Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Monday, April 5, 2010

Larison Quick Hits

Commentary By Ron Beasley



If only Daniel Larison was the Republican Party.  He has a couple of brilliant foreign policy posts today.  I'll give you a a snip from each one but they really need to be read in full.



Natural Results

We could also draw another lesson from the growth of Iranian influence
and power following the invasion of Iraq, and this is that policies that
are supposed to increase and advance American power can be
short-sighted and counterproductive. Indeed, these policies can
ultimately produce the opposite result.





A Bright Post-Hegemonic Future

Michael
Auslin
does his best to paint a picture of the dire �dimming of our
age� (via Scoblete)
that will come with gradual reduction in U.S. military presence
overseas, and the future he predicts does not seem very gloomy at all:

The upshot of these three trends will likely be a series
of decisions to slowly, but irrevocably reduce America�s overseas global
military presence and limit our capacity to uphold peace and intervene
around the globe. And, as we hollow out our capabilities, China will be
fielding ever more accurate anti-ship ballistic missiles, advanced
fighter aircraft, and stealthy submarines; Russia will continue to
expand its influence over its �near abroad� while modernizing its
nuclear arsenal; and Iran will develop nuclear weapons, leading to an
arms race or preemptive attacks in the Middle East.


Under such conditions, global trade flows will be stressed, the free
flow of capital will be constrained, and foreign governments will expand
their regulatory and confiscatory powers against their domestic
economies in order to fund their own military expansions.

........

Too many American policymakers and policy analysts remain devoted to
restoring a degree of American preeminence that existed in 1991-92 and
will probably never come again. The reality is that we may not even see
American preeminence c. 2008, much less the way it was twenty years
ago. Our policies and our military deployments around the world have
not adjusted to this reality. Now some of our closest allies are
forcing us to come to terms with the way the world has changed.

Go read them both .



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