Louis René Beres
Emptiness and consciousness: Still unseen limits of American politics
Nowadays, in the midst of near-perpetual scandal, both Democrats and Republicans are variously criticized for failing to fix a beleaguered country. But America’s core problems are not remediable in politics. By itself, no American...
Toward a Second North Korean Summit: Adjusting US Expectations
Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is still very difficult." (Carl von Clausewitz, On War)
Donald Trump plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sometime toward the end of February. From...
With Trump, ‘the times, they are a changin
The times are changing. In 1960, when I was still in high school, John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States. Immediately and intelligently, the new president challenged an entire generation of...
Fearful Continuities From Goebbels To Trump
“Intellect rots the brain.”
Joseph Goebbels, Third Reich Minister of Propaganda
“I love the poorly educated“
Donald J. Trump, Candidate for President of the United States
One should hesitate to make any such fearful comparisons, but if truth...
Trump and Destruction of the American Mind
An open loathing of intellect has become substantially de rigeur for Donald Trump and his supporters. Accordingly, the nation’s chief executive regards terms like “intellectual” or “analytic” as epithets rather than positive attributes or prospectively gainful...
How Saving Israel from Terrorism Could Save the World
For Islamist and jihadist fighters around the world — ISIS, Hamas, it generally makes little actual difference — terrorism represents a sacred form of religious sacrifice. The underlying purpose of this murderous ethos is...
Intellect and politics: Trumpian opposites
"All our dignity," observed Blaise Pascal back in the 17th century, "consists in thought... Let us labor then to think well: this is the foundation of morality." To be sure, this simple truth is being...
Synergistic perils for Israel, 2019
Our eighth grade geometry teachers were not always correct. One very conspicuous “axiomatic” error was contained in stipulating postulates that ignored “synergy,” because the expected “whole” of certain global intersections could sometimes prove substantially...
‘America First’ is a deepening policy error
In the seventeenth century, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes warned against anarchy in world politics, conditions that he associated with a devastating “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes).Appearing in his book Leviathan,...
Terrorism as Power over Death
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Opposing terrorism, especially jihadist terror, has become a continuous security obligation of the US, Europe, and of course Israel. Still, too little serious analytic attention has been directed towards identifying remedies for...