Fred Kaplan
Slate's War Stories columnist; author of The Bomb, Dark Territory, The Insurgents, 1959, Daydream Believers, The Wizards of Armageddon, and--most recently--A Capital Calamity (a novel); also jazz critic for Tracking Angle.
- The last US-Russia nuclear arms treaty expires this week. Trump has done nothing about it. What he should do. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- If US-Europe relations really do rupture, historians will look back on last week as the breaking point. Here's why. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Trump's preposterous, going-nowhere Board of Peace. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Trump goes TACO on Greenland. Good news, sort of, but it doesn't end--in some ways, it worsens--the crisis for him, the Europeans, and us all. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Two speeches at Davos (Carney's and 'Trump's) and how they point the way to a turbulent new world. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Canadian PM Carney's speech at Davos today is THE speech about international politics in our time. Watch! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg4r...
- Trump's Greenland obsession marks a new level of madness. What to do about it? slate.com/news-and-pol...
- It's time to dismantle the Dept of Homeland Security. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Why Hegseth's crusade against Mark Kelly is even dumber than it seems. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Why Trump is talking again about grabbing Greenland. Why the world is taking him seriously. Why it's still a daft idea. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Who's running Venezuela--and who's running US foreign policy? slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Re Trump's press conference on the nabbing of Maduro: never has a president been so unabashedly imperialist about his motives in foreign policy (at least not in public). slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Why the "Trump-class battleship" is a bad idea, even apart from the megalomania of Trump's naming it after himself. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Why the latest Ukraine "peace" talks failed (hint: it's not Zelensky's fault). slate.com/news-and-pol...
- The leaked Pentagon report that says DoD is spending its trillion-dollar-budget on, mainly, the wrong things. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- He says drug prices down 400, 500, even 600% - “numbers nobody had ever imagined.” Indeed.
- Also how do network execs feel about turning over prime time air to a blatant campaign speech?
- Big question: are people going to go for this, given (a) his subterranean ratings, (b) prices are high. and (c) the fact that he sounds loony.
- Is ISIS making a comeback? Actually, it never went away. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Was the seizure of a Venezuelan tanker a "dramatic escalation" to war? Not necessarily. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- I’m on @BrianLehrer show on @WNYC at 10am today (Dec 11) to talk about Trump and Europe, Ukraine, Venezuela, etc.
- The real meaning of Trump's National Security Strategy. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- My Slate column on the best jazz albums of 2025. slate.com/comments/cul...
- So, did Pete Hegseth commit war crimes, or just plain old murder? slate.com/news-and-pol...
- A highly classified leaked phone-call transcript sheds new light on Trump/Witkoff's cozy ties to the Kremlin--and the real nature of the discarded 28-point "peace" plan. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Trump's calamitous weekend on Ukraine flashes a neon signal that his foreign policy is a 3-ring circus, and not the fun kind. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Trump's weekend riffing on Ukraine flashes a neon sign that his foreign policy is a dangerous 3-ring circus.
- The closer you look at Trump's 28-point "peace" plan, the worse it looks for Ukraine. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Trump thinks that, with immunity, anything he does is ipso facto legal. He seems not to know that US armed forces are not obligated to obey—in fact, are obligated not to obey—unlawful orders.
- The deeper significance of Trump's abhorrent "Things happen" remark about Khashoggi's murder. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- Now online: my liner notes for the Criterion Collection's Blu-ray disc of Howard Hughes' 1930 war film, "Hell's Angels." www.criterion.com/current/post...
- Pete Hegseth declares war on the Military-Industrial Complex. Guess who's likely to win. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- My obit piece on the rise and fall of Dick Cheney. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- I'm very proud and pleased to have written the liner notes for the Criterion Collection's Blu-ray/4K disc of Howard Hughes' 1930 war film, "Hell's Angels." www.criterion.com/films/28987-...
- The bad news for the Gaza ceasefire is it requires Trump's attention to sustain it. slate.com/news-and-pol...
- I’m now with the Lyceum Agency. To book me for a speaking gig, contact nancy@lyceumagency.com .
- Trump's remarks on nuclear testing--threat, nonsense, or both? slate.com/news-and-pol...
