Despite all the media attention devoted to it, Russia’s incursion into Ukraine poses no threat to the United States. Soviet Russia was a mortal threat to the United States because she embodied a communist ideology with aspirations of global hegemony. The threat died with that ideology, which is why Americans who believe that the goal...
Category: Columns
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Of Pasteboard and Pastry
The Grand Budapest Hotel Produced by Scott Rudin Productions and Studio Babelsberg Directed and written by Wes Anderson Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures Exceptionally well-made pastries are often said to be lighter than air. I was reminded of this after watching Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, a confection so airy that...
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America’s Grand Strategy
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. “Robbing, slaughtering, pillaging they misname sovereign authority, and where they make an empty waste they call it peace.” Tacitus puts this accurate if one-sided summation of Roman imperial strategy into the mouth of Calgacus, a Caledonian chieftain, urging the Celtic warriors to resist...
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Moscow Rules
Spending the first three days of spring in snowy Moscow, especially after being in balmy Yalta and Sevastopol, is not my idea of fun. It is useful, however, when you write on foreign affairs and there’s a first-rate crisis under way between “Putin’s Russia” and the West. The overriding impression is that Moscow no longer...
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More Knee-Slappers
One of the great knee-slappers, however perverse, of the so-called War on Terror is the fact that fundamentalist Islamic forces are stronger than ever as a result. It is like going on a crash diet for a month and putting on 20 pounds. In the 12 years since George W. first uttered those three little...
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Bear Flag Revolt
Most Americans have no idea that California was once an independent republic and came into the Union, like Texas, without going through a territorial stage. This is symbolized by California’s state seal, which features Minerva, who sprang from Jupiter’s head fully formed. During the 1950’s we Golden State schoolchildren were taught all about our Bear...
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Truth on a Diet
Now that Matthew McConaughey has won his loudly preordained Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Dallas Buyers Club, it’s time we asked how he did it. The answer is simple. He pulled off a canny trifecta: First, he made himself an LGBT wet dream by playing a heterosexual who gets AIDS; second,...
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National Debtors
The United States is a nation of debtors. Whatever sources you consult or trust, our per capita debt is extraordinarily high. The money geeks at NerdWallet.com, after analyzing statistics from the Federal Reserve, offer the following profile of American households: Average credit-card debt: $15,270 Average mortgage debt: $149,925 Average student-loan debt: $32,258 I shall not...
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The Dogma in the Manger
As readers of this column may have noted, I hardly ever comment on events in Moscow. Since 1984, when Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in Russia, I have taken the view that the clever understand what transpires there without need for fresh explanations, while the daft, no matter how ingenious one’s explanations or persuasive one’s reasoning,...
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Eastern Approaches
In April 1904, Scottish geographer Halford Mackinder gave a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society. His paper, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” caused a sensation and marked the birth of geopolitics as an autonomous discipline. According to Mackinder, control over the Eurasian “World-Island” is the key to global hegemony. At its core is the “pivot...
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Little Yellow Bastards
One of life’s safest bets is that, following a visit by a Japanese premier to the shrine that honors the nation’s war dead, a lot of Chinese megacrooks and inheritors of the greatest murderer of all time will cry foul, and lots of buffoons of the neocon and liberal persuasion over here will echo them. ...
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Pregnant With Meaning
Her Produced by Annapurna Pictures Written and directed by Spike Jonze Distributed by Warner Brothers Inside Llewyn Davis Produced by StudioCanal and Anton Capital Entertainment Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen Distributed by CBS Films Her is directed by Spike Jonze, the inscrutable nom de cinema Adam Spiegel has adopted for himself. Set...
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In Search of the Bourgeoisie
“How beastly the bourgeois is,” sneered D.H. Lawrence, “especially the male of the species.” What courage and imagination a writer must have to revile a social class that has been under attack for over a generation! Aristocrats (and would-be aristocrats) look down their noses at the bourgeoisie’s convention-bound moralism and dismal commitment to hard work...
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Up and Down in Palermo
The American billionaire Elon Musk, lately much in the news on account of his ambition to send apple pie, solar energy, PayPal, and Ninja Turtles to other planets in our galaxy, was once a cash-strapped college student. The experience, as he boasted to the Los Angeles Times, had taught him frugality: “I tried various experiments...
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In Praise of Geopolitics
The noun geopolitics and the adjective geopolitical are increasingly present in media discourse on world affairs. In principle, this is a good thing. Relating political power to the immutable imperatives of space and resources is essential to an analysis of world affairs that is free from the ideological baggage of American exceptionalism, whether Wilsonian or...
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Did You Hear the One About Syria?
From the top of the mountain that overlooks my Swiss chalet I can almost see Lake Geneva on a clear day, but thankfully, what I cannot see are the armies of so-called diplomats, flunkies, arms dealers, professional wallet lifters, con men, thieves, and men who have obviously been conceived by apes with a dose of...
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The Technology Mirage
For years, Americans worried about the disappearance of manufacturing jobs were told that their loss would be more than offset by all the new jobs technology would create in the United States. What’s more, the jobs created by technology would stay in the United States, because they required skills that the Chinese and Mexicans—those now...
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The Mexican War
It’s popular in academe today to describe the Mexican War as an example of an aggressive and expansive colossus beating up on a weak neighbor, but that was not the case in 1846. The war was really a second phase of the Texas Revolution. Most people don’t understand that Mexico never recognized Texas independence. It...
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Flyovers and Combovers
Nebraska Produced by Blue Lake Media Fund and Bona Fide ProductionsDirected by Alexander Payne Screenplay by Bob Nelson Distributed by Paramount Vantage American Hustle Produced by Atlas Entertainment and Annapurna Pictures Directed and written by David O. Russell Distributed by Columbia Pictures Few directors would have taken the chances Alexander Payne does with his...
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The Mandela Mandala
Every year, the Christian calendar is more and more marginalized by anti-Christian “holidays” and commemorations. In 2013, the first week of Advent, by decree of President Obama and National Public Radio, was displaced by Nelson Mandela Week. Since we were only in December, I could not wait to see what our masters will pull out...
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The Buffalo Harp
Inutile asking me why this column is called that, or what a buffalo harp might be. I honestly do not know, except that it is the name of an old ironmonger’s near my house. One still happens here and there, in the less progressive European towns, upon those ancient shop signs, faded black or gold...
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A Vanishing Nation
Uit die blou van onse hemel uit die diepte van ons see, Oor ons ewige gebergtes, waar die kranse antwoord gee. When in 1918 Cornelis Jacobus Langenhoven wrote “Die Stem” (“The Voice”), the poem that became South Africa’s pre-1995 national anthem, by “our everlasting mountains” he meant the Drakensberg range that separates Transvaal from Natal. ...
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Back to the Trenches
Stand by for a barrage of centennials. For some years to come, we will be facing very regular commemorations of the various horrors of World War I and its aftermath, so expect a great many books, documentaries, and newspaper pieces on Sarajevo, the Armenian massacres, the Lusitania, the Russian Revolution, and on through the 2020’s. ...
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Bums and Bandits
One of the great but perverse pleasures of my life when I’m in New York City is to read the New York Times. It’s perverse because no paper north of Saudi Arabia lies quite as blatantly as the Times does, its lying based on omission rather than invention, and by the use of the kind...
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Reckless Regard
All Is Lost Produced by Before The Door Picture Written and Directed by J.C. Chandor Distributed by Lionsgate Robert Redford and Bruce Dern are proving that we needn’t retire to our rocking chairs at 77—not if we have star power, that is. Each costar of 1974’s The Great Gatsby has his own leading role in...
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Wiseguys
The American home-mortgage crisis, though it is only a little less urgent than it was a year ago, has taken second place, in the ambulance-chasing media, to ObamaCare, same-sex “marriage,” and even the wars in Syria and Afghanistan. We have all been informed that the Great Recession was caused in large part by high rates...
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Global Security Challenges in 2014
The year ahead is likely to bring unforeseen foreign-policy challenges. Two years ago nobody anticipated the “Arab Spring,” and that phenomenon’s causes, significance, and future developments are still a matter of dispute. The North Korean regime is fundamentally less stable than at any time since the 1950-53 war, and its sudden unraveling could cause a...
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A Farewell to Balls
I recently sat down with a friend of more than 50 years, Reinaldo Herrera, and was filmed by Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, also an old friend, while lunching and discussing the past. The Herrera house is a grand one, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and Graydon’s idea was to film...
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Where’s Kafka When You Need Him?
Like all proper banana republics, the Olive Republic of Greece has jailed some elected members of parliament, charging them with criminality, as obscure and vague an accusation as hooliganism used to be when Uncle Joe Stalin was displeased with some Russian writer. Stalin used dissidents for target practice; the present gang in power in the...
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Japan’s Prelude to Pearl Harbor
Was Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor out of character for the chrysanthemum nation? Her actions at Port Arthur, nearly 38 years earlier, suggest otherwise. In 1898 Russia began leasing the Liaotung Peninsula, which juts into the Yellow Sea between China and the Korean Peninsula, from the Chinese. On the southern tip of the Liaotung...
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Stairway to Heaven
There is, or at least there used to be before the days of Nestlé in every pot and a Nissan in every garage, the idea of a stairway to Heaven. Jacob’s ladder, which the biblical patriarch famously dreamed about during the flight from his brother Esau, is a locus classicus, of course, but the idea...
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O Captain, My Captain
Captain Phillips Produced by Trigger Street Productions Directed by Paul Greengrass Screenplay by Billy Ray Distributed by Columbia Pictures Captain Phillips, the film, has come under fire since its opening, as has the eponymous captain of the Danish container ship Maersk Alabama, which was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009. Complaints against Richard Phillips have...
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The Making of Books
When I came to Chronicles, I looked forward to the arrival of a steady stream of books for review: new fiction and poetry, histories and biographies, and the occasional works of popular scholarship or science. From the first I was disappointed in the quality of the books sent in “over the transom,” and I turned...
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The Night the World Didn’t Change
Most sober historians have little respect for counterfactuals, those extrapolations of alternative worlds where matters developed differently from the world we know. Yet such alternatives are actually hard to avoid. How can you claim that Gettysburg was a significant battle unless you contemplate the other paths that American history might have taken if the South...
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An Uncertain Asian Pivot
Nicholas Spykman died 70 years ago, more than two years before Japan’s defeat, but his analysis of America’s role in the world, and the challenges she will face in the Far East, sounds almost prophetic today. The Dutch-born Yale professor caused a scandal when he wrote in 1942—only months after Pearl Harbor—that America’s chief regional...
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Answering Islam
Americans find it difficult to understand the Islamic threat. It is not just that they have made the mistake of listening to presidential speeches on the “religion of peace” or dulled their wits reading the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The fault does not lie exclusively or even primarily with American schools,...
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The Middle East: Steady as She Goes
To paraphrase Camus, he who despairs of the condition of the Middle East is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool. In a permanent disaster zone, the best one can hope for is that things will not get worse—not too soon, anyway. Things did get better in the Middle East...
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Of Locks and la King
A man whose reputation rivals that of the Clintons for dishonesty and lies recently claimed he overheard a gangster confirming that Bobby Riggs had thrown his match against Billie Jean King in the infamous Battle of the Sexes on September 20, 1973. King won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. According to the Clinton-wannabe, Bobby was $100,000 in...
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The Academic Industrial Complex
In his farewell address, Dwight Eisenhower warned against a military-industrial complex that would seek to enrich itself through false appeals to the common good. Today, it is higher education that is growing rich by convincing the public that its actions are for their good. The costs that universities and colleges are charging students range from...
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Attachment and Loss
Blue Jasmine Produced by Perdido Productions Written and directed by Woody Allen Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics Grim. That’s the first thing to say about Woody Allen’s new movie, Blue Jasmine. The second is that its lead, Cate Blanchett, gives one of the best performances by an actress since Vivian Leigh played Blanche DuBois...
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The Stafford Disaster
If you didn’t hear about the social and medical catastrophe that occurred at Stafford Hospital, in the English Midlands—a disaster that claimed some 1,200 lives—then you must have been following the U.S. news media. The Stafford experience should be a nightmarish wake-up call for Americans, and a crushingly definitive argument in the nation’s debate over...
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Elysian Fields Forever
Elysium Produced and distributed by TriStar Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment Directed and written by Neill Blomkamp Neill Blomkamp’s second film, Elysium, is, in a way, a sequel to his first, District 9. This time, however, there are no eight-foot-tall prawn-like aliens accusing earthlings in Johannesburg, South Africa, of the crime of apartheid or insensitivity...
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Terminators, Inc.
“Hieronymo’s mad againe.” The cover of the August issue of The Atlantic Monthly, titled “Drone Warrior,” features a picture of President Obama and the question, “Has It Become Too Easy for a President to Kill?” I should have thought “Stop me before I kill again” or, perhaps, “I’ll be back” would...
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A Failure of Intelligence
“Al Qaeda is on the run, Osama bin Laden is dead,” President Obama announced at a rally in Des Moines on the eve of last year’s presidential election. Less than a year later it is evident that, contrary to Obama’s assurances, Al Qaeda is alive and well, along with other Islamic terrorist networks. The jihadists...
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Friending Narcissus
Cicero was a wise human being who wrote that a man with a garden and a library has all he needs. He also said that only a man without a brain tweets. (Well, he would have said it, were he around today.) The Oxford philosopher John Gray, a man I used to get drunk with...
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A Different Hollywood
We’ve all heard it dozens of times after another disappointed moviegoer leaves the theater: “They don’t make ’em like they used to.” One reason is the absence today of the kind of men who once made the movies. Try this test yourself: Think of a few of your favorite movies, and then identify the directors,...
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An Aix to Grind
As though in memory of those antediluvian Playboy “pictorials” in which the hapless young lady posed with whatever attribute of her metier the photographer had unearthed in the props room—an alleged student of architecture with a carpenter’s wooden compass, a presumed graduate of the police academy with a sheriff’s badge, a putative nurse with a...
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The Best Schooling Money Can Buy
Well, the jury, they see their facts. My thoughts of the jury, they old, that’s old-school people. We in a new school, our generation, my generation. Poor Rachel Jeantel has been ridiculed for her diction, elocution, and irrationality, but in her interview with Piers Morgan she makes a valid point in contrasting “old-school people” who...
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Reason’s Enemy
Copperhead Produced by Swordspoint Productions Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell Screenplay by Bill Kauffman Distributed by Brainstorm Media What makes a good war story? Cannons, bombs, bloody bodies, and bounding heroes? Stephen Crane’s short story “An Episode of War” demonstrates it can be achieved by other means. It fully registers the madness, horror, and folly...
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A Tale of Two Islamists
Two waves of popular protests against Islamist regimes, one in Turkey and the other in Egypt, have produced notably different outcomes. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has weathered the storm, while President Mohamed Morsi was removed from office by the military. In view of the similarities between Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) and Morsi’s...