US Empire

Evolving International Law, Political Realism, and the Illusions of Diplomacy


By Richard Falk
International law is mainly supportive of Palestinian grievances with respect to Israel, as well as offering both Israelis and Palestinians a reliable marker as to how these two peoples could live normally together in the future if the appropriate political will existed on both sides to reach a sustainable peace.

Get out of Afghanistan


By Jonathan Power
August 29, 2017
It’s the most repeated maxim in all the reporting on Afghanistan: “The Americans have the watches, the Taliban have the time”.
Dead right! This is America’s longest war ever, 16 years and counting. President Donald Trump, admitting he was reversing his campaign call for pulling out, has now decided to stay in, sending to Afghanistan another 3,900 troops to reinforce the 8,400 there now.

End of Nuclearism or the End of the World: Utopian Dreams, Dystopian Nightmares


By Richard Falk
We are living amid contradictions whether we like it or not, driving expectations about the future toward opposite extremes.
Increasingly plausible are fears that the ‘sixth extinction’ will encompass the human species, or at least, throw human society back to a technology of sticks and stones, with a habitat limited to caves and forests.