Stephen Walt

None Of The Above: How Foreign Influence Works in Washington The United States is wealthy, powerful, and a democracy.  That means there are many avenues for foreign countries vying to influence its politics&nbsp...

noneoftheaboveegfpodcast.libsyn.com/how-foreign-...

The Top 10 Reasons to Be Thankful in 2025 These are trying times—but there's still plenty to be grateful for in the world.

Seems to get tougher every year, but I did find ten reasons to be thankful in 2025. Latest FP column here: foreignpolicy.com/2025/11/26/t...

First Secretary of Defense you could defeat by painting a tunnel on the side of a boulder.

A big trend in higher ed and I absolutely hate it

White House blew past legal concerns in deadly strikes on drug boats The Trump administration sidestepped skeptical lawyers across national security agencies as it pursued a military campaign against alleged narcotraffickers, officials say.

detailed WashPost account of how Trump and Stephen Miller sidelined serious lawyers so they could fabricate a justification for committing murder

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

The Regime Change Temptation in Venezuela If past is prologue, a U.S. attempt to overthrow Maduro would not end well.

My skeptical take (with Lindsey O'Rourke of Boston College) on regime change in Venezuela.
www.foreignaffairs.com/venezuela/re...

📣 Job alert! 📣 Harvard Kennedy School is running 2 open-rank faculty searches in technology & public policy. One position is specifically for scholars using data science to address public problems. Please help us spread the word! academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15561

Faculty searches at Harvard Kennedy School in applied microeconomics and in technology and public policy www.hks.harvard.edu/more/about/l...

He promised not to do this. He lied. What a surprise.

It is good to see the pushback on Trump lead to real losses for him. But it's hard to be optimistic when he still wields the enormous power of the presidency. ICE is still rampaging, HHS is harming people, the U.S. may be about to sell out Ukraine, the boat strikes...he's still doing so much damage.

For what it’s worth, as a commander and officer it was my duty, moral obligation, and legal requirement to first question and then to not obey any illegal order I was given.

The same is true for everyone who swear their oath.

Hope that clears things up.

A tweet from “chris evans @notcapnamerica” includes an edited image of Trump pointing toward stacked food items with text reading: “So when I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one. —President Trump, August 2024.” Below it is a tweet from “Newswire_US” reading: “U.S. grocery prices hit record high as monthly cost for a family of four reaches $1,030.”

He’s never set food in a grocery store as a customer, has he.

Trump shrugged off the murder of Jamal Khashoggi this week by saying "things happen," an attitude towards violence that has huge implications for our country. @rosabrooks.bsky.social and @djrothkopf.bsky.social discuss and look for answers in our history:

ow.ly/urX550Xut82

youtu.be/FJFgW2c5m8o

Not that he cares about facts, but 92% of Medicaid recipients are working or fall within an exempt category, and thanks to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (🤮), immigrants generally have to wait 5 years to enroll in Medicaid.

RFK Jr. is making shit up.

This is what competitive authoritarianism looks like - regime ally trying to purchase media and remove critical voices

It remains a national shanda that we have totally moved on from the attempted and actual assassinations of elected Democrats, as if they never even happened. It's why we're here, dealing with this should-immediately-end-a-presidency stuff today.

Strangling the world-beating export industry which cross-subsidizes higher education for Americans. The White House says that's good news!

In related news, the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killings shows that rightwingers don't actually mind cancel culture—so long as it's done against their ideological adversaries. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

There is something darkly poetic, in an Orwellian sense, about the aspiring dictator saying to the press, "Quiet, quiet, piggy".

Oh, I get it now. MAGA = Make ARABIA Great Again.

The press corps sure could do a better job of challenging Trump when he lies, when he refuses to answer questions, when he attacks colleagues. The first reporter who says to him, "Why are you being such a jerk?" will become a folk hero. And i hope he or she keeps their job.

Important stuff here from @pattynieberg.bsky.social and Jeff Schogol in light of the recent Venezuela news.

*Every single* institution, organization, and individual who caved into Trump already looks worse for having done so.

And every one that stood up continues to look better.

Tell Students the Truth About American History We owe it to Americans of all ages to be honest about the country’s past, including its contradictions.

I spent October traveling to schools throughout the South talking to students about American history. What I found were young people who understand we can tell a story that includes both the positive and the negative. As one 8th grader in Memphis said, “Doesn’t seem that hard, just say both things.”

Lubbock Will Remove Buddy Holly-Themed Crosswalk After Federal Crackdown

And then they came for Buddy Holly…

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/u...

The Perils and Pitfalls of a U.S.-Saudi Defense Pact U.S. troops would be obliged to defend Riyadh.

The core risk of a U.S.-Saudi defense pact is structural: Saudi Arabia would gain protection; the United States would gain obligation.

Those boats we are sinking in the Caribbean and Pacific are small and at best very lightly armed and we have the most powerful Navy in the world. Yet somehow we can’t stop them, detain the crews, seize the drugs (if any), and we prefer to just kill people instead. Not a good look…

Progressives have echoed the right in calling for a revival of manufacturing. This is a mistake. Automation and global competition have killed manufacturing jobs in virtually all middle-income and advanced economies. Manufacturing's share of employment has broadly continued to fall in the United States despite strident efforts by Presidents Biden and Trump to arrest it. Today roughly one in 12 American workers is employed in manufacturing. Putting up trade barriers against China will not work. China itself has lost millions of manufacturing jobs over the past decade and a half.

Dani Rodrik in the NYT the other day with a pretty compelling argument about making service sector jobs into good jobs

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/o...