Back in September @tparsi and I wrote a piece predicting that unless the U.S. could get more distance from Israel's foreign policy agenda, we would be sucked into much greater military committments in the Middle East.

Unfortunately looks prescient now (🧵) We predicted then that Israel would pull the U.S. into a vastly expanded conflict with Iran.

We also made the point that in historically in the Middle East tactical military victories have not led to lasting peace, but often to continuing war.

Excellent new Foreign Affairs article by Michael Beckley of @AEIfdp.

I don't agree with all of it, but it avoids the single greatest error made by both right and left wing foreign policy analysts in DC: underestimating American relative power and global dominance. (🧵) The right wing claims American weakness because they have an incentive to create an atmosphere of threat and crisis, in order to justify a massive military budget (e.g. Trump's proposed 50% increase).

The Administration has finally released its long-awaited national security strategy. It's a strikingly schizophrenic document. whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl… It reflects an Administration that seems to understand the need for international cooperation but also seems helplessly carried along with currents that could divide the world and make such cooperation impossible.

According to Volodymyr Karpenko, the Ukrainian logistics chief, winning the war against Russia will take TEN TIMES the amount of military aid we have already provided. nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2022/… (🧵) Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's minister of foreign affairs, gives a similar assessment in his recent Foreign Affairs article foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukrai…

Late to the party here, but let’s discuss some of the massive lending facilities the Federal Reserve announced last week. Focus on upport for corporate capital markets, for “Main Street” bank lending to businesses, and for securitizations federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pre… The capital markets facilities supporting primary and secondary market corporate credit could pump out up to $750 billion in bond purchases and are the most fun if you’re looking to keep the Wall Street party going federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pre…

There’s an outrageous lack of controls on the huge amount of corporate assistance provided in Section 4003 of the just passed stimulus bill. (1/9) Big corporations benefiting from the $454 billion in public equity investment (likely leveraged to over $4 trillion in funding by the Fed) don’t even have to maintain their payrolls. They can actually lay off workers while receiving public assistance (2/9)