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Containing the National Security State represents more than 100 editorials that assess the militarization of U.S. governance and U.S. foreign policy.
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Interview w/ IAN TROTTIER on Discussions of Truth podcast
Melvin Goodman: Trump war on US governance. 42 years in US intelligence and DC. Listen Now to my recent interview in this episode of Discussions of Truth w/ IAN TROTTIER podcast.
Star Wars Revisited: One More Nightmare From Trump
Donald Trump and his “war cabinet” have struck again. In the wake of record defense spending; the creation of a Space Force that would violate the Outer Space Treaty agreed to fifty years ago; the abrogation of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty from thirty years ago; and the chaos of random decision making for use of force, the Trump administration is returning to the madness of President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” idea with costly and ineffective ideas regarding missile-defense technologies.
Washington’s Latest Cold War Maneuver: Pulling Out of the INF
The Trump administration has decided to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the most comprehensive disarmament treaty ever negotiated between Washington and Moscow. National Security Adviser John Bolton, a long-time opponent of arms control, reportedly will inform Russian President Vladimir Putin this week that the United States will do so.
Nuclear Disagreements
In response to: Singapore Sham from the August 16, 2018 issue To the Editors: Jessica T. Mathews’s “Singapore Sham” [NYR, August 16] correctly notes North Korea’s failure to halt plutonium…
What is to be done?
The odds do not favor Donald Trump being impeached or indicted, but there is an unusual alternative without precedent. In 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a bipartisan effort led by Senators Kenneth Keating and Estes Kefauver enacted legislation for a procedure to replace a president unable to discharge the duties of the office. Like impeachment and indictment, however, the use of the 25th Amendment is unlikely.
Trump’s Psyche and the Threat of Force
The frightening letter from a senior official in the Trump administration that appeared in the New York Times begs questions about the possibility of additional “misguided impulses” from the President that cannot be blocked. Unfortunately, there is a terrible precedent from the Nixon administration in 1973 during the October War, when President Richard M. Nixon was incapacitated and national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger recklessly and unnecessarily upgraded the nuclear alert to Defense Condition III.
America’s War Habit
The articles in your special issue “Needed: A New Foreign Policy” [July 16/23] exaggerate the potential for a public challenge to militarism and the readiness of the public even to do so.
The CIA’s Double Standard Revisited
The Central Intelligence Agency has practiced a double standard for many years. Former CIA director David Petraeus escaped a jail sentence despite providing eight notebooks of highly classified information, including names of covert operatives, to his biographer-mistress.
Donald the Destroyer
The mainstream media is concerned with the politics, policies, and propaganda of President Donald Trump, but underplays the central question of his presidency: Is Donald Trump psychologically fit to be president of the United States and commander-in-chief? Over the past twelve months, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have produced two books (“The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” and “Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump”) to warn that our dangerously disordered president is a threat to domestic and international security.
Montenegro and the “Manchurian Candidate”
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Hollywood released a suspense thriller, “The Manchurian Candidate,” that centered on a Korean War veteran who had been captured and brainwashed by his North Korean captors. Following his release and discharge from the U.S. Army, the veteran becomes an unwitting assassin, a sleeper agent, involved in an international communist conspiracy to subvert and take over the U.S. government.
