Louis René Beres
Ukraine as a ‘Final Epidemic’ Amid Increasingly Plausible Risks of a Nuclear War
“Defenseless under the night, our world in stupor lies….” — W H Auden
Background of the Current Nuclear War Threat
Since August 6, 1945, the “official” start of the Nuclear Age, humankind has been acquainting itself...
An “Unphilosophical Spirit”: Root Causes of American Intellectual Decline
“The enemy is the unphilosophical spirit which knows nothing and wants to know nothing of truth.“- Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time (1971)
For the most part, Americans loath mind-challenging excursions into philosophy. At times,...
Prioritizing Russian Crimes In Ukraine: Aggression Versus Human Rights
International law requires all states in world politics to oppose crimes of aggression and crimes against human rights. Among other things, these coinciding requirements are “peremptory,” meaning that authoritative expectations of world community action...
Shaping Tenable Policy on North Korea: A U.S. Security Imperative
Prof. Louis René Beres
The Adversarial Chessboard
In response to the growing aggressiveness of its North Korean nuclear adversary, the United States needs to fashion its pertinent policy positions on comprehensive analytic foundations. More precisely, Kim...
A Bewildering Juxtaposition: Donald Trump’s “Temple of Intellect”
“The university is the temple of intellect, and I am its high priest.”- Miguel de Unamuno, speaking against irrationalism as rector of the University of Salamanca (Spain), 12 October 1936
From the start of his...
An Ironic “Side-Effect”: Trump Document Mishandling And America’s Nuclear Strategy
“I learn a science from the soul’s aggressions.”-St. John Perse
Mar-a-Lago, Search Warrants and Beyond
The contentious issue of Trump’s “mishandled” national security documents has reached the very highest levels of public urgency. Above all, this...
World Unity and “Cosmopolis”: Law-Based Opportunities for Survival
“Civilization is the never-ending process of creating one world and one humanity.”
Lewis Mumford, In the Name of Sanity (1954)
Biological Sameness and Species Unification
The unity and interdependence of humankind is not subject to reasonable challenge. Beginning with our biological sameness,...
Resurrecting Trump: Reason and anti-reason in American politics
Even today, even after so much accumulated evidence of Donald J. Trump’s incapacity and malfeasance, millions of Americans regard his presidency as exemplary. This cannot be explained in terms of any inherent liabilities of...
Building Global Civilization: Humankind’s Core Obligation
“Everyone knows that the world situation in which we live is not a final one.”
Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age (1951)
For the most part, human beings regard any global or planetary civilization as a naïve...
When International Legal Obligations Are Contradictory: America’s Dilemma in Ukraine
Ongoing Russian crimes against Ukraine are egregious and overlapping. Most conspicuous of these crimes are Vladimir Putin’s acts of aggression and of genocide. Jurisprudentially, even if Putin lacks any confirmable “intent to destroy” specific Ukrainian populations, Russia’s law-breaking behavior...