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we should conduct a global posture review with the goal of closing at least 50 overseas military installations. The U.S. military maintains more than 700 installations outside the United States, the vast majority of which were opened during the Cold War. With a more mobile and flexible force, we simply don't need as many facilities overseas.

America alone cannot police the world. We should increase burden-sharing for the protection of the global commons among countries that share our values and security objectives. Unfortunately, we are not the only democracy stuck in a Cold War mentality. It is time for countries such as Japan and India to play a greater role in regional security matters. We must also throw out the old map and forge new security arrangements with regional partners such as Vietnam and Brazil.

For America to remain a global force for good, we must maintain the world's most capable military. And being the best is not simply a function of spending the most. Staying on top will increasingly depend on our willingness to adapt to the realities of the 21st century security environment.

"In Mongolia, Kublai is known as Kublai 'The Wise'," said museum researcher Egiimaa Tseveendorj.  "Genghis Khan is known as a military leader, but Kublai was a king who organised an enormous kingdom, not only by conquering it, but with administration, politics, trade, diplomacy, science, religion and production," she added.  "In the period of Kublai Khan the Silk Road, which facilitated trade with the West, experienced a new era of prosperity."

“I’m an unashamed traditionalist when it comes to the curriculum,” Mr Gove said. “Most parents would rather their children had a traditional education, with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England, the great works of literature, proper mental arithmetic, algebra by the age of 11, modern foreign languages. That’s the best training of the mind and that’s how children will be able to compete.”

Liberal war is so useful, particularly to ‘good Europeans’, because it denies it is war. It is a no-fly zone protecting human rights! While quite obviously joining the Libyan rebels in their war on the regime, coalition commanders are forced to pretend otherwise. They regularly and politely inform Gaddafi’s forces where they need to regroup to avoid being destroyed in the name of universal values. In essence, and without ever saying so, the message to Gaddafi is that he must stop defending himself from those who would overthrow him. Why, we might ask, is it not possible to speak more plainly, at least to ourselves? Why must war be confronted with liberal euphemisms? At the core of liberal war is a contradiction between big rhetoric – humanity, innocence, evil – and limited liability, signalled by ‘no ground troops’ and the pathetic legions of UN peacekeepers.

Historical memory is a casualty so instantaneous no one notices. The US fought its first war in what is now Libya, against the Barbary pirates, also justified by humanitarian concerns undergirded with commercial interest.

tales of well-intentioned Westerners and violent natives

The American military remains an especially globetrotting enterprise, largely impervious to political and economic hiccups, and immune to President Obama’s best efforts to squeeze it.

This is the big door through which we may penetrate into the affairs of the East …. In addition to the big door there is a smaller one. Syria, and the Christian population of Lebanon in particular, have the right to obtain from the Sultan, by virtue of a European intervention, guarantees, and in particular an administrative regulation, which may provide them with protection from the abuse they suffered under different rulers and that may secure Syria against sliding once more into chaos … We believe that it is the duty of the Christian powers, even their honour, to support this approach and push forward toward accomplishing a positive practical outcome

Guizot thought that obtaining the consent of Russia and Austria would neutralise Britain and make it less able to hinder the implementation of his project. Russia had been pursuing an expansionist approach within the Ottoman sphere of influence. It had close links with the Orthodox and Armenians of the Sultanate, who – and not the Catholics – constituted the majority of the Christians of the Orient.

he was seeking to establish an independent, or semi-independent, administrative status in the district of Jerusalem, which was at the time part of the Damascus governorate

Colonialism was, and remains, a wholesale destruction of memory. Lands, the sources of identity, stolen. Languages, ripped from mouths. The collective loss to humanity was incalculable, as cultures, ideas, species, habitats, traditions, cosmologies, possibilities, patterns of life, and ways of understanding the world were destroyed. Countless ecological traditions – involving diverse ways of being with nature – were swept away.

As formal colonialism came to an end, the process of erasing its crimes from public memory and effacing history began

In the last decades of the 19th century, tens of millions of Indians died of famine, while British colonial policy forced the country to export record levels of food.  If their bodies were laid head to foot, the corpses would cover the length of England 85 times over (5). The evisceration of the Congo, designed to extract maximum levels of ivory and rubber, killed at least 10 million people – half the country’s population at the time

America learned from its founding to dehumanize and dominate people. But there is a great problem here, which America has never understood, much less reckoned with. Only the dehumanized can dehumanize. Dominance always requires our own subjugation. To be able to treat another person as if they are not a human being, but a mere possession, also costs us our very own empathy, gentleness, mercy, wisdom, courage, defiance, grace, and truth. And in the end, my friends, that ruins a nation

In other rich nations, norms of decency developed — after strife, it’s true, yet develop they did. What do I mean by norms of decency? Simply the idea, if you like, that every person is one. All people deserve dignity, equality, and freedom. Nobody stands alone — especially when they are in need of support, nurturance, and guidance.But Americans developed a perverse, backwards set of norms: I am only good when I punish you, when I’m above you, when I dominate you, when I dehumanize you

norms of dehumanization and dominance had catastrophic political effects. “Why should I invest in schools for those dirty animals?” asked American whites. And so the result of norms of dehumanization and domination were that America never built proper public goods, like healthcare, education, finance, media, transportation, and so on — and yet those are exactly the things that whites needed too, if they were ever to live lives that were genuinely free, healthy, sane, and happy. But now nobody had such things, because such norms make it impossible for people to invest in one another.

Turkey is turning northern Syria – Jarabulus and Afrin – into the “Turkish Republic of Northern Syria,” just as it has turned northern Cyprus into a Turkish protectorate through military and economic domination.

Turkey’s military interventions in northern Syria’s Jarabulus and Afrin have turned these two enclaves into Turkish military and economic protectorates. Turkish involvement in these cantons has increased the regions’ economic and political dependency on Ankara which has nearly reached the level of Turkey’s position in Northern Cyprus.

Turkish anxiety grew when the Pan-Kurdish maps reaching the Mediterranean Sea began to float on the social media and internet. Kurdish access to the sea would constitute a game changer as it would end the landlocked status of the Kurdish entity and will limit Kurdish dependency on Turkey and other surrounding neighboring states. Moreover, a self-sufficient independent Kurdistan could trigger spillover effects in Turkey that would shake the country’s territorial integrity.