Stephen Wertheim @stephenwertheim Twitter profile

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Stephen Wertheim

2 months

Never in the years since the Cold War has the United States looked less like a leader of the world and more like the head of a faction — reduced to defending its preferred side against increasingly aligned adversaries, I write in @nytopinion :

Opinion | America Isn’t Leading the World

Never has the country looked less like a leader and more like the head of a faction.

www.nytimes.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

In my estimation, the Four Seasons Total Landscaping incident is the most hilarious thing ever to happen in human history — so hilarious that we are unable to comprehend it right now. In three days, we will all just break out in laughter for 12 hours straight.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

2 years

If any Democrats still think it makes sense to fruitlessly embargo the island of Cuba into submission until the end of time, in order to gain an insufficient number of votes in a red state, could you please explain why?

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

8 months

As a Jew in America, I resent the implication that Jews in America are unsafe and that they must rely upon a foreign government, rather than their own, to make them safe.

Melissa Weiss

@melissaeweiss

8 months

“Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world that is safe,” Biden says at the White House Hanukkah party as he reaffirms support for Israel against its war against Hamas.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

"I'll never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don't care what the facts are." — Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1988, after the United States shot down an Iranian passenger airplane, Iran Air 655, killing all 290 civilians on board.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

As I revisit the George W. Bush administration for a piece, I can only marvel at how, in the Trump years, some people managed to claim that Bush was some kind of upholder of a “rules-based international order.”

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

9 months

Jake Sullivan on State of the Union this morning: Israel has to abide by the rules of war. Q: Is Israel abiding by the rules of war? I'm not going to judge whether Israel is abiding by the rules of war.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

2 years

Biden: “Next week, I will be the first president to visit the Middle East since 9/11 without U.S. troops engaged in a combat mission there.” Hard to see how this is not misleading, unless he is removing U.S. troops from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen within days.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

They did it: a presidential debate in the most powerful country in the world that didn't mention foreign policy.

Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

NBC debate moderators: foreign policy does not exist

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

1 year

The whole world knows this isn’t true.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

It's a danger to democracy that presidents are not prosecuted while in office but can be prosecuted out of office. To incentivize the peaceful transfer of power, the norm should be consistent in both phases — and better for presidents to be prosecutable all the time.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

Tony Blair says the United States withdrew from Afghanistan "in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending 'the forever wars.'" I call it the most productive foreign-policy slogan in a generation.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

It’s long past time for an honest debate about these issues. Blaming @IlhanMN for saying the same things in substance as supporters of the Netanyahu government do, only with the normative signs reversed, makes clear how far we are from an honest debate.

Eli Clifton

@EliClifton

5 years

Was it anti-Semitic when Bret Stephens said “it is a scandal, it seems to me, if we fail to live up to the promise of our American citizenship to do all we can to assure the survival of the Jewish state and the Jewish people”? @IlhanMN

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

The "centrists" will not coalesce to stop Bernie for the same reason that centrist policies have failed: centrism is not a substantive politics but rather the tactical pursuit of power.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

That was a Four Seasons Hotel-quality speech.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

So U.S. sanctions have failed and will be removed?

Samantha Power

@SamanthaJPower

3 years

5.5 million people have fled #Venezuela since 2015 (6.6 million have fled Syria). The once-booming country with the world’s largest oil reserves has been ravaged by Maduro’s brutality and gross mismanagement.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

No person, whether brilliant or deranged, should have the power to wage war currently possessed by the President of the United States.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

In two minutes, @IlhanMN delivered more accountability than three decades of a broken system.

Eli Clifton

@EliClifton

5 years

Elliott Abrams just experienced his own worst nightmare today. He was questioned about his abysmal track record by a woman of color who came to this country as a refugee, who wears a hijab, and doesn't respect the blob's rules about never holding foreign policy elites accountable

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 months

Finally, a concept the whole world can embrace: the Non-Binding Rules-Based International Order

Heidi Matthews

@Heidi__Matthews

4 months

The U.S. is unilaterally claiming that Security Council resolution 2728 is non-binding and therefore has no impact on its policy or the legality of Israel’s continued war. This is not so obvious… 🧵

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

There is no "rules-based order" that the United States upholds and China threatens. It is simply not so. And it is dangerous to flatter one's own (often rule-breaking) power as consensual and demonize the other's as antithetical to world order.

60 Minutes

@60Minutes

3 years

“I want to be very clear about something,” says Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to.”

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 months

Matt Duss

@mattduss

4 months

Schumer and AOC’s courageous floor speeches show how significantly the Israel-Palestine debate has shifted among Democrats. Thousands of lives, and possibly the future of our democracy, depend on Biden listening. My new piece in ⁦ @newrepublic ⁩

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

The American people would react in the same way if some other power kept a “military presence” of thousands of troops in the United States and struck targets against the wishes of the U.S. government.

CBS News

@CBSNews

5 years

WATCH: Thousands of Iraqi protesters furious over deadly U.S. airstrikes storm the American Embassy in Baghdad, breaking down doors and setting fires

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

“Ceding territory to Russia and Iran”? Is all territory in the world presumptively American?

Jim Sciutto

@jimsciutto

4 years

Glenn, he held back military assistance to Ukraine to force a political favor against Biden. He twice ordered the withdrawal of US forces from Syria, ceding territory to Russia & Iran. He refused to blame or call out Russia for 2016 election interference, Navalny poisoning 1/

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

How depressing that on the 19th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, the war received no attention besides a passing reference. Three-quarters of Americans want our troops to come home. Ending the war should be a priority, even a source of national unity when we need one most.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

I have deep concerns about the $7.5 trillion trajectory of U.S. military spending over the next decade. At some point, all of us, regardless of party, must ask the simple question — how much is enough?

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

2 years

NATO “expansion will leave [Ukraine] wedged between an Alliance it can probably never enter, and Russia.” — Richard Holbrooke, Sept. 1994, advocating NATO expansion despite the price for Ukraine

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

Eighty years ago, the United States made a tragic decision to pursue global supremacy. The project has outlived its purpose, immobilizing American statecraft and producing endless war. My thoughts in @nytopinion :

Opinion | America Has No Reason to Be So Powerful (Published 2020)

Eighty years ago, the United States made a tragic decision to pursue global supremacy. The project has outlived its purpose.

www.nytimes.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

The Afghanistan war has become endless not because US leaders thought they could win—they didn’t, the Afghanistan Papers reveal—but because they have normalized war. Since the 1990s, war has become routine and peace seems strange, @samuelmoyn and I write:

Perspective | The infinity war

We say we’re a peaceful nation. Why do our leaders keep us at war?

www.washingtonpost.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

“We are going to challenge the basis of American foreign policy in a way that has not been done in at least the last quarter-century.”

In an astonishing turn, George Soros and Charles Koch team up to end US ‘forever war’ policy - The...

In one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern American political history, the leftist financier Soros and the conservative Charles Koch are uniting to revive the fading vision of a peaceable...

www.bostonglobe.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

Harvard is an investment fund with a university attached.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

For the first time in history, large numbers of Americans are demanding an end to endless war. But it won’t happen unless the United States stops trying to dominate the world by force. My thoughts in @nytopinion :

Opinion | The Only Way to End ‘Endless War’ (Published 2019)

First, America has to give up its pursuit of global dominance.

www.nytimes.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

All the pathologies of U.S. foreign policy in one tweet

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

All that is left of American exceptionalism is having +1 as our international calling code

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

2 years

As a historian of World War II, I’m forming Historians Against Analogies to World War II

Sam Haselby

@samhaselby

2 years

The main thing is to find an event from World War II which the last couple days resemble.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

NBC debate moderators: foreign policy does not exist

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

1 year

A few weeks ago, Joe Biden declared: "The idea that over 100,000 forces would invade another country—since World War II, nothing like that has happened." 20 years ago, America invaded Iraq. And Ukraine is paying a price today. My thoughts in @guardian :

Two decades later, it feels as if the US is trying to forget the Iraq war ever happened | Stephen...

In framing the Ukraine war as a fight between democracy and autocracy, Biden shows that the US hasn’t learned from Iraq

www.theguardian.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

How many days until the Žižek book on Suez?

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

Officials now call for overwhelming displays of force against Americans with the same knee-jerk zeal once reserved for faraway peoples. Two decades of continual war, coiled in the national psyche, have sprung back onto the homeland.

All options on table to end violence in Portland -acting Homeland Security secretary

"All options continue to be on the table" to resolve violent protests in Portland, Oregon, including sending in federal law enforcement assistance, the acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf...

www.reuters.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

It's time for Americans to recover their critical faculties when they hear "NATO," a military alliance that cements European division, bombs the Middle East, and risks great-power war of which Americans should want no part. My thoughts in @nytopinion :

Opinion | Sorry, Liberals. But You Really Shouldn’t Love NATO. (Published 2021)

It antagonizes Russia, keeps Europe subservient and facilitates endless wars. What's there to love?

www.nytimes.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

Note the final comment: "This is my only opportunity during this process to raise an objection and to be heard." As if he had a special entitlement to be "heard," after the American people (himself included) had already voted and the states had certified the vote.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

4 years

BRET BAIER: I want to pin you down on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to say that Trump will be president after January 20? JOSH HAWLEY: Well, that depends on what happens on Wednesday BAIER: No it doesn't (Trump in fact lost an election!)

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

The Taliban insurgency has been steadily gaining for years. The recent lull in American casualties was due to the U.S. agreement to withdraw. Sustainable? Biden’s choice was to escalate a failing war or end it.

Richard N. Haass

@RichardHaass

3 years

What makes the Afghanistan situation so frustrating is that the US & its allies had reached something of an equilibrium at a low sustainable cost. It wasn’t peace or military victory, but it was infinitely preferable to the strategic & human catastrophe that is unfolding.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

The @nytimes really should change this headline. With troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria, drones striking Afghanistan and Somalia, and much else, it is misleading and harmful to state as a fact that the United States is not at war.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

We may face a general election between two candidates who each falsely claim to have opposed the Iraq war. I think this fact signifies something beyond troubling candidates: American society has decided the Iraq war was a disaster but has not begun to debate why.

Andy Kaczynski

@KFILE

4 years

Biden on MSNBC last night said of his vote for the Iraq War, "I didn't believe he had those nuclear weapons. I didn't believe he had those weapons of mass destruction." He said his vote was for inspectors to prove they didn't have WMDs. This isn't backed by our reporting.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

Having reached the summit, I would like to announce my retirement from public life

Room Rater

@ratemyskyperoom

4 years

Great depth. Natural light. Books. Red chair. Pillows. 10/10 @stephenwertheim

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

“The senator has also vowed to get congressional authorization for any new military conflicts. If he honors that promise, it would effectively make U.S. military interventions highly unlikely during his presidency.”

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

6 years

I think the pro-war shift in Democratic opinion is an effect of opposition to Trump, but it is troubling nonetheless. This is why the media needs strong anti-war voices, not the same discredited crowd that encouraged decades of violence and now claim to be bulwarks of democracy.

Glenn Greenwald

@ggreenwald

6 years

As Democratic Elites Reunite With Neocons, The Party’s Voters Are Becoming Far More Militaristic and Pro-War than Republicans

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

Gotta hand to it Trump: it took the Bush administration years to get to the “it doesn’t really matter if Saddam didn’t have WMD” stage

The Washington Post

@washingtonpost

5 years

Trump says "it doesn’t really matter" if Iranian general posed an imminent threat

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

True, Afghanistan is not Vietnam: the Afghanistan war has gone on much longer than the Vietnam war, which U.S. leaders at least managed to end within a decade of realizing that the mission was wrong and victory impossible.

AEI Foreign Policy

@AEIfdp

5 years

#Afghanistan isn’t #Vietnam . It isn’t even Iraq. George W. Bush did not lie America into this war. The “revelations” in The Washington Post are only new to people who have forgotten front page news from a few years ago, writes Fred Kagan for @AEIdeas .

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

2 years

I am in solidarity with brave Russians who have protested and spoken against this war. I hope more do. But should ordinary Russians be viewed as guilty, and thus deserving of punishment, if they do not risk life and limb to protest a war they had no part in launching? I hope not.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

The CDC budget is 1.5% of the military budget. This is the nearly inevitable result of a foreign policy that prizes armed dominance above all else — and it is the opposite of a sane internationalism for the 21st century.

Rep. Ro Khanna

@RepRoKhanna

4 years

The CDC’s budget is 1.5% of the defense budget. We should double it. We have underfunded our public health system for decades, directly leading to the mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis. We need to step up and support our doctors + scientists so they can save lives.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

By advocating or staying silent about an assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, many defenders of the "rules-based liberal international order" are proving what maxim they live by: "When you're powerful, they let you do it. You can do anything."

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

11 months

So your plan is we go to war with Mexico for two decades and the cartels end up running the country?

Will Hurd

@WillHurd

11 months

I hunted terrorists. I know a thing or two about dismantling dangerous organizations. We can dismantle cartel and human smuggling networks by treating them the same way we treated the Taliban and al Qaeda.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 months

Blinken said earlier: “We are determined to get a ceasefire that brings the hostages home and to get it now, and the only reason that that wouldn’t be achieved is because of Hamas.” What Blinken said is not accurate.

Barak Ravid

@BarakRavid

3 months

BREAKING: Netanyahu told Blinken during their meeting today he won't accept a deal that will include ending the war. He said if Hamas doesn't drop this demand there will be no deal and Israel will invade Rafah, per Israeli and U.S. officials

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

"Bernie recognizes that the Pentagon is the largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases in the world and that the US spends $81b annually to protect oil supplies and transport routes. We are uniquely positioned to lead the planet in a wholesale shift away from militarism."

Matt Duss

@mattduss

5 years

"Instead of accepting that the world’s countries will spend $1.5 trillion annually on weapons of destruction, Bernie will convene global leaders to redirect our priorities to confront our shared enemy: climate change."

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

How did the Sanders campaign slide this veiled endorsement into the Washington Post? "Sanders's vision would represent a stark departure from the platform Democrats have embraced since the end of the Cold War."

Josh Rogin

@joshrogin

5 years

NEW: Bernie Sanders’s foreign policy is a risk for Democrats against Trump by me @PostOpinions

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

2 years

The United States has swiftly moved from "engagement" with China — a theory of slow-moving, non-coerced regime change — to the containment of China, passing over the alternative of mutual coexistence.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

It’s real, and it’s spectacular

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

Bafflingly @PeteButtigieg is on TV arguing that the U.S. military — which emits more greenhouse gases than any other institution on the planet — is a major part of the solution to climate change. He doesn’t mean by downsizing it.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

Discontent is brewing inside the Democratic Party over foreign policy, and @IlhanMN is only the beginning. @tparsi and me on the way forward in the @guardian :

Democratic party elites silence Ilhan Omar at their peril | Trita Parsi and Stephen Wertheim

The congresswoman’s foreign policy views are far more in line with voters than the disconnected party establishment

www.theguardian.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

“If Sanders wins the nomination and his financial support from service members translates into votes, it would represent a significant shift from 2016, when active-duty personnel were twice as likely to choose Trump over Hillary Clinton.”

Bernie Sanders Leads Trump, All 2020 Candidates in Donations From Active-Duty Troops

The Vermont senator outpaces Trump in donations from active-duty troops and has doubled his nearest Democratic rival.

www.rollingstone.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

I am scandalized by the presence of the U.S. military in the streets and the air. But I can't help but think that some people are scandalized because they assume it's their birthright as Americans for the military to bomb people over there without ever coming here.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

Now would be a good time to stop spending a trillion dollars per year chasing the illusion of global military domination, and instead act cooperatively to take on real threats like pandemic disease and climate change:

The Price of Primacy

Washington’s post–Cold War strategy of armed primacy has failed. It needs a grand strategy for the many, not the few.

www.foreignaffairs.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

Elliott Abrams was convicted for illegally withholding information from Congress. He supported selling arms to a government that committed mass murder. These are facts. And more evidence still of the looney center represented by Max “Think of Our Indian Wars” Boot.

Max Boot 🇺🇦🇺🇸

@MaxBoot

5 years

Disgraceful ad hominem attacks by @IlhanMN on my @CFR_org colleague Elliott Abrams. She doesn't seem to realize he is a leading advocate of human rights and democracy--not a promoter of genocide! More evidence of the loony left I caution Democrats about:

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

As endless war comes home, it is the death knell for George W. Bush’s entire argument for the war on terror: “We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.”

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

You don’t get to lose a war and expect the result to look like you won it. Yet some in Washington are denying reality, calling for still more war and blaming Biden for their failure. To move forward, we must accept defeat. My thoughts in @PostOpinions :

Perspective | The ever-ready answer for failures in Afghanistan: More war

Until the U.S. accepts it lost the war, it will repeat its mistakes.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

1 month

NATO should not move Ukraine closer toward membership in the alliance. Ahead of next week's summit, read the open letter I've signed along with 60 colleagues, representing a broad spectrum of foreign policy experts, published in @politico .

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

1 year

To attract international support for Ukraine, it would be far better to admit past errors frankly than to ask countries to collude in memory-holing the obvious.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

Rep. Lee cast the lone vote against the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. She warned: "We must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target." The bill passed 420-1. The 1 was right.

Rep. Barbara Lee

@RepBarbaraLee

5 years

The 2001 #AUMF gave any president the power to wage war anywhere, at any time, for any reason. America's culture of endless war has harmed too many. It's past time we take a hard look at our ongoing military operations & authorizations to #StopEndlessWar .

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

This is the clearest presidential statement in recent years that emphasizes the need to limit the intensity of U.S.-China rivalry and cooperate to address climate change, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

3 years

Biden: "We are not seeking -- I'll say it again -- we are not seeking a new Cold War, or a world divided into rigid blocks."

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

2 years

Premature and irresponsible to call for arming a Ukrainian insurgency that does not yet even exist. Who would we be arming? To what end? With what consequences? Have we learned nothing from recent missions that made wars only longer and deadlier?

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

1 year

For Biden to give a NATO-like security guarantee to Saudi Arabia — committing the United States to go to war in defense of the kingdom — would be strategically and morally perverse.

Opinion | Biden Is Weighing a Big Middle East Deal (Published 2023)

Senior Biden officials are in Riyadh on Thursday exploring the possibility of some kind of U.S.-Saudi-Israeli-Palestinian understanding.

www.nytimes.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

In the age of Trump, American politics has taken on the qualities of American wars. Endless war has not merely come home; endless war increasingly is home. My thoughts in @NewYorker :

How Trump Brought Home the Endless War

Having come to power exploiting the fears spawned by perpetual war abroad, the President is defining the enemy of his war at home just as expansively.

www.newyorker.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

1 year

The Biden team is doing a bang-up job delivering on progressive foreign policy priorities like locking into a cold war with China and considering a pledge to go to war on behalf of Saudi Arabia.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

7 months

Biden's "defense of democracy" in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan is not delivering. His approach intensifies conflicts without resolving them, while entangling the United States within them. And it's playing into Trump's hands. My thoughts in @TheAtlantic :

Biden’s Democracy-Defense Credo Does Not Serve U.S. Interests

Centering U.S. foreign policy on this principle is destabilizing abroad and divisive at home.

www.theatlantic.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

“They learned that from the Iraq war crew.” @chrislhayes is searing on how the invasion, and the lack of accountability ever since, has damaged American politics:

Chris Hayes on the lessons of the Iraq war 16 years after it started

Chris Hayes looks at how the lack of consequences for those who advocated for the Iraq war brought us to today.

www.msnbc.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

May there be accountability for those who have spent the Trump years fretting about “isolationism” and decrying non-existent troop withdrawals, while the administration was escalating existing wars and provoking new wars.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

6 years

A whole new direction for Seinfeldisms. “Have you ever noticed that the top 1% owns 40% of the wealth?” “What’s the deal with all this capital accumulation?”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

6 years

Has anyone else noticed that “I am not a scientist” is the new cliche prelude for lobbyists & fossil fuel interests to slip in climate denial pseudoscience on live television? Here are some examples:

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

I was delighted to speak with @TeenVogue about American global supremacy!

How the U.S. Became the World’s Police

“The U.S. presence in the world is military presence.”

www.teenvogue.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

If the Biden administration believes the United States is not at war, then it should support the repeal of every Congressional authorization of war, including the 2001 authorization that provides the basis for ongoing U.S. military operations in approximately nine countries.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

2 months

Obama, 2016: "The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do...This is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for."

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

9 months

This is Osama bin Laden’s justification for killing American civilians.

Read No Shortcuts

@JoshuaPHilll

9 months

Anderson Cooper's guest tonight, former Israeli intelligence chief: "The noncombatant population in the Gaza strip is really a nonexistent term because all of the Gazans voted for Hamas, and as we have seen on 7th of October most of the population in the Gaza strip are Hamas."

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

This is not how international politics works. Other states do not share American policymakers’ benign view of their own intentions. Would the United States look kindly on Russia or China arming Mexico or threatening to form a military alliance with Mexico?

Michael McFaul

@McFaul

3 years

Putin is only threatened by NATO if he plans to attack a NATO country. NATO has never attacked the USSR or Russia and never will. And Putin of course knows that.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

Just ask Trump: "What is Obamacare?"

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

American isolationism: *Did not exist before WWII (when the US conquered a continent and took colonies). *Did not exist before 9/11 (when the US pursued global military dominance). *Is not happening now (when endless wars are hardly ending). To believe otherwise is dangerous.

Lindsey Graham

@LindseyGrahamSC

5 years

American isolationism: * Did not work before WWII. * Did not work before 9/11. * Will not work now. When it comes to fighting ISIS it's a bad idea to outsource American national security to Russia, Iran, and Turkey. To believe otherwise is very dangerous.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

Liberal democracy and international order are truly in danger if Bill Kristol, and other advocates of wars of aggression, continue to be taken seriously. There are few greater dangers to peace, prosperity, democracy, and climate in the 21st century than their mindless militarism.

Bill Kristol

@BillKristol

5 years

75 years of a US-led liberal international order, based on a US forward presence and backed by US might, with regional and bilateral alliances and relatively free trade, has enabled remarkable peace and prosperity. But let’s go back to the 1920’s and 30’s!

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

Trump and the establishment are one in assuming that the United States must seek military supremacy across the world — in all regions, at all costs, for all time. In the @newrepublic , I say no:

How to End Endless War

The case against American military supremacy

newrepublic.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

It wasn't enough for Former Defense Secretary Mattis to spin through the revolving door to rejoin the board of General Dynamics. He also had to hawk a book while dancing around saying anything of significance. Civic duty is in short supply.

Mehdi Hasan

@mehdirhasan

5 years

I don’t think the guy who served under Trump and then refused to quit when Charlottesville happened and then when he eventually did quit and wrote a book, refused to criticize Trump, gets to ‘mock’ Trump now *after* Trump attacks him.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

1 year

For decades, U.S. officials have widely recognized that enlarging NATO, especially to Ukraine, ran at least some risk of putting the United States on a collision course with Russia. Below are some quotations that I didn't have room to include in my piece.

Opinion | The Tale the West Tells Itself About Ukraine (Published 2023)

Ukraine’s best path to peace is to be well armed and supported outside NATO — not to join it.

www.nytimes.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

The centuries-long record of Western humanitarian intervention has found its singular visual expression.

Laleh Khalili 🇵🇸

@LalehKhalili

4 years

The utter absurdity of BHL who has to stand on tiptoes to make his sorry ass look taller than the Kurdish people he is getting himself photographed with:

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

1 month

The Democratic Party “is giving the American people a choice they do not want and then threatening them with the end of democracy if they do not take it.”

‎The Ezra Klein Show: What Is the Democratic Party For? on Apple Podcasts

‎Show The Ezra Klein Show, Ep What Is the Democratic Party For? - Jun 30, 2024

podcasts.apple.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

6 years

In the latest of his endless columns advocating endless war, @MaxBoot complains that my response to him was "endlessly retweeted." I checked: that tweet currently has 12 retweets. Poor Max. If only the war in Afghanistan had lasted a mere 12 years.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

1 year

The White House should think about what Biden’s line conveys to the world: that when the United States commits aggression, it isn’t wrong or doesn’t matter; that only Europe has a history; that supporting Ukraine is mere power politics, not principled opposition to aggression.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

“That Lee isn’t on Biden’s list, while someone like former national security adviser Susan E. Rice is, speaks volumes about the hold the pro-intervention, pro-endless war national security establishment continues to exert over much of our politics.”

Opinion | The woman Biden isn’t considering for vice president, but should

This is the woman Biden should pick if he wants to show he's listening to the party's future.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

5 years

American politics is awash in scandals, but some scandals don't scandalize. I keep thinking back to the U.S.-supplied GBU-12 Paveway II bomb that Saudi Arabia dropped last year on a school bus in Yemen, killing 40 young boys.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

30 days

20 points underwater in July. Goodbye.

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

The debate said all it needed to say about foreign policy. Who could watch it and think the United States is the indispensable nation that must dominate the world by force?

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

2 years

Russia's aggression may tempt the United States to try to remain the leading protector of Europe even as it counters China. But the European awakening opens up a far better option: transition to a Europe-led European defense. My thoughts in @PostOutlook :

Perspective | Europe is showing that it could lead its own defense

In the long run, the United States can’t contain both Russia and China. Europe’s resolute opposition to Putin’s war provides an opening for a strategic shift.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

2 years

I am reminded of George F. Kennan's remarks on NATO expansion in 1998: "Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [advocates of NATO expansion] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are."

Nick Schifrin

@nickschifrin

2 years

Looks like Beijing will use the @SpeakerPelosi visit to create a new military status quo around #Taiwan :

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

4 years

The real extremism:

Erica Fein

@enfein

4 years

This is incredibly disappointing language from @RepAdamSmith -- who is saying that those of us who believe that the Pentagon budget should be reduced to a mere *$600 billion* are "extremists."

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Stephen Wertheim

@stephenwertheim

3 years

"If China sent special operations forces or used lethal drone strikes in a half-dozen African or Asian countries to combat potential anti-Chinese terrorism, Washington would lose its mind. That's American exceptionalism," says @llumpe in @FinancialTimes :

Has America had enough of war?

After 20 years in Afghanistan, the US is re-evaluating the exceptionalism that drives its foreign policy

www.ft.com

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