President Vladimir Putin has been facing several crises that could undermine Russia’s strategic interests. His inability to respond quickly and effectively reflects lingering complacency within areas of Moscow’s sphere of influence. Azerbaijan’s offensive against the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, encouraged and abetted by Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is testing Moscow’s ability to remain neutral in...
I recently took a trip to the German city of Constance, site of an important medieval Latin Church council that established the right to remove incorrigible popes. Some reflection on the city and its council may be of interest, given the news today that Pope Francis has apparently decided to endorse same-sex civil unions. Crossing...
On Monday, Oct. 5, our occasional contributor James G. Jatras gave a lecture at the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade entitled “Does America Have a Future? Options Before a Declining Hegemon.” He presented a complex and rather bleak picture of America’s condition to an audience of some 30 scholars and analysts from Serbia’s leading research...
People are policy and Joe Biden has 2,000 of them. That is, according to reporting in Foreign Policy magazine that his team of foreign policy and national security advisors has swelled to more than that number. A contingent of that size could be expected to produce a torrent of interesting ideas and fresh proposals, from the fundamentals of...
Chronicles Foreign Affairs Editor Srdja Trifkovic was interviewed by Serbian morning news program, Dobro jutro (Good Morning) on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. We bring you an abbreviated and edited transcript of his remarks in English. ST: The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh does not have the same potential to trigger...
For the majority of Egypt’s Christians, the Sisi government is far from ideal, but preferable to any likely alternative. The Copts (“Copt” being derived from the Greek Αἰγύπτιος, “Egyptian”) still suffer from various forms of discrimination, but at least Christians are not formally reduced to the status of dhimmis, second-class citizens under Sharia, which was...
I’m back in Egypt six months after my brief foray into Sinai in February and a year and a half since my last grand tour of this remarkable country. This is a good time to visit. There are no crowds at the sights. Red Sea resorts are half-empty and ridiculously cheap. It is still rather...
A major border clash took place between Indian and Chinese troops mid-June in the Western Himalayan region of Ladakh, on the disputed “Line of Actual Control” dividing the two Asian giants. Twenty Indian soldiers died, including a senior officer, and there were 43 reported casualties on the Chinese side. This was the bloodiest in a series...
Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden has vowed to end President Trump’s “Muslim travel ban” on his first day in office and to fight “Islamicphobia”. The supposed “Muslim travel ban,” which was signed by Trump in January 2017, blocked most immigrants and travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Of the five majority-Muslim...
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” recently, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn likened President Donald Trump to Benito Mussolini. The South Carolina lawmaker opined that Trump “plans to install himself in some kind of emergency way to continue to hold on to office.” “The American people had better wake up,” Clyburn declared. “I know a...
Japan feared the Soviets, not the bomb For a generation after the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on Sept. 2, 1945, the standard narrative remained fairly straightforward. By deciding to use nuclear weapons—against Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and on Nagasaki three days later—President Harry Truman enabled the realists in Tokyo, also called the peace faction,...
Metternich: Strategist and Visionary by Wolfram Siemann; Translated by Daniel Steuer; Belknap Press, Harvard University; 928 pp., $39.95 All states need a strategy, however rudimentary, in order to survive. Great powers need much more: a viable grand strategy for war and peace is called for to endure in the never-ending struggle for power, land, and resources. As A.J.P. Taylor...
A Chronicles website reader self-identified as “bigfish92672” took exception to my statement (“Back to the Mosque,” July 22) that “[i]n the awful annals of the 20th century, two instances of genocide stand out,” the Nazi mass murder of European Jews and the Ottoman mass murder of Armenians. “No Holodomor, comrade?” commented he (or she) with...
(This is part three of Prof. Trifkovic’s three-part series, “Reflections on the Tragedy of the Hagia Sophia.” Read part two here.) In a speech at Blackheath in 1876, Britain’s former Prime Minister William Gladstone told the Ottomans, “You shall retain your titular sovereignty, your empire shall not be invaded, but never again, as the years...
(This is part two of Prof. Trifkovic’s three-part series, “Reflections on the Tragedy of the Hagia Sophia.” Read part one here.) The Ottoman zenith was reached in the 16th century, when the Turks controlled Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, held Persia at bay, and pushed into central Europe after defeating the Hungarians at Mohács. The decline...
In the Great Church where the holy gifts were revealed, the King of all, there came to them a voice from heaven, from the mouth of the angels: ‘Leave off your psalter, put away the holy gifts. Send word to the land of the Franks to come and take them: Let them come and take the...
The United States finds itself at a geostrategic crossroads. The moment is comparable to the period between the dispatch of George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” from Moscow in February 1946 suggesting a new strategy for relations with the USSR, and the announcement of the Truman Doctrine in March 1947, pledging U.S. political, military, and economic assistance to...
The great and good French novelist and thinker Jean Raspail died on June 13, three weeks short of his 95th birthday. I was deeply saddened by the news, although at his age it was to be expected. It is ironic that he succumbed to the COVID-19 virus, the product and totemic symbol of our age...
The left talks often about so-called white privilege. Being “white” is a privilege, in that it is a privilege to be a biological, spiritual, and moral heir of the best civilization the world has known, from the Old Testament and Homer via Rome and Constantinople, via the leftward turn of the Renaissance and the heresy...
It is impossible to present a coherent and forthright analysis of the causes, character, and likely consequences of the misnamed “protests” in the U.S. mainstream media. The same restraint on free speech and thought applies to most of Western Europe, and notably to the Federal Republic in which denazification has led to de-Germanization. It is...
On June second, Dr. Trifkovic gave an interview to Serbia’s most popular morning news program, Pink TV’s Novo jutro (The New Morning) on the ongoing disorder in American cities. We bring you a slightly abbreviated transcript of his remarks in English. The first question concerned the causes and background of these extraordinary events. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTniTDXM4kE [Transcript starts...
At the end of the ongoing global melodrama’s first quarter, it seems reasonable to predict that this will be a two-act play with the final curtain coming down in July. It will end as a tragedy, not because the outcome was preordained in a world impervious to human choices, but because men have free will....
Four weeks ago I posted an article examining some likely geopolitical implications of the COVID-19 epidemic. The first among those concerned attempts by major oil producers to halt the collapse of prices by agreeing to the largest production cut in history. I noted that it was uncertain whether the agreement would be enough to push...
The most destructive war in history ended in Europe shortly after 9 p.m. on May 8, 1945, when Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed the final German Instrument of Surrender. Over the past seven and a half decades millions of words have been written about World War II, but some of its aspects remain contentious to...
On April 20, Adolf Hitler turns 131. Ten days later comes the 75th anniversary of his earthly demise in the ruins of Berlin, but he is still our contemporary par excellence. He continues to haunt and fascinate. Hitler’s countenance, his very name, seem to get indelibly etched in the collective consciousness of each new generation....
“Nothing will ever be the same again!” The cliché is invoked whenever people think they are facing an event of metahistorical significance. Sometimes its use is justified: Sarajevo 1914, the Bolshevik Revolution, Hiroshima, and the fall of the Berlin Wall fit the phrase. More often it is not. Versailles 1919, JFK’s assassination, Neil Armstrong’s “giant...
In the third week of April, the nation remained absorbed by the epidemic and its immediate effects, to the exclusion of most other concerns at home or abroad. This does not mean that the struggle for power and resources in the great, wide Hobbesian world has been suspended. It continues, just as the Hundred Years’...
Pope Francis recently said he believes the coronavirus epidemic is “nature’s response” to humanity’s failure to address human-induced climate change. Asked by British journalist and papal biographer Austen Ivereigh if the current crisis provided an opportunity for an “ecological conversion,” the pontiff repeated his previously stated belief that humanity had provoked nature by not responding adequately...
President Donald Trump’s first official visit to India produced all the right optics for him and his host, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Tens of thousands of flag-waving Indians lined the streets, and well over 100,000 came to the cricket stadium in Ahmedabad to hear Trump speak. Clips from the Namaste Trump extravaganza—shots of a charismatic...
Over the past two or three decades it has been fashionable for international relations theorists, politicians, and mainstream media pundits to claim that the Westphalian nation state was moribund, obsolete, and rapidly diminishing in importance. They claimed that various transnational and regional mechanisms and institutions—the European Union being a prime example—were irreversibly taking over its...
Serious epidemics can have far-reaching social, cultural, and geopolitical consequences. The plague which devastated Athens in 430 BC—in the second year of the Peloponnesian War, when an Athenian victory still seemed within reach—claimed a quarter of the population, some 75,000 people including Pericles. His successors were weak and incompetent, and Athens suffered a precipitous decline...
An Arab-Israeli peace agreement is like a moderate Syrian rebel or rational leftist: It is possible to visualize, but producing one is daunting. Every attempt has failed. President Donald Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan will be no exception. Hardly the “deal of the century,” it proposes the establishment of a disconnected, truncated Palestinian state with...
[Read part one of this essay, “The Plan,” posted on Wednesday, Feb. 12.] Part Two: The Disagreeable Agreement. Establishing the Palestinians’ significant culpability for the lack of progress nevertheless does not mean that the Israelis should be encouraged to create territorial faits accomplis which cannot be tenable in the long run. Let us look once...
Part One: The Plan The conflict in the Holy Land is older than any mainstream media pundit of note. Most of them have spewed ill-informed drivel on President Donald Trump’s plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace because they are ignorant of geography or history. They talk of “Jerusalem,” but don’t know the difference between the Jerusalem Municipality...
During the Second World War the German High Command issued regular bulletins about the situation on various fronts. They had a triumphalist tone in 1940, when France fell, and in 1941, when it looked like the Red Army would collapse, but the core information remained reliable throughout the war. These Wehr machtberichten adopted a sober...
A wake-up call sounds in the Reeducation Camp #3017, on a bitterly cold North Dakotan morning. It is January 2023. Inmate Harold Denison, age 48, designated IPR (incarcerated pending reeducation) on the orders of President Sanders’ Homeland Security Secretary Kyle Jurek (“on the well-founded suspicion of being a Chronicles subscriber”), is feverish and yearns for...
On January 27 Dr. Trifkovic presented a paper on the geostrategic significance of the Russo-Chinese partnership at the Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Military Studies of the Israel Defense Forces in Glilot, north of Tel Aviv. We bring you his remarks in a slightly abbreviated form. Almost exactly 116 years ago, in January 1904, Sir Halford Mackinder gave a...
In his latest interview with Serbia’s most-watched private TV channel, Dr. Trifkovic looks at the renewal of tensions in Libya. [Translated from Serbian, abbreviated] Q: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed that he is sending his country’s soldiers to Libya to support the Government of National Accord in its fight against the forces...
Inspired by Harry and Meghan [Note from the editors: The following piece is satirical. (We hope!)] On January 8 Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, issued a significant statement on Instagram announcing plans to change their roles within the British royal family. Further details are available to the curious. In view of the...
In his latest interview for Serbia’s top-rated Happy TV channel, Dr. Trifkovic dwells on the geostrategic and political dynamics behind the current crisis in the Middle East. The first question was whether we are at the threshold of a major war. [Interview transcript below, translated from Serbian and abbreviated.] ST: The odds of...
A successful strategy, in diplomacy and war alike, rests on the judicious balancing of ends and means in pursuit of defined objectives. This invariably entails altering the behavior of the adversary in a manner which will make the attainment of those objectives more likely. It is unclear whether and in what way the killing of...
[above: Office of War Information research workers, 1943] The Afghanistan Papers, published by The Washington Post on Dec. 9, have demonstrated that successive U.S. administrations have deliberately and systematically disinformed the nation about the nature of the conflict, its course, and prospects. This should be no surprise to those who have studied the modern history of foreign affairs...
In his 1968 essay “Bureaucracy and Policy Making,” Dr. Henry Kissinger argued that there was no rationality or consistency in American foreign policymaking. “[A]s the bureaucracy becomes large and complex,” he wrote, “more time is devoted to running its internal management than in divining the purpose which it is supposed to serve.” There is only...
On December 12 the U.S. Senate passed a resolution formally recognizing the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during the Great War and in its aftermath as genocide, a move Ankara has long opposed. The resolution states that “it is the policy of the United States to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and...
Prague is one of the grand capitals of Europe. It is painfully beautiful in these misty mornings, with the Castle catching the first sun rays while a hundred spires below remain dormant. With just over a million residents, it is a city big enough to offer an embarrassment of cultural, visual and gastronomic riches while...
As we approach the last year of this century’s second decade, the United States is still the most powerful state in the world, safe from direct threats by foreign state actors. Two oceans separate America from actual or potential hot spots on other continents, while its neighbors to the north and south are harmless and...
Seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly and rapidly, an obscure and evidently troubled Swedish teenager became a global celebrity. The phenomenon of Greta Thunberg was the theme of Srdja Trifkovic’s presentation at the Media Forum on Modern Journalism in Prague on November 20. Greta Thunberg soared from an apparently lonely girl protesting climate change with...
Upon his return from a week-long stay in Budapest, Srdja Trifkovic provides an assessment of Hungary’s current political scene in his weekly roundup of world affairs for Serbia’s top-rated Happy TV network. He also looks at the central European country’s role in EU politics, which occasionally may appear disproportionate to its modest size and resources....
On November 8 Dr. Trifkovic presented a paper on China’s geostrategy and U.S. response at a major conference in Budapest, New Dimensions and Generational Leap in Warfare, which was organized by the Hungarian Defense Forces General Staff Scientific Research Centre. The event was attented by several general officers from NATO countries, over a hundred Hungarian...
In his weekly roundup of world events for Serbia’s Happy TV network, Dr. Trifkovic discusses the future of the Islamic State. He also looks at a viable strategy for President Donald Trump to emerge victorious from the impeachment battle. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ2EPtvxQ_c&app=desktop (Translated from Serbian, slightly abbreviated.) Q: What has changed with the killing of al-Baghdadi?...