Category: USA

It is understandable that people around the world obsess about US elections given the cultural and political impact the country has on the rest of us. (more…)

Kamala Harris was, to my mind, a clear winner of the first debate between herself and Donald Trump. As things stand, however, I reckon that Trump must be still regarded as the favourite to win a majority of the state electoral college votes, and thus become the next president. I hope I am wrong, but on the evidence as I see it, including regular tasting of a fair sample of American perspectives, this is an election still capable of serious surprises. (more…)

The interview of Jeffrey Sachs, a Social Progressive, by Tucker Carlson, a Social Conservative, makes riveting viewing since its an insight to where the polar enemies of American politics may be converging on their big picture view of US foreign policy. (more…)

Kamala Harris has enthusiastically accepted the endorsement of Dick Cheney. (more…)

That warning was 20 years ago, but in the years since, the US has continued in its violent and aggressive ways, cloaking its violence and aggression with bromides about a rules-based international order and defence of democratic values. If only that was true. (more…)

The notion of American exceptionalism — that the United States is uniquely destined to lead the world due to its superior values and capabilities — has been deeply embedded in the national consciousness for generations. This belief, cultivated by political, business, and intellectual elites, frames the US as a force for good, a beacon of liberty and democracy that must guide the world. Yet, this self-image, so central to the American identity, has also become a source of dangerous rigidity, blinding the nation to the realities of its own decline and the limitations of its power. (more…)

On the liberal Left, we consider ourselves above judging people by their appearance. We don’t presume to know what a person will or won’t do because they are Black or a woman. But as we learned from the Obama presidency, where we all hoped he would bring the global war on terror to a close, he expanded it – and his successors have done nothing to change course. (more…)

It is sometimes difficult to believe that the US is not headed irretrievably towards a new civil war. But recent research suggests that among the massive problems and sheer insanity of many of its citizens — let alone that of one of the Presidential candidates — the situation is much more complex. (more…)

Recent P&I contributors have drawn out sharply the consequences of American influence in Australia. (more…)

Richard Marles’ double-speak knows no bounds. His national strategy is entirely contrived to deliver “projection” for America’s ends, without mentioning that Australia is now merely one cog in the unfolding US war machinery across the periphery of Asia. Which is what Paul Keating is saying. (more…)

It is becoming less and less controversial or eccentric to claim that endless economic expansion and consumption, of a sort that the United States has so successfully championed, is simply incompatible with life on a finite planet. [This is Part II of a two-part series; read Part I.] (more…)

Past experience of Donald Trump is fuelling intense anxiety among the allies and partners of America; that oddly fearful collection of wealthy supplicant states. As Trump’s prospects of electoral success seem to fade, the issue becomes, will Kamala Harris carve out a different foreign policy path as president from Biden’s failed doctrine? (more…)

“When you’re siding with John Bolton on whether to bomb Iran, you’re as insanely hawkish as it gets.” (more…)