[Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, by Scott Horton, The Libertarian Institute, 2024; 690 pp.]“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” Scott Horton is the liberty movement’s foreign policy hedgehog, endeavoring to convince the American public of one essential truth: the folly of war. But within that sphere, Horton is a fox, weaving an encyclopedic knowledge of various conflicts into an elaborate and convincing tapestry that indicts elites, intellectuals, the military-industrial complex, and—with characteristic vitriol—neoconservatives in pushing the US toward unnecessary wars.Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, fits this mold

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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In around three months’ time, the Biden administration will be out of office. Exits typically prompt reflection. For an outgoing administration, the chief task is to shape the narrative. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent legacy-molding foray grounds the Biden administration’s legacy in the “fierce competition” with the “revisionist powers”—Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China—who want to bring down America and dominate the international order at the US government’s expense. On Blinken’s telling, the Biden administration’s strategy of domestic industrial spending and improved international partnerships were the one-two punch that “has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago.” Unfortunately for

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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The war in Ukraine rages. Underwritten by US dollars, arms, intelligence, and provocation, US leaders have prolonged the war. And, in funding and arming Ukraine to the teeth, they have escalated tensions with Russia, a nation with thousands of nuclear weapons. Just this week, for the third straight month, the Russian military conducted drills to prepare for using short-range, “tactical” nuclear weapons. The risks could not be graver. Yet, as the threats of nuclear war daily become more ominous, our political class buries its head further into the sand.Henry Kissinger notably concluded that nuclear war need not devolve into global nuclear war. But “limited nuclear war” is an oxymoron, rather like “journalistic ethics” or “military intelligence.” This is borne out

As the saying goes, “Personnel is Policy.” President Trump learned this the hard way, depending heavily on the very Washington, D.C. swamp creatures whose swamp he sought to drain. George W. Bush, having scant foreign policy experience himself, leaned heavily on a stable of neoconservative advisors, who had long pressed for another war with Iraq. What might a Kamala Harris victory in November portend for US foreign policy? Harris’s statements and advisors tell the story.In 2019, when Kamala Harris was running for President, her campaign website’s foreign policy featured bright spots. Harris stated that, “[a]s president, she’ll work with our allies and local leaders to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and protracted military engagements in places like Syria.”