When Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz-KDNP alliance swept to victory on Sunday, thereby guaranteeing the Hungarian premier a fourth term with a large parliamentary majority, it proved that a national conservative could win in a Western country. It is the greatest victory of national democracy that we may see in our lifetimes and a deserved...
“In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security,” said President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address. “This is a real test. It’s going to take time.” Thus did Biden frame the struggle of our time...
Several weeks into the war in Ukraine, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked President Joe Biden if he agreed with those who call Russian President Vladimir Putin “a killer.” “I do,” said Biden. Since calling Putin a killer, Biden has progressed to calling him “a war criminal,” “a murderous dictator,” “a pure thug,” and “a...
Senator Lindsey Graham’s recent comments about wishing to see someone assassinate Putin, just as he wished Hitler had been taken out, reminded me of why I would never want neoconservatives like Graham running American foreign policy. And I don’t regard Graham’s remarks as an isolated opinion. I’ve heard numerous Republicans and Fox News celebrities seconding...
While President Joe Biden was in Brussels and Warsaw showing U.S. solidarity with Ukraine, the 38-year-old autocrat who rules North Korea made a bold bid for the president’s attention. For the first time since 2017, Kim Jong Un test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-17, the largest road-mobile missile ever launched. While it flew 600...
Twenty years ago, we traditional conservatives, paleoconservatives, members of the dissident right—whatever you want to call us—had perhaps our finest hour. With the nation still looking to avenge 9/11, a number of powerful people who had been scheming to invade Iraq long before 9/11 used that tragedy to plunge America into a disastrous war of choice. Few...
During the 70 years that the Soviet Union existed, Ukraine was an integral part of the nation. Yet this geographic and political reality posed no threat to the United States. A Russia and a Ukraine, both inside the USSR, was an accepted reality that was seen as no threat for the seven decades that they...
“The only way the gay rights movement can succeed in making society accept homosexuality as natural, normal, moral, and healthy is to first de-Christianize that society … and they are making headway.” That was the warning of paleoconservative commentator Pat Buchanan in his 2001 book, The Death of the West. His point was clear: there could...
“It’s time to meet, time to talk … time to restore territorial integrity … for Ukraine,” said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday. Zelenskyy added that the need to negotiate was even greater for Moscow. “Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be so huge that several generations will not be enough to rebound.” According to the Pentagon, Russia...
“This is worse than a crime,” Talleyrand famously said of Napoleon’s execution of the Duke of Enghien: “it is a mistake.” The same can be said of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, almost four weeks after it was launched. However the battle turns out–even if the Russian army achieves its operational...
My reaction to crazy, infuriating things that woke leftists do is often softened and even evaporates when I notice how the conservative establishment responds to the same situations. I am certainly no fan of Jussie Smollett and was as offended as most non-woke Americans by his shenanigans in Chicago in 2019, when he pretended that...
In an interview with Reuters, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman for decades, made a startling offer. Moscow could end the Ukraine war immediately, said Peskov, if four conditions were met. Ukraine should cease all military action, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, accept the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk separatist enclaves, and...
When several NATO nations revealed that they had dozens of Russian-made MiG-29s, the idea arose to fly them to Ukraine and turn them over to Ukrainian pilots familiar with the MiGs. America would provide F-16s to replace the MiGs. Poland had an even better idea. Warsaw would fly its 27 MiG fighter jets to the...
After Friday’s NATO summit refused to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the allies’ failure to “close the skies” to Russian military aircraft gives “a green light for further bombing of Ukrainian cities.” “All the people who will die starting from this day will … die because of you,” said...
When Hungarian rebels arose in 1956 to overthrow the Communist regime imposed by Joseph Stalin, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. forces to aid the Hungarians. Ike would not take America to war with Russia over a small country in Central Europe. While the Hungarians were heroic and inspirational, Hungary was neither a member...
Events in the Russia-Ukraine situation have moved far faster than anyone imagined, and today we are watching Russian troops attempt to take Kiev as part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. This invasion will do to the reputation of Putin’s Russia what the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 did to the reputation of...
From his principal avenues of attack on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin began this war with three strategic goals. Send an army south from Belarus to capture Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and replace the government. Send forces into northeast Ukraine to capture its second largest city, Kharkiv, with 1.4 million people. Third, extend the Donetsk enclave...
When Vladimir Putin channeled history in his Feb. 21 speech justifying Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, many Western critics dismissed his remarks as a pack of lies, the ravings of a delusional madman. But things are not always as simple as they seem. While many of the claims Putin made to justify his aggression are...
When Russia’s Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership and be admitted. We’re not changing that. In the Bucharest declaration of 2008, NATO had put Ukraine and...
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a military “special operation” in Ukraine, which, through the fog of war, looks like an attempt to overthrow the current authorities there and “demilitarize” that country, has prompted the usual globalist/neo-con talking heads to throw around irresponsible comparisons of the Kremlin boss to Hitler. The truth is that...
The issue of what constitutes an invasion is no longer relevant as of 5 a.m. Moscow time on Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine across several fronts with troops, armor, and missile strikes. Indignant Western rhetoric aside, the Russian military’s strategic objective and President Vladimir Putin’s subsequent long-term political objective are what matters now. The...
With all due respect for a distinction that Chronicles Foreign Affairs Editor Srdja Trifkovic and some diplomats in America and Europe have tried to make, I can’t see how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s marching of armies into Donetsk and Lugansk earlier this week does not constitute a good old-fashioned invasion. Although Russian armies, in a...
Not so long ago, Democrats seemed the party of the future. “Inevitable!” predicted some pundits, for demography is destiny. Moreover, in 2020, Democrats, who had won the popular vote six times in seven presidential elections, swept the popular vote again, by 6 million ballots. And they captured both houses of Congress. The future did seem...
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree on Monday to recognize the two self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (the Donbass) in eastern Ukraine. His decision, announced in an hour-long live address, was immediately followed by an order to Russian units to move into the disputed territories in a “peacekeeping” mission. By Monday evening their...
When NBC’s Lester Holt asked President Joe Biden what might prompt him to send U.S. troops to rescue Americans fleeing Ukraine, Biden replied: “There’s not. That’s a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another.” “It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization. We’re dealing with one of the largest...
The furor over contentious symbols is rising again, the latest case occurring in connection with Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates in Ottawa. The frightening hate symbols found among the truckers were described thus by Al Jazeera: The convoy was organised by known far-right figures, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network has reported in detail. Confederate flags and...
Whenever America is polarized, as it is today, people go back in memory and history to recall other times their nation was so divided. The Civil War of the 1860s and the social revolution that tore us apart in the 1960s come instantly to mind. In that latter time, there was no figure more central...
Because America entered both world wars of the 20th century last, while all the other great powers bled one another, and because we outlasted the Soviet Empire in the Cold War, America emerged, in the term of President George H.W. Bush, as “the last superpower.” We had it all. We were the “indispensable nation.” We...
The Pentagon affirmed its commitment to critical race theory on Wednesday, pointing to a talk delivered by Bishop Garrison, senior advisor to the secretary of defense for human capital and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Garrison joined a panel at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), which has received funding from every major defense contractor, Wall...
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has pushed neoconservative party lines on foreign policy for decades; the last time I read a dissenting view on that subject in the Journal was when I wrote an editorial for it in 1989. Although my caustic remarks on a global democratic foreign policy were published on the editorial...
When the Union was fighting to preserve itself in the Civil War, the France of Napoleon III moved troops into Mexico, overthrew the regime of Benito Juarez, set up a monarchy and put Austrian Archduke Maximilian von Habsburg on the throne as Emperor of Mexico—one month before Gettysburg. Preoccupied, the Union did nothing. At war’s...
Water rights are at the heart of a growing geopolitical conflict between Egypt and its neighbors, as I discussed in my missive last week during my annual trip to the region. In the center of this conflict is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) under construction in Ethiopia since 2011, and which Egypt is concerned...
Former President Trump is growing more vocal in his criticism of former Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the 2020 Presidential election. At a Texas rally on Jan. 29, Trump said that Pence could have sent electoral votes from disputed states back to their state legislatures, thereby overturning the 2020 presidential election results. Trump followed...
Speaking in Conroe, Texas, last weekend, former President Donald Trump accused his successor of allowing millions of migrants to enter the country illegally across our Southern border. “The most important border … for us is not Ukraine’s border but America’s border,” thundered Trump. “Before Joe Biden sends any troops to defend a border in Europe,...
My annual Middle Eastern tour this winter is limited to Egypt, mainly due to the less rigid Corona-related restrictions there than elsewhere in the region. An additional motive is the fact that this country of over a hundred million souls faces an unprecedented geopolitical crisis that is not sufficiently known in the outside world yet...
Professor Levine writes knowledgeably about Burnham’s abilities to analyze America during the Cold War and his predications about the American future. Burnham has remained fashionable within the independent American right. The part of Burnham’s oeuvre valued by this segment of the right are his analysis of managerialism as an historical phenomenon and his clear-headed look...
Is the territorial integrity of Ukraine a cause worth America’s fighting a war with Russia? No, it is not. And this is why President Joe Biden has declared that the U.S. will not become militarily involved should Russia invade Ukraine. Biden is saying that, no matter our sentiments, our vital interests dictate staying out of...
Former President Donald Trump questions the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. For half the country, this makes him a “sore loser” who promotes “conspiracy theories” and pushes “The Big Lie.” But when President Joe Biden in his recent press conference preemptively questions the legitimacy of the 2022 midterm elections, nine months before they even...
Two Texas National Guardsmen sat in a “non-tactical” vehicle near the Mexican border and south of Laredo, Texas on the morning of Jan. 18. The Army Times reported that the men got out to assist Border Patrol in stopping a Chrysler 300 after it was seen picking up six migrants. As they approached, the driver, a suspected smuggler,...
Amid the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, multiple U.S. and defense officials have told the press that the Biden administration is in the final stages of selecting military units for deployment to Eastern Europe. The U.S. accuses Russia of planning to invade Ukraine, despite threats of heavy reprisals, while Moscow insists on guarantees that there would be...
If the left believed that draping the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, around the neck of former President Donald Trump and the party that refused to repudiate him would sink the GOP, it appears to have miscalculated. For, as the left painted the Capitol riot as an “armed insurrection,” “domestic terrorism,” “attempted coup,” and...
Two years ago, Gracy Olmstead, a journalist who writes on farming and farming communities, partnered with Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) to compose a list of those whom she and the Institute view as “conservatives.” Of the now deceased figures who appear on Olmstead’s list, very few of them have any connection to anything identifiably conservative....
In 2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup that ousted a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv by occupying Crimea, President Barack Obama did nothing. When Putin aided secessionists in the Donbass in seizing Luhansk and Donetsk, once again, Obama did nothing. Why did we not come to the military assistance of Ukraine?...
After he left the Church of Scientology, Hollywood screenwriter Paul Haggis recalled a discussion he had had with his fellow Scientologists. If great leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. can err, Haggis suggested to his zealous peers, so too can the cult’s leader, David Miscavige. “How dare you compare a great man like David Miscavige...
“The next few days … will mark a turning point in this nation’s history,” said President Joe Biden in his Atlanta speech to reframe the debate in Congress on voting rights legislation and the filibuster. He went on: “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadows, justice over injustice? … I know where I...
“Although I deal with the Italian attempt to build a fascist state,” Chronicles editor Paul Gottfried wrote in response to an obtuse critic of his latest book, Antifascism: Course of a Crusade, “I am also quite critical of Mussolini’s career, especially his involvement with Hitler’s Third Reich and the unfortunate anti-Semitic laws that Il Duce...
Chronicles Associate Editor Pedro Gonzalez was accused of being an anti-Semite by The Spectator Associate Editor Douglas Murray on Wednesday of last week. In an article entitled “When the Right Plays With Jew-Hate” in the Substack newsletter of former New York Times op-ed editor Bari Weiss, Murray wrote that Gonzalez “unmasked himself boringly and yet still wretchedly, as an antisemite.”...
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the breakup of the USSR began. But the dissolution did not stop with the 14 Soviet “republics” declaring their independence of Moscow. Decomposition had only just begun. Transnistria broke away from Moldova. South Ossetia and Abkhazia seceded from Georgia. Chechnya broke free of...
“Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now.” That was the headline over the editorial of 1,000 words in The New York Times of Sunday last. On first read, I thought the Times was conceding its obsession and describing its mission. For the editorial began by bewailing yet anew the “horrifying” event, “the very real bloodshed of...
While all facts are true, not all facts are relevant. And what are the relevant facts in this crisis where 100,000 Russian troops are now stationed along the Ukrainian border? Fact one: There is not now and never has been a vital U.S. interest in Ukraine to justify risking a war with Russia. History tells...