Gary Leupp

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press).

It’s Time for Norway to Drop NATO

Suddenly the Nordic peoples are embracing the beast with new fervor. The Nordic countries have grown closer to the U.S. in terms of common response to Russian behavior (which is to say, Russia’s response to NATO expansion).

Gary Leupp
By Gary Leupp
U.S. Secretary for Defense Jim Mattis, center left, speaks with Norway's Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen, center right, prior to a group photo at a NATO defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, June 7, 2018. NATO defense ministers gather Thursday determined to show fresh resolve against Russia while hoping to prevent a series of festering trans-Atlantic disputes from undermining unity across the 29-nation military alliance. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

Norway has announced that it has invited the U.S. to expand the contingent of Marines it sent to the country last year to 700, and to post troops closer to the Russian border. Russia protests that this undermines trust between Oslo and Moscow. Why is this important? In 1949 Norway joined NATO pledging to the USSR that it would not accept the

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The Skripal Poisonings and the Ongoing Vilification of Putin

The attack on Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter is highly useful to those who want to vilify Vladimir Putin, just as the use of chemical weapons in Syria last April was useful for those wanting to further vilify Bashar Assad and justify a U.S. missile strike.

Gary Leupp
By Gary Leupp
Sergei Skripal stands behind bars in a courtroom in Moscow in August 2006. (Photo: Press Service of Moscow District Millitary Court)

Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent on March 4 on a park bench in Salisbury, England. Skripal had been a Russian double agent, a spy who turned over 300 names of Russian spies to British intelligence from 1995 to 2004. He was (not so surprisingly) arrested in Russia in 2004 and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. He

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Media Gives a Pass to Crown Prince Salman and Saudi War Crimes

Isn’t it wonderful that the Saudis are going to give the United States some of their wealth, by profiting Boeing, providing jobs, so they can better bomb airports and schools in Yemen? They can do so confident that the U.S. media will ignore their war crimes.

Gary Leupp
By Gary Leupp
President Donald Trump shows a chart highlighting arms sales to Saudi Arabia during a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, March 20, 2018, in Washington. (AP/Evan Vucci)

Opinion -- There are few countries on earth more oppressive than Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy shaped by Sunni theocracy. It stones adulterers and hurls gay men off buildings by judicial decision. The State Department routinely, matter of factly, reports widespread human rights abuses in the country.  International human rights organizations

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