World

Haiti has never been known as a beacon of stability and tranquility. Most of its politicians are feckless, in league with criminals, or too consumed with trying to stay alive themselves. America not so long ago intervened on the island twice in 10 years — the first time in 1994, when President Clinton’s threat of an invasion compelled the junta to reverse its coup three years earlier, and the second in 2004, when the Bush administration participated in an international stabilization force after Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned. But this year has been an especially tough one for the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

Let’s be honest. If North Korea didn’t have nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them to targets as far away as the US homeland, you would not be reading this article. In fact, the national security establishment would most likely consider North Korea, a nation that can no longer feed itself with a GDP smaller than Rhode Island's, to be a joke. And yet the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) keeps cranking out ever-more advanced weapons platforms that drive headlines and clicks the world over. North Korea’s most recent test, a submarine-launched ballistic missile, seems at least on the surface to be pretty threatening. Yet a more sober analysis suggests that such a weapon, at least by itself, is no major threat to anyone, and for the foreseeable future.

For the first time in two decades, and arguably for the first time since the late 1970s, there is a semblance of calm in Afghanistan’s countryside. The US troop withdrawal last August, ending Washington’s 20-year misadventure in the country, has ushered in a period when airstrikes, IEDs, and Taliban-orchestrated bombings are no longer daily facts of life. Afghans who haven’t seen their relatives for years are now able to travel the roads without worrying about getting menaced by Taliban gunmen or fleeced by corrupt Afghan army troops. At the same time, Afghanistan is at a perilous moment in its history.

Since Joe Biden was elected in part as a salve for Donald Trump's perceived foreign policy blunders, it seems reasonable nine months in to go searching for the Biden Doctrine, to assess his initial foreign policy moves, to see what paths he has sketched out for the next three years. ...is that a tumbleweed? Well, OK, there was Afghanistan, Biden's most significant foreign policy action. Biden won election in November and took office in January. There was ample time for replanning and renegotiating anything that had been left behind by Trump, especially since Biden and his team had muddled in Afghanistan during the Obama era and knew well the mess they'd helped create. The rush for the last plane out was a fully expected unexpected event.

President Joe Biden walked into the grand UN General Assembly chamber this morning with a list of asks, an appeal for greater cooperation among the world’s great powers and a bit of controversy trailing behind him. Biden’s first UN address came at a difficult time in American diplomacy. The European Union, led by an irate France, is livid over a $60 billion US-Australian nuclear submarine deal that European leaders view as skeevy and duplicitous. And last month’s American troop exit from Afghanistan remains a sore point for contributing nations in the Nato coalition, some of which wanted more time to evacuate their own nationals. Biden, however, sidestepped all of these disputes.

When President Joe Biden tapped longtime aide Antony Blinken to be his secretary of state last November, Blinken landed his dream job. Here he was, a man widely respected in foreign policy circles, continuing the family business (his father and uncle were both ambassadors and his stepfather was an adviser to John F. Kennedy). What Blinken could have lived without, however, was the grandstanding, bravado and livid speeches from lawmakers responsible for overseeing his work. Unfortunately, fielding self-righteous questions is a part of the job description.

There’s a disgusting scene I can’t stop thinking about. It comes about midway through This Is What Winning Looks Like, a 2013 VICE documentary about America’s efforts in Afghanistan you can watch for free on YouTube. The film switches between the documentary footage itself and a sort of metafilm in which the filmmaker, Ben Anderson, discusses aspects of his work with Eddy Moretti of VICE, with Anderson’s footage from his time overseas frozen on a computer monitor behind them. The scene in question starts at 51:00 in the YouTube cut, was filmed around 2012, and involves a series of horrific murders. These were perpetrated not by the Taliban, but by America’s supposed allies: the country’s nascent police force.

Let’s say that two decades ago you were wondering where to invest your savings for retirement and the money that was supposed to pay for your kids’ college years, and decided to consult with your financial adviser known to be a market wizard. Let’s call him Tom Friedman. 'Don’t pay attention to all the bullish talk about Steve Jobs and Apple', Friedman said. 'I would bet all my money on two of the market’s crown jewels, Alta Vista and Enron'. Well, to make a very long story short, you are now spending your retirement years in a trailer park in Nevada, while your son is dealing drugs and your daughter works for an escort service to pay for their college studies.