More from The Scholar's Stage
LAST OCTOBER I published a short breakdown of four geopolitical ‘schools’ that might shape China strategy under Trump. That piece was a pre-election preview of a much larger report I was writing for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. I published the preview as security: Trump might not win. If so I had better publish something before election day while interest in Trumpworld was guaranteed. Trump won. Interest in GOP debates did not abate. I continued to work on the report. As of this week the full thing is out. You can read it, in all its twenty-page glory, over at the FPRI website. What follows are some of its key points:
In November 2024, I traveled to India as part of a delegation hosted by the India Foundation. The foundation is a part of the new nationalist establishment steering Indian society. As they see things, India’s relationship with America has been mediated by hostile parties for too long. On the Indian side you have Congress-sympathizing functionaries; on the American side, a set of intellectuals and diplomats who can neither speak for nor to the American right. Direct links between Indian and American nationalists are needed. So I was invited India.
MIDWAY through his 900 page history of biology, zoologist Ernst Mayr considers the problem posed by Alfred Wallace. Wallace was a contemporary of Charles Darwin who independently developed a theory of speciation by means of natural selection. By the time Wallace came on the scene Darwin had been sitting on his evolutionary theory for two decades. Reading Wallace’s 1858 paper “On the Tendency of Species to Form Varities” spooked Darwin. He did not want to be scooped. Within a year Darwin had rushed his material into an “abstract which… must necessarily be imperfect” as it only gave “the general conclusions” of his theory, and offered only a “few facts in illustration” to support them. We know this abstract well: it was published as The Origin of Species.
MANY HAVE TRIED to pin Trump to Heritage’s “Project 2025.” The Trump campaign has not only refused to endorse Project 2025—they have refused to endorse any detailed policy plan whatsoever. Trump prefers to keep his options open. One unanticipated benefit of this approach is that Republicans have spent much of the last year engaged in intensive but open debates over policy. Ambitious politicians, congressional offices, and think tanks have laid out their preferred plans on almost every issue of importance. These plans often differ from each other in striking ways. Absent endorsement from Trump or his campaign, no one quite knows which of these policy packages will eventually be adopted as the Republican standard. The Republicans involved have thus been free to debate the merits and costs of each. Take China policy.
More in history
Felix-Hilaire Buhot (July 9, 1847 – April 26, 1898) was a French painter and illustrator who was particularly adept at making aquatint, engraving, roulette and drypoint images of people in the rain. He also did lots of snow, mist and fog. But he remains arguably the best rain artist of the 19th Century. Buhot … Continue reading "No One Does Rain Like Felix-Hilaire Buhot" The post No One Does Rain Like Felix-Hilaire Buhot appeared first on Flashbak.
The Phoenicians, renowned for their trading and maritime skills, originated in what’s modern Lebanon. They called themselves Canaanites, related to similar peoples in the region. The term Phoenician derived from the Greek word “phoinix” meaning purple, referencing the famous purple dye produced in Tyre. The Phoenician era spanned some 2,500 years, encompassing […]
Podcast with Professors: Dr. Maria Kasmirli
The ancient world was full of incredible marvels and religious sites. Many of these have been lost to time, but plenty of them still stand, and with your passport and visa in hand, you can visit them all. These ancient sites don’t just give us a window into our ancestors’ belief system; they are […]