Brandan P. Buck
@brandan_buck
Historian of American Noninterventionism Foreign Policy Research Fellow @CatoFP https://www.cato.org/people/brandan-p-buck Jaded OEF Vet & Former Intel Analyst
"Our first duty is to keep America out of foreign wars. Our entry would only destroy democracy, not save it. ‘The path to war is a false path to freedom.’” My latest, "The Lost Liberalism of America First," and a companion thread are below.
Absolute Midwest Nationalist banger of a letter.
"I am of the deep opinion that there is to be an upheaval here in America before the summer is out. We Americans want Republican Democracy, not National Socialism, not Communism, not Dictatorship—NO SIR. We do not want our National tranquility and prosperity superseded by…
"I am of the deep opinion that there is to be an upheaval here in America before the summer is out. We Americans want Republican Democracy, not National Socialism, not Communism, not Dictatorship—NO SIR. We do not want our National tranquility and prosperity superseded by…
"The strange thing about World War I, in terms of public reaction, was that by and large the people who seemed to have lost control of their emotions to a greater extent than any other population were the intellectuals." Many such (historical) cases.
Reading.
Retvrn.
A fascinating graph: Less than a quarter of the population paid taxes in the UK and US before WW2
Latest w @EmmaMAshford on her forthcoming book on grand strategy, how to embrace multipolarity, spheres of influence, why alliances shouldn't be sacred, economic statecraft, bureaucratic inertia, the problem of temptation, & more. Listen! cato.org/multimedia/pow…
"We can't afford that kind of unity in our country." Raymond S Richmond to Senator Robert A Taft, 28 Jan 1942 2/3
Dangerous to whom? The U.S. or some third country you fail to name?
With Khamenei severely weakened, Erdogan may becoming the most dangerous man in the Middle East.
Airstrikes didn’t destroy Iran’s nuclear program because there is no viable military solution to preventing Iranian weaponization. This was a regime change attempt by Israel under thin nuclear disguise — and the U.S. must not get pulled in.
Iran's nuclear program has survived "obliteration" by the Trump administration, says @RKelanic in a sobering interview with Diwan. "The Iranian nuclear complex is sprawling and includes many additional sites beyond Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan that were not hit by airstrikes," she…
"The isolationists may therefore be regarded as the true heirs to the American tradition" "I was impelled through a special guidance from the Almighty, to go to Pennsylvania" Manfred Jonas, "Isolationism in America, 1935-1941" (1966)
You could pay me a billion dollars and I would not do one of those Jordan Peterson/Mehdi Hasan lightning round speed dating things.
name a man that didn’t deserve the hate he got
name a man that didn’t deserve the hate he got
Establishment thinking on the Middle East has produced one failure after another. It's rooted in the flawed assumption that we and our "partners" are capable of forcibly upholding an artificial regional order w/o incurring considerable costs. The result is endless violence.
