Michael Brenner

The Democrats are in a shambles. Progressives, née liberals, are in particularly dire straits. They have been marginalized and their influence on public policy wanes even as events reconfirm their values, their philosophy and their historic cause. They face an election that pits extreme rightists against an incumbent president who...

The ever contentious defense budget is being fought over in Congress. It is big and it is complex. The politics of Pentagon spending are also big-time -- an an all-in and nasty high stakes game. What determines what's decided and who gets what? In a better world, the many hundreds...

We are into the second decade of the "war on terror." It now ranges from the mountains of Afghanistan to the jungles of Colombia. It has dominated our lives since 9/11. Yet there is no measure of success to gauge progress or to say when it may end. So it...

Barack Obama announced a new war on atrocity and genocide at the Holocaust Museum in Washington this week. There, he declared a renewed American dedication to act decisively and in a timely fashion wherever the threat of either might raise its head. An ambitious package of pledges, policies...

Iran and North Korea have been in the headlines this past week, with their nuclear programs the focal point. They habitually are treated quite differently, though. Iran garners the lion's share of attention as a news leader. North Korea appears intermittently and fleetingly. Consequently, little effort is made to compare...

Immaturity, as the alienists tell us, expresses itself in various psychological strategies to cope with a reality that challenges self-image -- e.g. a recalcitrant Islamic Republic of Iran threatening the ingrained belief of American leaders that they can coerce weaker states to bend to their will and thereby fulfill the...

America's Common Man exists no more -- gone and forgotten. Once he was lauded as the salt of the earth -- our country's embodiment of what made us special, of what made the great democratic experiment successful, of what made of the United States the magnetic pole for the world's...

The normally placid waters of European politics have been roiled by the ongoing monetary crisis. The tides threatening the structurally-flawed mechanisms designed to protect the EU's tidy precincts from a wave of defaults have crested ever higher while flustered government leaders, Brussels commissioners, European Central Bank authorities, and even the...

The latest Afghan atrocity, on the heels of the Koran book burnings, should be seen as a flare in the night signaling that the last act in this tragic drama is upon us. Recently we have been distracted from this slowly unfolding disaster because our attention has been fixed on...

The United States is on the brink of war with Iran with no more understanding -- or discussion -- of why than we understand or discuss why we are fighting an all-out war in Afghanistan. What has become a national habit of acting without public deliberation is a clear and...

In the latest weird turn in this weirdest of political seasons, Rick Santorum is now the pivot of American political life. Not because he will be elected president -- he doesn't have the proverbial snowball's chance in Hell (where he could expect a hostile welcome from Satan). Not because he...

American electoral politics has become as close to a random phenomenon as public life ever gets. Obama and Palin in 2008 established that truth. The Republican contest, now in its second year, has confirmed it. Just about anything can happen. The causal sequence is about as hard to discern as...

More military capability equates to more security for the United States. This precept is so deeply embedded in our minds that no one sees a need to state it. Yet it may be false. Let's consider the following. If we did not possess a mighty high-tech military, we may never...

Last week the Obama administration sent clear signals that it was planning to fold its tents in Afghanistan earlier than previously advertised. That set off a flurry of speculation as to why and whether we were giving up on the mission. Most of the talk is about how a retreat...

Here are a few thoughts.

First, there will be no reduction in the current defense budget. The cuts in question are in fact reductions in future expenditure as called for in the Pentagon's spending plans. In nominal dollars, outlays in fact will rise somewhat. Whether they grow in constant dollars...

The drums are sounding for war on Iran. The leading Republican presidential candidates pledge military action as soon as they cross the threshold of the White House. The Obama administration sharpens its rhetoric in accompaniment to imposing coercive sanctions. It strong arms its allies to stand with it in confrontation....

The 2012 electoral season is now in its second year. Republican presidential candidates began their marathon run in the spring of 2011 and their long round of national "debates" concluded before the first chords of "Auld Lang Syne" were struck. The bizarre timing of an electoral cycle that is close...

Americans are engaged in their quadrennial exercise in political free play we call the presidential election. Actually, very few are direct participants -- most are passive observers. Mitt Romney is proclaimed by all the media to have almost sewn up the Republican nomination based on the votes of less than...

It's been a year-long slog on the campaign trail for the nine presidential aspirants seeking the Republican nomination. It seems even longer for those who are not addicted to the insipid and the preening, yet could not avoid taking an occasional peek at what is in store for America in...

Failure is hard for a country to swallow -- especially so for the United States. For two reasons. One, Americans feel that our nation was born in a state of original virtue which, as Destiny's child, always would be crowned with success. Two, the US has experienced tangible failure only...