 2004) once wrote, “History should be our Cautionary Science” and argued we should not “underestimate the probability of the unexpected” in gaining an understanding of past events¹. This not to argue that we should disregard the probability of expected outcomes based on the demonstrated past performance of individuals […]
On Monday afternoon, while audiences around the world watched the unfolding of the evacuation of Kabul, President Biden offered the American people the rationale behind his decision to order the end of America’s commitment to its longest war. The story isn’t over, of course; six thousand U.S. military personnel have been ordered to Afghanistan to […]
On July 21, the White House released its new U.S Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America (Root-Causes-Strategy.pdf (whitehouse.gov). As Vice President Harris emphasized in her cover message, “the root causes of migration run deep—and migration from the region has a direct impact on the United States. For that reason, our […]
This series of articles began with a number – 891,213 encounters with undocumented aliens reported by the Border Patrol on the southern U.S. border during the first nine months of this fiscal year. That number was followed by a statement by Vice President Harris that she would focus her attention on determining the “root causes” […]
The third article in this series examines the “root causes” of migration from Guatemala and El Salvador. So far this fiscal year, the Border Patrol reports having encountered 153,478 people from Guatemala and 49,845 from El Salvador on the southern border (Southwest Land Border Encounters (By Component) | U.S. Customs and Border Protection (cbp.gov). Much […]
This is the second in a series of articles exploring the “root causes” of the migrant crisis on the southern U.S. border, focusing on the four largest identified sending countries – Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. From the beginning of the current fiscal year on October 1, 2020, through June 3, 2021, Border […]
Numbers alone do not tell the whole story of the migrant crisis on the southern border, but they do tell a lot. According to official statistics released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, from the beginning of the current fiscal year on October 1, 2020, through June 3, 2021, Border Patrol agents reported 891,213 encounters […]
The concept of national sovereignty is central to the contemporary international system. One of the generally accepted aspects of national sovereignty is the ability of a government to exercise control of its national territory within defined borders, and to control who crosses those borders, where, and when. The United States shares a nearly 2,000-mile border […]
Vice President Harris’s visit to El Paso last Friday marked her first official visit to the southwest border as the Biden Administration’s “border czar.” After a few hours of largely symbolic activity – she visited a migrant processing center, posed for photographs with Border Patrol agents and local officials, and made a speech – she […]
State governors usually seek to grow their states’ economies. One of Governor Ducey’s priorities has been to create a “21st Century Economy” in Arizona, which includes supporting “21st century companies that employ Arizonans.”[1] As part of his efforts to attract “21st Century companies” to the state, the Governor has actively sought to foster greater Chinese […]
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY’S ANNUAL 2021 THREAT ASSESSMENT One of the unique aspects of the United States Intelligence Community is that it often publishes its collective thinking in the public domain. Each year, for instance, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence produces an unclassified version of a report of worldwide threats […]
In an earlier article, I discussed the meaning behind the “China Dream” of “rejuvenating” China as a great power – which essentially means supplanting the United States to create an authoritarian, China-centric global system (What Does China Want? Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” . In pursuit this objective, China uses all of its instruments of national power, […]
In his first speech after taking office as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012, Xi Jinping employed a phrase not used in public by previous Chinese leaders – qiang zhongguo meng, or “strong nation dream” (1). Since then, Xi and other Chinese leaders have repeatedly referred to the “dream” of “resurrecting” or […]
The People’s Republic of China is engaged in a long-term, wide-ranging strategic competition with the United States and its allies. The 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States characterized China as a “revisionist power” that seeks to “shape a world consistent with [its] authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, […]
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