The ‘unbelievably small’ deployment of Special Operations Forces to Syria

Today, the president reneged on his longstanding promise not to deploy American ground troops to Syria. It may be tempting to view this development as a change in the administration’s strategy, or even as a sign that they have finally recognized that degrading and destroying the Islamic State will take...

A trilateral in name only

When leaders of Japan, South Korea, and China gather in Seoul this weekend, it may be best to paraphrase Sigmund Freud: Sometimes, a meeting is just a meeting. The Seoul confab will be the first trilateral meeting of Northeast Asia’s main powers since May 2012. This time, however, a new face will represent China, current premier Li Keqiang, who will be making his first visit to South Korea. That...

Liberté de la mer: A case for French naval operations in Asia

A French frigate is docked at Zhanjiang in Guangdong province this week for a good will visit, and two Australian naval vessels will, in the coming days, engage in bilateral exercises with Chinese warships. After they conclude their activities with the Chinese navy, all three of these ships should head...

Paul Krugman thinks voters should give Democrats the benefit of the doubt on debt and spending. Hmm …

Paul Krugman on the GOP presidential economic plans: So now we have candidates proposing “wildly unaffordable” tax cuts. Can we start by noting that this isn’t a bipartisan phenomenon, that it’s not true that everyone does it? Hillary Clinton isn’t proposing wildly unaffordable stuff; Bernie Sanders...

It’s mad to forgo missile defense

American thinking about missile defense has been incoherent from the very beginning. The issue is superficially simple: the Soviet Union threatened the American people with nuclear missiles, so the US should naturally have tried to defend them against those missiles. Missile defense is among the most unequivocally defensive military systems one can imagine. It cannot be used for attack. Yet the US...

Flat taxes and gold: A few thoughts on Ted Cruz’s economic plan

Full disclosure: I have written critically of the flat tax and gold standard as appropriate policy choices for the modern US economy. Frequently, in fact. So there goes Ted Cruz in Wednesday’s debate endorsing both policies (kind of regarding the gold standard): “If you want a 10 percent flat tax where...

China scraps one-child policy: Country’s great age of reform begins in the bedroom

Governmental reform plans have been known since Hammurabi drafted his first set of law codes over 3,000 years ago. The repeated cycles of reform and reaction are as much an exercise designed to keep government scribes and bureaucrats busy, as they are intended to affect the activities of the people under central control. Rarely, however, does reform directly impact the most intimate matters of the...

How the national debt affects your family: Hassett on Fox News’ ‘Special Report’

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China, South Korea, and Japan: What to expect from the trilateral summit

After a three-year hiatus, South Korea, Japan, and China will convene for a trilateral summit on Sunday, November 1, 2015. The high-level meeting, though largely symbolic, is intended to address several ongoing regional disputes including historical grievances over Japan’s wartime past, Chinese military...

Diagnosing the urge to run for office

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt contributed by AEI’s Sally Satel in Politico Magazine’s “Diagnosing the urge to run for office,” November/December 2015. ‘No reason to suspect aberration as a general rule’ A few months before the 1964 presidential election, the now-defunct Fact magazine surveyed the membership of the American Psychiatric Association about the personality of Barry Goldwater,...

No Medicare premium spike…for now

The fix is in, but seniors have little reason to celebrate. About 16 million Medicare beneficiaries were facing an unprecedented 52 percent increase next year in their premiums for Part B, which pays for physician services. The budget deal worked out by the White House and Congress held that to a more manageable 15 percent increase. But this kicks the cost down the road, leaving an even bigger problem...

State of the race: Ponnuru on MSNBC’s ‘MTPDaily’

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On energy security, Obama should follow David Cameron’s example

Less than a decade ago U.S. energy security was in crisis. Domestic oil production had been declining steadily from a peak of 10 million barrels per day in 1970 to only half that amount in 2005. Our reliance on oil imports and OPEC had risen to an all-time high ten years ago. U.S. natural gas production had been flat for more than 30 years and was slipping behind growing domestic demand. We were on...

The family foundations of economic growth

It is often hard to understand exactly what drives economic growth. By definition, economic growth is the amalgamation of labor, capital and technological change. As individuals, we understand that we contribute to this process in our daily lives through our decisions to work, save, consume and invest. Yet it is often difficult to foresee how these choices yield the larger, macroeconomic process of...

Bad IMF advice for China

In the context of China’s bid for its currency to be included in the IMF’s Special Drawing Right (SDR) basket, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) seems to be dispensing poor policy advice to China with respect to its exchange rate and external capital account management. By pushing the Chinese policymakers to further liberalize their country’s exchange rate and to open up their capital account...

China’s new Two-Child Policy and the fatal conceit

It is the latest twist in the most ambitious and ruthless social-engineering program ever undertaken by a modern state: Beijing announced Thursday that the Chinese Communist Party will officially abandon its one-child policy. Yet it has no plans to relinquish authority over its subjects’ birth patterns; rather, Beijing has simply changed the ration. Now two children per family will be permitted. The...

NAEP and political meaning

The 2015 reading and math results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were released yesterday. The national news is unpleasant: only 35% of fourth graders and 33% of eighth graders scored at proficient or better in reading, and only 39% of fourth graders and 32% of eighth graders...

Another proposal for a hidden VAT

Following Senator Rand Paul’s lead, Senator Ted Cruz has released a tax reform plan that includes a substantial value added tax (VAT). Cruz’s plan would abolish the payroll and self-employment tax, the corporate income tax, and the estate and gift tax, and would also slash  individual income tax...

Free stuff can turn out to be a bad buy

Free college! That’s what the Democratic candidates were offering in their presidential debate. And it’s likely that, if the subject had come up, they would have offered something like free home mortgages as well, to judge from Hillary Clinton’s statement that she had urged Wall Street to stop mortgage foreclosures. Sounds a lot like free houses! Free stuff sounds good to many people, and it’s not...

Jeb’s journey

A CBS News/New York Times national poll released earlier before last night’s CNBC-GOP debate provided strong hints of how people would react to Jeb Bush’s debate performance. No, I’m not talking about the question about the Republican field, in which Bush came in fourth among self-described Republican primary voters after Ben Carson’s presidential campaign, Donald Trump, and a little behind Marco...

Ecuador: Is there a future beyond Correa?

Key Points Elected president in 2007 as a maverick outsider, Rafael Correa has centralized economic and political power in his hands, outmaneuvered potential rivals, and bullied the independent media. Correa benefited from unsustainable social spending and artificial economic growth, buoyed by the oil and commodity boom, but internal opposition is growing as he is forced to reduce spending and raise...