As a former resident of Winchmore Hill I am well familiar the surrounding areas of north London—Wood Green, Ponders End, Enfield…—affected by three successive nights of rioting and looting which has now spread to other parts of the capital. Burglaries, car thefts and vandalism started being a problem in our N21 neighborhood two decades ago, but the Hobbesian mayhem of...
Author: Srdja Trifkovic (Srdja Trifkovic)
The Habsburgs and the Balkans: A Rich, Uneven Tapestry
Much ill-informed and superficial nonsense has been published in recent weeks on the Habsburgs in general and on their role in the Balkans in particular. This is a pity because that role is genuinely interesting, often filled with drama and heroism, and in its final stages marked by hubris, folly, and tragedy. Well worth a...
The Oslo Fallout: A Review of Views Unfit to Print
On August 1 The Daily Mail published an op-ed by Melanie Philips (“Hatred, smears and the liberals hell-bent on bullying millions of us into silence”) which warns that the baleful effects of Anders Breivik’s recent attacks in Norway have not been limited to the carnage of the day. The atrocity has produced a reaction on the...
Time for Disengagment
“I’ve spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position,” outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Newsweek on June 19. “[F]rankly I can’t imagine being part of a nation, part of a government . . . that’s...
Otto von Habsburg: The Facts
Mr. James Bogle denies [“It is ludicrous”] that Otto von Habsburg was an enthusiastic supporter of the jihadist side in the Bosnian war. Since Habsburg’s support of the Muslim side in the Bosnian war is uncontentious, the claim is “ludicrous” only if Bogle denies that Alija Izetbegovic was a jihadist. On that subject the record is...
The Oslo Connection
In his 1,500-page European Declaration of Independence mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik approvingly quotes me and several other authors who have written critically about Islam, including Bat Ye’or, Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The exploitation of the connection followed promptly. “Norwegian butcher a product of Islamophobia” was last Monday’s banner headline in the Zaman, Turkey’s...
Otto von Habsburg’s Ambiguous Legacy
Archduke Otto von Habsburg, who died on July 4 aged 98, became the heir to the imperial crown of Austria and the royal crown of Hungary when his father Charles ascended the throne of the multinational Dual Monarchy in November 1916. In the final decades of his life (1979-1999) he was an influential figure...
The Green, Green Arab Summer: II
The magnitude of Western self-deception and ignorance about the future of Egypt was exemplified by a feature article in The Washington Post last week (Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood could be unraveling, July 7). The influence and organizational abilities of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) have raised fears in the West and among Egypt’s secular and liberal groups that democracy may...
The Green, Green Arab Summer: I
In the U.S. mainstream media the developments that have followed the misnamed “Arab Spring” have been curiously under-reported. The reason seems clear: In recent weeks those developments have taken a clear turn away from Western-style democracy, pluralism, tolerance, respect for human rights, etc. (as we’ve warned, repeatedly, that they would). The turmoil has undermined the region’s...
A Speech of No Consequence
All too many speeches by major political figures are heralded as historic in advance of delivery yet prove to be irrelevant in the grand-strategic scheme of things. Churchill’s “we shall fight on the beaches” address in the wake of Dunkirk, for example, and his Iron Curtain speech at Fulton six years later were rich in...
Libya: A Non-Hostile War
Only one spectacle in recent weeks proved more nauseating than the Commander-in-Chief fine-tuning the Afghan drawdown to suit his re-election timetable. It was Barack Obama’s attempt to justify continued American participation in the illegal and unnecessary war in Libya by claiming that—far from being a war—it does not even merit the designation of hostilities. Back in...
The ICC Orders Qaddafy’s Arrest
The Libyan affair became a choreographed farce on June 27, with the International Criminal Court (ICC) issuing arrest warrants for Muammar Qaddafy, one of his sons, and his chief of military intelligence. This move is a carbon copy of The Hague Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicting Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes at...
The Transnistrian Solution, Lost in Kievan Translation
On June 14 I was the keynote speaker at a press briefing in Kiev organized by The American Institute in Ukraine on the problem of Pridnestrovie (Transnistria). The Russian and Ukrainian majority of that self-proclaimed republic straddling the eastern bank of the Dniestr declared secession from Moldova after a brief but bloody conflict in...
Shades of Grey: The Record of Archbishop Stepinac
As a long-time upholder of friendship and alliance between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditionalists, I am disheartened by Pope Benedict XVI’s uncritical portrayal of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960) as a saintly figure during his visit to Croatia earlier this week. In a homily at the Zagreb Cathedral the Pontiff called Stepinac “a fearless pastor and an example...
General Mladic: The Facts
The circumstances surrounding the arrest of the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, General Ratko Mladic, seem puzzling. On May 26 he was captured in the house of a close relative with the same surname in a village north of Belgrade. Prima facie this means either that Mladic was entirely left to his own devices...
Our Interest in Turkey
Trying to spread democracy in the Middle East has always been a bad idea. The quagmire in Iraq is largely thanks to George W. Bush and his team extending the original mission from depriving Saddam of his (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction to the establishment of a democratic Iraq as a first step to transforming...
Arabian Limbo
Zack Shahin, an American, was arrested in Dubai in 2008 and held in isolation for months on end. Shahin still remains in jail on what appear to be spurious charges, with no trial date in sight. All this is happening in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which purport to be the forward-looking showcase of Arab...
Democratizing the Middle East: A Realist Alternative
The most significant aspect of President Obama’s speech on the Middle East (May 19) is the absence of a plan to revive the “Peace Process.” The passing storm over his statements regarding the 1967 borders notwithstanding, it is already evident that there will be no new initiatives in the months to come. This is...
Democratizing the Middle East: A Realist Alternative
The most significant aspect of President Obama’s speech on the Middle East (May 19) is the absence of a plan to revive the “Peace Process.” The passing storm over his statements regarding the 1967 borders notwithstanding, it is already evident that there will be no new initiatives in the months ...
Pakistan: The Problem, the Solution
The most significant fact to emerge from the killing of Osama Bin Laden is that Pakistan’s military intelligence service (ISI) had been sheltering him for years. This confirms what we have been warning for the best part of the past decade: that Pakistan is an irredeemably flawed entity, unable to turn itself into a...
An Orthodox Muslim: Bin Laden’s Theology and Terrorism
One annoying old canard, reinserted into the mainstream media reporting of Osama Bin Laden’s death, is the claim that his theology represents a radical break with traditional Islam. The usual propagandists and apologists for “normative Islam”—peaceful and tolerant, and totally at odds with terrorist violence—are back peddling their old wares. CNN had Ebrahim Moosa, a professor...
The Coming Bin Laden Conspiracy Theory
The killing of OBL is a significant event politically and psychologically. It will not have any detrimental impact on the operations of Al-Qa’eda, however, because that amorphous group does not need a leader and has not had a centralized command-and-control structure for a decade. We should not expect a single retaliatory terrorist assault by...
The Libyan War
In the aftermath of September 11, President George W. Bush launched the War on Terror. It was the first war in U.S. history—declared or undeclared—against a phenomenon, a method, or an emotion, rather than against a state (or a subgroup such as the Barbary pirates or the Viet Cong). The concept evoked Xerxes’ War on...
Road to Damascus
Unrest in Syria has discomforted rather than shaken the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. It is an even bet that he will survive, which is preferable to any likely alternative. There are several reasons he will not end up like Ben Ali or Mubarak. Bashar is popular with a large segment of the population, especially among...
Syria: Nowhere Near Regime Change
“Unrest in Syria has discomforted rather than shaken the regime of Bashir Al-Assad,” I wrote in the May issue of Chronicles (Cultural Revolutions, p. 6). “On current form it is an even bet that he will survive, which is preferable to any likely alternative.” The violence has become far worse since the editorial was written in...
Croatian Generals Sentenced at The Hague
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Zagreb and other Croatian cities over the past week to protest the conviction of two Croatian generals by the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. The ICTY sentenced Ante Gotovina to 24 years in jail and Mladen Markac to 18 years for their role...
“Srebrenica” and the Power of Reason
“Truth and reason are eternal,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to Rev. Samuel Knox in 1810. “They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail . . . ” Jefferson was wrong. His belief that “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it” was naive. As Patrick J. Buchanan proves in a passing...
“Srebrenica” and the Power of Reason
“Truth and reason are eternal,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to Rev. Samuel Knox in 1810. “They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail . . . ” Jefferson was wrong. His belief that “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it” was naive. As Patrick J. Buchanan ...
The Liberal Hawks’ Neoconservative Allies
The problem with President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is not that it is “too pragmatic,” as recently alleged. The problem is that Obama combines the broad ideological assumptions of liberal interventionists with a leadership style that allows people more doctrinaire than he to dominate the internal debate and decision-making process. Libya is the product...
The Libyan Stalemate
The Libyan operation is being quietly aborted, barely three weeks after its ill-conceived onset. There will be no mission creep, no American boots on the ground, and no arming and training of the rebel forces. The impending stalemate is the least of all evils. It is preferable to an open-ended ...
The Libyan Stalemate
The Libyan operation is being quietly aborted, barely three weeks after its ill-conceived onset. There will be no mission creep, no American boots on the ground, and no arming and training of the rebel forces. The impending stalemate is the least of all evils. It is preferable to an open-ended escalation or to an...
Egypt’s Non-Revolution
The fall of Hosni Mubarak came as a complete surprise to experts and policymakers. Why did the shadowy leading figures in Egypt’s political-military establishment, men who have profited handsomely from Mubarak’s three decades in power, risk their own power and privilege by pulling the plug on him? As Cairo returned to its chaotic daily routine,...
Europe’s Uncrowned Leader
“Total German triumph as EU minnows subjugated,” The Daily Telegraph headlines a report by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s latest diktat. Whoever wants credit must fulfill our conditions, she declared. Her conditions amount to capitulation by three vulnerable states on core policies, and further erosion of sovereignty for the rest of the eurozone. For Greece, Evans-Pritchard explains, the terms...
Barred From Canada: An Update
On March 3 Ambassador James Bissett had a letter published in Alberta’s premier daily, the Edmonton Journal, taking issue with an “assistant adjunct” professor [sic!] at the University of Alberta who had voiced support for the cancellation of my lectures at UBC and UofA because of my “denial of genocide” at Srebrenica: First, the...
Barred From Canada: An Update
On March 3 Ambassador James Bissett had a letter published in Alberta’s premier daily, the Edmonton Journal, taking issue with an “assistant adjunct” professor [sic!] at the University of Alberta who had voiced support for the cancellation of my lectures at UBC and UofA because of my “denial of genocide” ...
The King Hearings: Necessary in Principle, Unlikely To Provide Answers in Practice
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, started his congressional hearing on Islamic radicalization Thursday amidst accusations of “Islamophobia” from the Sharia activists and expressions of distaste from most Democrats. In his opening statement King cited recent terror plots against the United States to justify his decision and suggested the...
Blowback: “Kosovars” Strike Again
The jihadist murder of two American servicemen by a “Kosovar”-Albanian Muslim at Frankfurt Airport on March 2 combines the fruits of the United States’ criminally misguided Balkan policy over the past two decades and of Europe’s suicidal immigration policy since the 1960’s. While it is probably too late to have either of them reversed, hope springs eternal:...
Blowback: “Kosovars” Strike Again
The jihadist murder of two American servicemen by a “Kosovar”-Albanian Muslim at Frankfurt Airport on March 2 combines the fruits of the United States’ criminally misguided Balkan policy over the past two decades and of Europe’s suicidal immigration policy since the 1960’s. While it is probably too late ...
State of the Tepid
President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union Address was almost entirely focused on domestic issues. This was appropriate, considering the magnitude of social, economic, and moral problems America is facing, and the attendant impossibility of pursuing grand global themes for as long as those problems remain unresolved. His proposals for resolving them are surprisingly...
The Eurozone: Time for a Divorce
The events of recent months present the eurozone as a dysfunctional bourgeois family, the latter-day Buddenbrooks morphing into Karamazovs. At the plot’s core is the loveless marriage of two incompatible, increasingly embittered partners. Teutonius is a rich yet parsimonious workaholic who abhors mortgages and long holidays. His much younger spouse, Meridiana, has inherited all the...
Banned From Canadistan
On Thursday, February 24, I was denied entry to Canada. After six hours’ detention and sporadic interrogation at Vancouver airport I was escorted to the next flight to Seattle. It turns out I am “inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights for being a proscribed senior ...
Banned From Canadistan
On Thursday, February 24, I was denied entry to Canada. After six hours’ detention and sporadic interrogation at Vancouver airport I was escorted to the next flight to Seattle. It turns out I am “inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights for being a proscribed senior official in the service of a government...
The Tragedy of American Education
Robert E. Holloway is a high school teacher in suburban Northern Virginia. He is probably considered a decent man by his neighbors, a competent educator by his peers, and a figure of some authority by his students. He is the embodiment of much that is wrong with this country’s education system, however: a bigot,...
Egypt: Steady As She Goes
Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman has announced that President Hosni Mubarak was stepping down from the office of president of the republic “and has charged the high council of the armed forces to administer the affairs of the country.” In other words, the Army has taken over. This is the least bad outcome on...
Beware the Neocon Advocacy of Egyptian Democracy
It is essential to take William (“Bill”) Kristol seriously. He has been so utterly wrong on so many things (America’s ability to run the world, NATO, Turkey, the Balkans, Chechnya, Iraq, Sarah Palin, Russia, Iran, Georgia, John McCain, missile defense . . . ) that his pronouncements merit respect. Being consistently wrong—in the fleeting...
Egypt: The Realist Scenario
The image of the “democratic revolution” in Egypt, as constructed by the mainstream media in North America and Europe over the past two weeks, evokes the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. The BBC World Service, NPR and other Western media outlets bring us young, articulate, lightly-accented demonstrators who talk of democracy,...
Catching a Snake
The Council of Europe published a report on December 15 that identifies Kosovo’s “prime minister” Hashim Thaçi as the boss of a “mafia-like” Albanian group specializing in smuggling weapons, drugs, people, and human organs all over Europe. The report reveals that Thaçi’s closest aides were taking Serbs across the border into Albania after the 1999...
The Pathology of U.S. Diplomacy
A few hours before Richard Holbrooke’s death on December 13, Hillary Clinton told a group of top U.S. diplomats at a State Department Christmas party that he was “practically synonymous with American foreign policy.” Her assessment is correct: Holbrooke’s career embodies some of its least attractive and most deeply flawed traits. Holbrooke started as a...
Barack Obama’s Reassuringly Vacuous State of the Union Address
President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union Address was almost entirely focused on domestic issues. This was appropriate considering the magnitude of social, economic and moral problems America is facing, and the attendant absurdity of pursuing grand global themes for as long as those problems remain unresolved. The clichés and the rhetoric were...
When the Wolves Get Religion
Letter From Turkey The city of Istanbul reflects Turkey’s transformation over the past decade. Almost eight years after my previous visit I am greeted by an impressive new international terminal at the Atatürk International Airport—Europe’s seventh busiest—and by the massive office towers and apartment complexes surrounding it. According to ...