Washington has recently initiated major war games in the neighborhoods and on the borders of Russia and China, the most intense martial exercises since the end of the Second World War. The old Cold War ante has been upped, and the danger of military confrontation between Washington and Russia and/or China looms large. (See my extensive discussion in “How Clinton Could Make a War”, in CounterPunch magazine, volume 23, number 5.) No less an authority than Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that Hillary Clinton’s promise to implement a no-fly zone over Syria would entail war with Russia. Some have claimed that Trump’s reluctance to impose no-fly in Syria is the silver lining on the dark cloud of his coming presidency. But more impressive commentators have argued that war with China is an equally horrific possibility. (John Pilger, “The Coming War on China”, CounterPunch, December 2, 2016.)
Stephen Kinzer’s foreign-policy commentaries stand head and shoulders above the rest of mainstream reporting. Kinzer was for more than 20 years a premier foreign correspondent for The New York Times. His book All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror is a first-rate analysis of exactly what the title describes and his Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change From Hawaii To Iraq, details some of the major U.S. overseas interventions and exposes the corporate…