Source: Independent Institute
by Ivan Eland

“‘The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must’ is a quote that has come down through the ages from the Greek historian Thucydides’[s] History of the Peloponnesian War, written in 416 BC. It has come to encapsulate the ‘might makes right’ philosophy in international relations and is embraced by some in the realist school of foreign policy. Such realists are mostly right about how the world still works, but have a PR problem in today’s milieu of woke platitudes in international relations. Despite the fact that the balance of power and spheres of influence still shape the worldview of the vast majority of global leaders, some of these strong countries usually dress up the reasons for their military interventions in terms of democratization, humanitarian ends, or their national security.” (01/20/26)

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/01/20/trump-greenland-foreign-policy/

Source: Reason
by Jack Nicastro

“Threatening European allies to further tax American citizens is unlikely to persuade them to surrender Greenland to the United States.” (01/20/26)

https://reason.com/2026/01/20/trump-threatens-nato-members-with-tariffs-paid-almost-entirely-by-americans/

Source: Washington Post
by George F Will

“As usual, today’s president, coming late to a long-standing problem, but presuming his original discovery of it, has made himself the issue. His acquisitiveness regarding Greenland has nothing to do with national security, and everything to do, as everything always does, with his fragile ego. He is pouting, and threatening aggression, because he has not received the Nobel Peace Prize. The Danes can perhaps take comfort from the fact that the president is contemplating military operations against another northern place. As this is being written, the Army is reportedly readying a potential deployment to Minnesota to quell disturbances stemming from ham-handed activities by the ludicrously — and lethally — militarized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. During all this, the president has announced he will order that no other football game can be televised during the annual Army-Navy game.” (01/20/26)

https://archive.is/pYGtE

Source: In These Times
by Sarah Jaffe

“Around the United States, the rebellions against President Donald Trump’s militarized Immigration and Customs Enforcement invasions (bolstered by other agencies including the National Guard and, at least in one case, actual Marines) continue. National headlines have mostly skipped over Memphis, perhaps because it’s a smaller city in the South, far from the headquarters of national media. On the ground in Memphis, local policy organizer Amber Sherman explained, the fear (and resistance) are similar to what we see in bigger cities. It’s not so much the National Guard, she said, but around the city, there are some 1,500 federal agents from the so-called Memphis Safe Task Force working alongside existing police and using traffic stops (reportedly more than 35,000 in two months) as a way to get their hands on people. This is the very issue (pretextual stops) that Memphis activists organized against so effectively after police killed artist and skateboarder Tyre Nichols two years ago.” (01/21/25)

https://inthesetimes.com/article/capitalism-without-humans-labor-ai-tech-waymo-riot