Here's a little Cold War nostalgia for you that relates to today. Back in 1983, Sam Huntington published an article in which he argued that one way to deter the Soviets from invading Western Europe was to threaten counter-invasions of Eastern Europe.


/1jstor.org/stable/2538699 The idea was they invade West Germany, we do airdrops into the GDR and CZ. A lot of folks thought he was nuts, and it was a pretty off-the-wall idea, especially NATO didn't have a lot of ability to pull that off. Here's an article about it:


/2nytimes.com/1984/02/05/wor…

I'm gonna say that I am surprised (and gladly so) by how fast the Democrats coalesced around Harris. First time in a while I've really gotten the sense that they know what the stakes are that maybe disbanding the circular firing squad is a good idea. VP was the obvious choice. /1

https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/1815775569667059932

Many of you asked me WELL WHO DO YOU WANT, TOM in that "we dare you to name a name" way. I didn't say Harris or anyone else. All of them had risks, and I didn't want a pile-on, especially on a candidate who becomes "the one you Never Trumpers" want, and esp before Biden quit. /2

Before I head downstairs for some late-night TV, I am going to do something I’ve never done:
To see if I can get through to some of you, I AM GOING TO USE A SPORTSBALL ANALOGY!

/1 Bottom of the 9th, Team Democracy tied with Team Autocrat. Biden’s been pitching a great game, but he’s getting tired. Facing their top hitter, he goes for his fastball.
He unloads a wild pitch into the stands, hitting a fan in the head. Crowd hushes. Opposing team grins.
/2

I agree that there is a double-standard in covering Trump. I have complained about it a lot. (The way I complain about everything: At length.) But maybe many of you should consider what you were saying about Trump coverage back at the start.
"Stop covering him!"
/1 I was one of the people arguing for saturating the airwaves with him so people could see his emotional instability. "Shut up," many of you yelled. "You're giving him oxygen!" When he was POTUS, I opposed kicking him off Twitter, which made some of you go nuts.
/2

This is an outdated way of thinking about nuclear bombers.
Yes, they are recallable - a great thing to have in 1960. Today, not as big a deal. Here's why. Short 🧵
/1

https://twitter.com/_themoman/status/1802425518400115192

During the Cold War, you assumed that a crisis could erupt into hemisphere-wide, all-out nuclear war. So you wanted a way to get at least some of your nukes out of the way early - and show the enemy your readiness. Bombers are A+ for that./2

I don't usually respond to critics, but this guy hauls me up short on what I get wrong about my insistence on absolute deference to experts.
A thread!
/1 Good point here about scientists who can't speak to the normals:
/2

Franck is making the case for a solipsistic, self-regarding approach to voting, that is all about you and not about collective action. Sometimes in politics just as in foreign policy, you understand that you end up in alliances you don’t like for the sake of a greater purpose. /1

https://twitter.com/stephenfhayes/status/1798371642466537716

Franck reminds me of the political scientists years ago who scratched their heads about why people bothered to vote when no single vote can affect very much. But voting even when you don’t like any of the choices is part of civic maturity. /2

My (friendly) disagreement with @NoahCRothman reminds me of something that happened to me when I was doing a speaking engagement at a college. One of the faculty was - no, really - very Trumpy. And he made a comment to me that really encapsulates our political asymmetry. /1 He said: "Your contempt for the voters is palpable," because I was talking about The Death of Expertise and how voters vote based on not knowing stuff.
He felt that was very elitist.
"Your contempt is obvious as well," I said.
He was, uh, taken aback.
/2

Some Memorial Day reading about how much Trump, the man who would be Commander in Chief again if he gets the chance, disdains our military - especially those who gave their lives, who he calls "suckers and losers."
Gifting these articles:
🧵 The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

I'm (a little) surprised at people who want to take issue with me and who insist that Americans, as a nation, really suffered through Afghanistan and Iraq, when the criticism I'm making is that we offloaded all that onto volunteers and then ignored them (and the wars). /1 I mean, normally, that might seem like a left-wing criticism, no? But I don't think it's either left/right, but just *true* in an empirical sense. A tiny fraction of the country serves in the military. We have not been a country "at war" in any meaningful sense since Vietnam. /2

Once again, a comment that I think is anodyne and self-evident has produced a bunch of ridiculously ahistorical objections from people who somehow think we were *more decadent* 30 years ago, an objection that makes no sense on almost any level.
/1

https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1780386474774425716

We are a far more affluent, leisure-oriented - and generally trashy - mass culture than we once were. (Note: *mass* culture.) "But gosh, edgy stuff happened back then!"
Exactly: What was once edge is now mainstream.
Are we more tolerant now? Yes. Of *anything.* /2

This is exactly right. Money doesn't buy respect. It's why Trump spent his life looking at Manhattan with that nose-pressed-to-the-glass feeling; no matter how much money he made, he was a vulgar boor who wasn't welcome there. Short 🧵before I go on vacation this week.
/1

https://twitter.com/MecCoffee/status/1759604353659215924

I didn't just come to this conclusion about Trump (or Carlson or anyone else) off the cuff; it's part of what I wrote about in my last book. So much of American politics among elites on the right is driven by a frustrated ambition, a sense of being denied respect. /2

Reading Tim Alberta's wrenching piece about the idolatry of American evangelicals. Read it, and realize that C.S. Lewis (as always) saw it coming and warned us. /1

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… As Lewis warned in Screwtape:

"Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. "
/2

Here, @jimgeraghty makes a some unwarranted assumptions. You'd think after the "no coup in 2020" pieces, we wouldn't be doing this again, but to his credit, he offers a reasoned (if wrong) argument. /1

A Reality Check on the Trump-as-Dictator Prophecies nationalreview.com/the-morning-jo… Jim writes:
"if our existing checks and balances under the Constitution aren’t strong enough to stop abuses of power by Trump . . . why would you think that they’re strong enough to stop abuses of power by Joe Biden or anyone else?"

This is a really odd non-sequitur.
/2

I didn't go into it in my piece today on Ukraine, but I also hope we can finally junk the Powell Doctrine. It's a misleading wish list of ideal conditions that has entranced strategists and military planners for years./1 Actually, it's the Weinberger-Powell doctrine, and it's not a doctrine. It's a list of reasons never to use force unless you can win instantly against a weak enemy and achieve a totally clear objective in a popular war. /2

atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atla…

I know it's obvious that Trump changes positions on a dime and how it's mystifying that his cult doesn't care, but picking all this apart is a fool's errand.
They stick with him because he channels their diffuse anger about their lives at other Americans. But it's worse now:
/1 After 2016, Trump voters thought they'd really made their point, pushed back change in America, and gained respect by electing a POTUS.
All that blew up in their faces: They found out they're not a majority, and worse, the disdain of their fellow citizens only intensified. /2

For years I've watched college kids latch on to one cause after another. Later, they grow up and rethink some of those causes.
This is different: Many are making a decision to become vicious antisemites, as if this is something you can later dismiss as youthful enthusiasm. /1

https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1722946093728575571

I knew kids who protested, say, nuclear power 40+ years ago who now, in late middle age, probably agreed with leaders like Obama that maybe nuke plants are okay. So you can walk back your fun stories of getting maced at Seabrook and say, "yeah, maybe I was wrong."

Not this. /2

A short thread on "The Day After," which I used to teach as part of my Cold War pop culture class.
ABC-TV should have listened more to director Nicholas Meyer, who did as much with it as you could do on American TV at the time and created a landmark national moment. /1 Some of the best moments in the "The Day After" are before the attack. Bibi Besch losing her shit trying to make the beds while her husband (a stoic John Cullum in a great turn) is trying to drag her downstairs to the bunker left a mark on me. /2

Perfectly legit q, and happy to answer it. Can do a long bibliography (including my own stuff), but instead, I'll just summarize.
Here we go. /1

https://twitter.com/esswoofie/status/1718028005476352316

Of course the Soviets were pissed about NATO nukes around them, but that's not what Cuba was about. Cuba had more to do with internal Soviet politics. Khr was trying to reduce the size of the Soviet military; it was eating money K wanted to make good on other promises. /2

I have some advice. I know these are stressful political times, but if you're going to be serious about politics and the threats to democracy, please stop posting about "envelopes of money," and "kompromat" and "payments from Russia" and all that. It's silly and a distraction. /1 Yes, there are corrupt people in politics who take bars of gold and hide them in a closet. But 99.9 percent of terrible political decisions are based on getting reelected. It's that simple. It's not mind control or blackmail or wads of cash. It's about staying in DC. /2

Have to disagree with my friend @KoriSchake here. If Trump were still in office, I might agree more. But Milley saying *nothing* would have looked like being squeamish in the face of a direct threat to the Constitution. He didn't name names. He didn't have to. /1

https://twitter.com/KoriSchake/status/1707854860312264760

I've been pretty resolute about respecting the office, right down to referring to Trump properly as "the President" while he was in the Oval. But Milley is not required to pretend that nothing happened since 2018. I think he handled it right while in his last hours in uniform. /2