Opinion | In Counting the Dead in Iran, a Picture of Ferocity

Trump contributed to up to 30,000 killed and 300,000 wounded by encouraging and then abandoning Iranian protesters. Khamenei was as ruthless as Trump was feckless.

Like US in Hungary in 1956, Trump is Roosevelt in reverse: big talk, small stick.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/o...

Congratulations on a well-deserved honor!

As a Grawemeyer Award winner you are joining very distinguished company — all the way back to Keohane, Jervjs, and Gorbachev!

Hard to top Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov making his cabinet clap as he lifted a weight bar, but forcing people to pretend to like the Melania movie is the ultimate dominance move.

Four sources means either Noem asked her staff to get this out or they did it on their own to keep her and their jobs. Either way ends any trust between Noem and Miller, and risking Trump’s wrath on the leak means Noem is desperate.

Downfall Bovino Edition. You're welcome.

Cox, Coates, Serwer. Gen X throwing our best writers at the moment.

(Sorry, Adam. We're claiming you.)

Understand that 370 days ago even bringing a motion like this would probably have been treated as sanctionably frivolous

Today it was granted ex parte

15 years ago I borrowed a bulletproof vest from a reporter so I could report from a war zone. I held onto it after I returned.

Last week the reporter finally asked for it back because he is headed to Minneapolis.

Greenland has become Trump’s great white whale and we are all on the Pequod.

In 1910, British General Wilson asked the French General Foch “How many British soldiers would you need to defend against Germany?”

Foch replied “A single British soldier—and we will see to it that he is killed” (which would bring Britain into the war).

Tripwire time in Greenland.

Excellent essay . Also : Why we study comparative politics

Goldfinger: I plan to destroy Fort Knox with a nuclear weapon, and gold will go up to $4600 an ounce.

Bond: Why don’t you just convince the President to prosecute the Chair of the Fed on false charges? Same result.

G: . . .

B: . . .

G: This mofo is crazy let’s laser him in half.

WH pool photo of today’s meeting of Trump and oil execs

Oil company execs meeting w Trump today to divide up the spoils of Venezuela.

Reminds me of the good old days of imperialism and robber baron capitalism.

Make it viral.

There are reasons that every foreign-backed colonial regime has lost to a national liberation movement for the last 80 years.

— potential insurgents are already highly organized as a political movement

—insurgents would have sympathy from a large diaspora and from foreign governments

—a large population of anti- government refugees is right across the border and could be a base for an insurgency

—insurgents can easily get weapons (drones) that can attack colonial installations (oil refineries)

An insurgency may not arise quickly in Venezuela, but eventually one is likely as all the pieces identified by research are in place:

—strong majority of the populace is angry at their govt and everyone knows it (no preference falsification)

When people invest they drop fantasies about the future, whether about the stability of the climate or of governments.

Insurance prices for properties vulnerable to climate change are up.

Oil company stocks after Trump grabbed Maduro and left his regime intact are not.

Just got this in the mail and eager to dig in. Jervis would have a lot to say right now! Delighted to have a piece in the volume with @profsaunders.bsky.social

some people love quoting "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." That was Athens saying that at the height of its empire. Few of those people seem to remember what happened to Athens the very next year.

Chevron stock is up only 4% since the kidnapping of Maduro. Looks like investors are not at all convinced Venezuela will be a big growth market for them (Exxon up only 1%).

For this Trump trashed America’s international reputation.

Domestic Distributional Roots of National Interest SOYOUNG LEE Yale University, United States, and Duke University, United States What international issues become national interests worth fighting for, and why? Contrary to conventional wisdom, I argue that issues without clear economic value, such as barren lands, are more likely to be perceived as national interests because they do not benefit any single domestic group. Since who benefits is unclear, politicians have an easier time framing such issues as benefiting the whole nation. I test this argument using survey experiments on the American public. The results show that first, issues providing diffuse benefits to citizens are more likely to be considered national interests than issues providing concentrated benefits to certain domestic groups. Second, issues with clearer economic value are harder to frame as having diffuse benefits because they are more easily associated with specific beneficiaries. This study proposes a new theory of national interest and offers a potential explanation for why people frequently support conflict over issues without obvious benefits.

Apropos current events, I want to tout this paper by @soyounglee.bsky.social showing that discussion of economic benefits can reduce public support for military action. People are skeptical when they think specific groups (e.g., oil companies) will benefit.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Venezuela’s Men With Guns Remain the Ultimate Power After Maduro’s Ouster Diosdado Cabello and Vladimir Padrino command Venezuela’s police and military, and represent a wild card for Trump.

US seems to have no plan to deal w/ powerful Venezuelan security forces, who can threaten/thwart political leaders if they comply w/ US demands. Authoritarian politics 101 & major reason US approach could lead to military escalation and/or civil conflict.
www.wsj.com/world/americ...

From State Dept transcript of Rubio appearance on This Week w/ George Stephanopolous: SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, we’re not going to judge moving forward based simply on what’s said in press conferences. We want to see action here at the end of the day. Rhetoric is one thing. You see rhetoric for a lot of different reasons. There’s a lot of different reasons why people go on TV and say certain things in these countries, especially 15 hours or 12 hours after the person who used to be in charge of the regime is now in handcuffs and on his way to New York. So what I will say is, moving forward, it’s very simple. We’re not going to be reactive here to statements at press conferences or what people say in a certain interview or what some media post – some media post somewhere. What we are going to react to is very simple: What do you do? Not what you’re saying in public – what happens? What happens next? Do the drugs stop coming? Are the changes made? Is Iran expelled? Is Hizballah no longer able and Iran no longer able to operate against our interests from Venezuela? Does the migration pattern stop? Do the drug trafficking boats end? Do you deal with the ELN and the FARC, two narcoterrorist organizations who control territory and operate with impunity from the territory of Venezuela against the interests of Colombia and the United States? These are the things we want addressed. If they are addressed, that’s how we’ll judge it. If they’re not addressed, that’s how we’ll judge it. QUESTION: And what happens if they’re not addressed?

🧵Day 3 and we have a new meaning for "running Venezuela," courtesy of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, who is in charge of Venezuela as well as the National Archives. We're going to insist they do what's in the US national interest. Time for some principal-agent theory. 1/

The Trump-Rubio vision for the future of Venezuela is not polling well.

If you ever wondered what would happen if someone in the “get off my lawn” stage of grouchy dementia had complete control of US foreign policy, well, now you know.

Six months ago @profmichaelross.bsky.social and I wrote in Foreign Affairs that the US is increasingly behaving like a petrostate. Seems relevant today

Trump Plunges the U.S. Into a New Era of Risk in Venezuela

“Legitimize” (in last sentence) is not the proper word here. More like “enforce the same bloody repression of the Maduro regime, this time with US backing.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/u...