John Feffer is director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.

He is the author, most recently, of Aftershock: A Journey into Eastern Europe’s Broken Dreams (Zed Books). He is also the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands (Dispatch Books) and its soon-to-be-released sequel Frostlands. He is the author of several other books, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, USAToday, Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, and many other publications.

He has been an Open Society fellow, a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University, a Herbert W. Scoville fellow, a writing fellow at Provisions Library in Washington, DC, and a writer in residence at Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation.

He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal. He has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee. He has studied in England and Russia, lived in Poland and Japan, and traveled widely throughout Europe and Asia.

John has been widely interviewed in print, on radio, and TV.

Learn more about him on his website.

Latest

My Meeting with Ahmadinejad

The Iranian president’s religiously charged rhetoric is often incoherent and inflammatory, but is he really a threat to the United States?

The Theology of American Empire

Ira Chernus writes that Americans crave a foreign policy based on moral conviction. Neoconservatives have offered one version. The left must provide a different one.

Neo-Zionism, Religion, and Citizenship

Israel needs a new Zionism or it will lose all legitimacy, Gershon Baskin argues.

Monks Versus the Military

Kyi May Kaung looks at the religious roots of the protest movement in Burma today.

An Opium Alternative for Afghanistan

Poppies are the go-to crop for many Afghan farmers. Here’s a way to change that.

Art as Jujitsu

War grabs the headlines, and anti-war art grabs our attention. They do so with some of the same tools: guns, bombs, and body counts.

The Art of Anti-War

At the Istanbul Biennale, antiwar artists shock and awe, but why is their work so alluring?

The Taiwan of Europe

According to the compromise proposal of UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, the international community was to grant “supervised independence” to Kosovo, the largely Albanian enclave in southern Serbia.

Bazaar-o World

Name the country in the Middle East that is most anti-American. Egypt? Palestine? Lebanon? Try again. Try instead our key NATO ally, the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid, and one of the countries in line for membership in the European Union.

Postcard from…Istanbul

The minaret and the flag are competing for the soul of Turkey, or are they?

Xtreme Gulpism

The United States did not invent greed. But particularly in the last quarter century, Americans have taken excess to a new level. Extravagance was once the province of kings and emperors. Now, even the head of a relatively obscure company can earn fabulous riches.

Interview with Anya Achtenberg

E. Ethelbert Miller talks to novelist Anya Achtenberg about Cambodia, memory, and the lives of others.

Kosovo in the Balance

Like a bad cold that won’t go away, the Kosovo question continues to plague international diplomacy long after it was expected that it would be resolved.

Make Your Own Foreign Policy

With the policymakers who have steered our country in the wrong direction absent from Washington, now is the time for YOU to start making US foreign policy.

Memo to the President, 2020

Although we are currently considered revisionist historians, I believe that my End of Empire books definitively establish that the financial crisis that the United States experienced in 2007 was the key element in destroying our position in the world.

On Political Poetry

Iranian poet Farideh Hassanzadeh–Mostafavi asks Adrienne Rich, Joy Harjo, Billy Collins, Maryam Ala Amjadi, and others about American foreign policy, 9/11, war, and the true essence of poetry.

60-Second Expert: U.S.-Korea Relations

The United States is negotiating with North Korea but hasn’t changed its fundamental policy toward the region.

Artists against Assassination

In their country’s tradition of creative dissent, Filipino artists have taken up the struggle against extrajudicial killings.

Three Hard Truths

The United States is negotiating with North Korea but hasn’t changed its fundamental policy toward the region.

Seoul Searching

after several years of strained relations between Seoul and Washington, will the Bush administration do a similar about-face and throw a lifeline to Roh Moo-Hyun?

Project Director and Associate Fellow

Epicenter, Foreign Policy in Focus

    Asia/Pacific, Military/Peace, NATO, North Korea, Northeast Asia, South Korea

    UpFront: Russia’s War in Ukraine

    KPFA | January 29, 2024

    Talkies

    KPFA | January 19, 2024

    Tensions High Over Russia’s War in Ukraine

    The Greenfield (MA) Recorder, The Tulsa (OK) World | October 23, 2023

    UpFront

    KPFA | October 2, 2023

    UpFront

    KPFA | September 18, 2023

    Technics and Civilization: Lithium and Society

    Korean IT Times | September 7, 2023

    More...