Politics & Power
EDW Civics: Who Gets to Start a War?
A lot of Americans were taught a clean sentence in school.
Read essayWar & Foreign Policy.
War powers, alliances, strategy, and the human and economic consequences of force.
Selected essays, arranged as a reading path. Original publication dates remain visible.
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Trump Has the Bombs. Iran Has the Clock
The United States can destroy far more than Iran can. Iran only needs to keep Trump from turning that power into a political victory as November approaches and the cost at home keeps rising.
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EDW Explainer: Why Wars Cost More Than the Bombs
Most Americans hear “cost of war” and picture the obvious things.
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Most of us have taken history class. Most of us have watched enough headlines to know one uncomfortable truth about the Middle East: power can win battles, but it rarely “ends the story.”
So when I hear Washington talk about this war like it is clean, decisive, and controllable, I do not feel safer. I feel like we are being sold safety as a slogan.
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EDW: The Blank-Check Doctrine
Here is the trick they are trying to pull on the country, and it’s so old it should be embarrassing.
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EDW: A Feeling Is Not a Doctrine
The most revealing line in today’s reporter exchange did not come wrapped in a statistic or a briefing slide. It came wrapped in something far more dangerous, because it sounds human and therefore “relatable.”
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EDW: He Sold a Short War. Now He Is Selling an Almost Peace.
Reader warning.
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Greenland by force would trade America’s biggest security asset for a map trophy
America can argue about almost anything. Border policy. Spending. Culture wars. Even what “strength” looks like.
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EDW | Alliances Are Not a Party. Break that—and you break the alliance.
If your national‑security doctrine reads like a comment‑section fever dream (“civilizational erasure,” “patriotic parties,” warnings that “certain NATO members will become majority non‑European”), you’re not leading the alliance; you’re…
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I’m going to say this as plainly as I can, especially for our friends in Europe who are reading along:
A lot of Americans love our NATO allies. We respect you. We’re grateful for you. And watching one person treat decades of partnership like a poker chip is breaking our hearts at EDW.
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The World Will Read America’s Venezuela Oil Plan as a Confession of Impunity
If the United States wanted to send a message that it can still project power in the Western Hemisphere, it did not need to sound like it was annexing a country’s revenue stream.
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Smash‑and‑Grab Foreign Policy
We just seized a ship on the high seas, stuck 1.85 million barrels in our pocket for “safekeeping,” and announced a “total blockade” of sanctioned tankers: details to be provided once the lawyers stop blinking in Morse code. Caracas calls…
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