Jeffrey Cavanaugh

Jeffrey Cavanaugh is a former MintPress political analyst and columnist specializing in international relations and US policy. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations, specializing in International Security and Conflict. He has worked as a political science and public administration lecturer at Mississippi State University.

A Too-Slow Requiem For Rural America

America’s metropolitan areas contribute disproportionately to the country’s economic output. According to a recent report put out by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, U.S. metro areas – cities with a population of greater than 50,000 people – account for 86% of total U.S. non-farm employment.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh
half of gdp in metro areas

A picture has been making the rounds on the internet of late that casts an immense light on America’s current set of pressing economic and political problems. Is it a photo of an Occupy rally? Or, is it an image from the recent CPAC conference in Washington D.C.? No, nothing so obvious – it’s a map. This map, like all maps, is more than a mere

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The Coming of Polar Geopolitics

Melting polar ice is giving the world access to untapped oil resources and previously unnavigable waters. Countries, of course, are scrambling to stake their own claims to this new geopolitical target.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh
iceberg

The world is grappling with the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, the civil war in Syria, the rise of China and middle-class stagnation in the United States, and Mother Nature is poised to deal us another strategic curveball: a race to own the Arctic, the last great untapped source of hydrocarbon energy on Earth. That’s right, the home of Santa’s

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The Global Fallout From The Crimean Crisis

While at first glance the conflict in Ukraine may seem regional, Russia super power status mean it’s implications are global.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh
Ukraine

The world was stunned on Feb. 27, when just a few short days after the end of the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, Russian forces operating out of military bases located on Ukraine’s strategic Crimean Peninsula seized control of the territory – effectively severing it from Kiev’s control. As a result, for the first time in many decades the

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The Clock’s Ticking On “60 Minutes”

An absence of journalistic due diligence, or maybe just outright disregard for it, stands at least partly to blame for the decline of the once-venerable “60 Minutes.”

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

1968 was one of the 20th century’s most pivotal years. In January, the United States was knocked on its heels by the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, a massive attack by the Hanoi-directed Viet Cong guerilla army. Though a military failure, it brought home to America that the war was unwinnable. For a people long accustomed to military victory, such an

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The Dragon in Araby: China Challenges Western Hegemony In The Arab World

Though others have tried and failed, China’s oil needs may be forcing its hand at making inroads in the Middle East. What will this look like? And can the Chinese make it work?

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

The Middle East has been a notoriously difficult environment for would-be imperial powers from the West to manage. France, Britain, Russia and the United States have all tried and largely failed to convince the region’s states and peoples of the benevolence of their rule or the wisdom of their policies. Past failures, however, are not stopping

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The Globalized State And Its Discontents

In a world governed by financial and cultural interdependence among states, the present reflects the past more than the future we had been promised. But is a state-less world a viable option?

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh
An Occupy protester wears a Guy Fawkes mask while protesting.

Nearly a quarter century ago the end of the Cold War instituted what then-President George H. W. Bush called a “New World Order.” It was, perhaps, a poor choice of words that elicited more in the way of conspiracy-fueled fear of one-world government than a bright, new cosmopolitan future, but it was nonetheless an apt description of a new era in

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If Venezuela Is To Survive, Then Compromise Must Become The Country’s Watchword.

Recent protests in Caracas against the continued rule of Chavez’s political heirs suggest that the electoral revolution carried out by Venezuela’s late caudillo is a least a bit shaky.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh
A demonstrator holds up a rosary during a protest

When Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s democratically-elected strongman died last March, there was some question about how long the neo-socialist regime created by the late paratrooper-turned president would last. Would it endure as its founder intended, or totter and fall in a Latin version of a color revolution of the type that rocked Ukraine and Georgia

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