International relations

The Striking Gesture

By Kevin Baker,

“I was not elected to do small things,” President Donald Trump said upon announcing his new Middle East peace plan at the end of January. Trump was not elected to…

Alms for the Führer

From a list of gifts given to President Trump by foreign officials in 2017, which was published by the State Department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol in March. The…

What China Threat?

By Kishore Mahbubani,

Within about fifteen years, China’s economy will surpass America’s and become the largest in the world. As this moment approaches, meanwhile, a consensus has formed in Washington that China poses…

Donald Trump Is a Good President

By Michel Houellebecq, Translated by John Cullen

In all sincerity, I like Americans a lot; I’ve met many lovely people in the United States, and I empathize with the shame many Americans (and not only “New York…

Destroyer of Worlds

By Elaine Scarry, Eric Schlosser, Lydia Millet, Mohammed Hanif, Rachel Bronson, Theodore Postol,

In February 1947, Harper’s Magazine published Henry L. Stimson’s “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.” As secretary of war, Stimson had served as the chief military adviser to President…

From Russia, With Lies

From 1,649 factually untrue reports published by pro-Kremlin media outlets over the past eighteen months. The reports were compiled by the Disinformation Review, a European Union project set up to…

Tearing Up the Map

By Andrew J. Bacevich, Hamid Dabashi, Hassan Hassan, Kori Schake, Dominique de Villepin, Paula J. Dobriansky,

As Barack Obama prepares to vacate the Oval Office after two terms, he has earned an odd distinction: the United States has been at war every day of his tenure,…

American Imperium

By Andrew J. Bacevich,

Republicans and Democrats disagree today on many issues, but they are united in their resolve that the United States must remain the world’s greatest military power. This bipartisan commitment to…

Secretary of Nothing

By Andrew Cockburn,

When former president Bill Clinton nominated Barack Obama for a second term at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, the hall was packed to the rafters with…

A Letter to Paul Wolfowitz

By Andrew J. Bacevich,

Dear Paul, I have been meaning to write to you for some time, and the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war provides as good an occasion as…

Brazil nots

By Harper’s Staff,

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