On January 22, 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) became international law for the 122 states who signed the agreement in July 2017. The TPNW, as with most treaties, is summed up in one sentence (article 1a): “Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to… Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” There is no complexity here. This is a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
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While Trump’s White House seemed obsessed with gaming its bilateral ties with China, Beijing was stealing a page right out of Obama’s strategic global playbook, outmaneuvering Washington by pursuing two multilateral trade agreements that should have seemed eerily familiar to anyone who lived through the Obama years. In November 2020, Beijing would lead 15 Asia-Pacific nations in signing a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that promised to create the world’s largest free-trade zone, encompassing 2.2 billion people and nearly a third of the global economy. More

Ever since the 9/11 attacks, Republicans and Democrats have conspired to keep Americans increasingly ignorant of what the federal government does. The number of secret federal documents skyrocketed, and any information that was classified supposedly cannot be exposed without dooming the nation. More

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States has not faced an existential threat—nothing to justify the trillions of dollars given to the Pentagon to maintain military predominance over the entire global community.  The United States requires a foil for its foreign policy declarations and for maintaining the allegiance of the U.S. citizenry.  Has China become that foil? More