Old enemies and absent friends
On holiday, keen to avoid anything to do with my day job, I came across a copy of The President is Missing, a thriller authored by Bill Clinton and James … Continue reading
The analogy misleader
You don’t have to watch US cable news for very long before somebody asks about history and Trump. Can you find a comparison? A precedent? Or is Donald Trump so … Continue reading
America meets Russia in the Urals
Even during the height of the Cold War, it was for a time fashionable to say that no two peoples were more similar than Americans and Russians. Some of the … Continue reading
The cost of hacking an election
‘I don’t know which is worse,’ asked the Russian comic Maxim Galkin in a hilarious skit that compared Donald Trump and the veteran populist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, ‘the choice there or … Continue reading
The Kaiser, the Tsar, and the President: an election day post
What happens when policymakers disagree about Russia? It’s surely a good thing — even if it doesn’t always head off disaster. Take newly unified Germany in the decades before 1914. … Continue reading
‘Our adversary’: Hillary, Trump, Russia
‘Our adversary.’ This is how Hillary Clinton described Russia in the second presidential debate on Sunday night. So routine has distrust and recrimination between the two countries become that nobody … Continue reading
Stalin and Hiroshima
In Hiroshima today, President Obama avoided a politically toxic and morally doubtful apology for the atomic bombing of Japan. Instead he faced up to the dangers of war. ‘We have … Continue reading
