Category: Web

Devising a great power’s national-security strategy is serious business.  When external challenges are properly evaluated, tasks prioritized, and resources allocated, the results can be impressive.  The Roman Empire from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius (a.d. 96-180) provides one example; Britain from Napoleon to the Great War another.  The rise of Prussia and unification of Germany during...

Following the 1862 battle at Perryville, the angry Unionists who held the Kentucky town declined to bury their slain foes.  When the stench and sight of wild hogs gorging themselves on corpses finally proved unbearable, the task of laying the dead to rest fell upon one Henry P. Bottom, the secessionist upon whose once-prosperous farm...

After Roy Moore secured the Republican nomination to fill Jeff Sessions’ seat in the U.S. Senate, the Washington Post ran an article claiming that, roughly four decades ago, Moore had dated two teenage girls and asked out a third in front of her mother, who did not approve.  These girls were over the age of...

On this month’s form, 2018 will be an interesting year. So far it has brought rich rewards to us world affairs aficionados. The overall global tempo is accelerating, affrettando, like de Falla’s Danza Ritual del Fuego. What would have been considered bizarre if not outright insane but a few years ago is now commonplace. Take...

If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week’s end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history. Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his troops will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded. Erdogan’s foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the U.S....

President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs of up to 50% on Asian washing machines being dumped into the United States in response to a trade case brought by Whirlpool prompted howls of outrage among Trump opponents everywhere, especially among Trump opponents who used to masquerade as conservatives. The most revealing howl came from National Review‘s...

Asked if he would agree to be interviewed by Robert Mueller’s team, President Donald Trump told the White House press corps, “I would love to do it . . . as soon as possible. . . . under oath, absolutely.” On hearing this, the special counsel’s office must have looked like the Eagles’ locker room...

From the February 2014 issue of Chronicles. The elegant duplex maisonette at 73 East 73rd Street in Manhattan, formerly the residence of the late Mr. and Mrs. William F. Buckley, Jr., was recently bought by Mr. and Mrs. Mark Rockefeller, son and daughter-in-law of the late Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.  A writer for the New York...

From the October 1995 issue of Chronicles. “The question is,” Humpty Dumpty tells Alice in Through the Looking Glass, “which is to be master—that’s all.” As overused as the quotation may be, it nevertheless communicates a perennial truth that most people forget when it comes to understanding not only the answer but also the question...

“The Western democratic system is hailed by the developed world as near perfect and the most superior political system to run a country,” mocked China’s official new agency. “However, what’s happening in the United States today will make more people worldwide reflect on the viability and legitimacy of such a chaotic political system.” There is...

According to a poll conducted in the late summer of 2017, 56 percent of respondents agreed that President Trump was “tearing the country apart.” We consistently read reports and see on the news the accusation that Trump, and others, are being “divisive” when what we really need is “unity.” We are repeatedly told we need...

As I write this, the federal government remains “shut down” because congressional Democrats have committed themselves en masse to open borders. The Democrats know that they can secure congressional approval of President Obama’s unilateral DACA amnesty if they give President Trump funding for a wall on our southern border. But the Democrats are unwilling to...

The war for dominance in the Middle East, following the crushing of ISIS, appears about to commence in Syria—with NATO allies America and Turkey on opposing sides. Turkey is moving armor and troops south to Syria’s border enclave of Afrin, occupied by Kurds, to drive them out, and then drive the Syrian Kurds out of...

Letter from Pergamum-on-the-Potomac It’s just incredible what a hullabaloo can erupt from the garbled account of just one spoken word. All week long the national media and political class have been in a tizzy over what Donald Trump was reported to have said in a closed-door White House meeting with Senators over DACA and immigration...

From the July 1995 issue of Chronicles. Gene Roddenberry was a hustling ex-cop who wanted to strike it rich in television, and he did, with a series called Star Trek, which he once described (before his slide into self-mythicizing and lucrative licensing deals) as “Wagon Train To the Stars.” His public image has heretofore been...

President Trump “said things which were hate-filled, vile and racist. . . . I cannot believe . . . any president has ever spoken the words that I . . . heard our president speak yesterday.” So wailed Sen. Dick Durbin after departing the White House. And what caused the minority leader to almost faint...

You can read Letter from Germany, Part I here. This past week has been unseasonably lovely in southern Germany, with crystal blue skies and the temperature in the fifties. I was enjoying the view of the Alps from the southern wing of Neuschwannstein, the famous fairytale castle built by Wagner’s mad friend King Ludwig, when...

The U.S. media are stoking the coalfires of populist nationalism with their breathless coverage of President Trump’s private and undoubtedly unwise comment that Haiti is a “sh-thole country.” The President denies using that specific language, but owns up to the substance of the comment. The New York Times has declared that Trump’s reported comment is...

After a year in which he tested a hydrogen bomb and an ICBM, threatened to destroy the United States, and called President Trump “a dotard,” Kim Jong Un, at the gracious invitation of the president of South Korea, will be sending a skating team to the “Peace Olympics.” An impressive year for Little Rocket Man....

From Afghanistan to Somalia, Special Ops Achieves Less with More At around 11 o’clock that night, four Lockheed MC-130 Combat Talons, turboprop Special Operations aircraft, were flying through a moonless sky from Pakistani into Afghan airspace. On board were 199 Army Rangers with orders to seize an airstrip. One hundred miles to the northeast, Chinook...

Informing Iran, “The U.S. is watching what you do,” Amb. Nikki Haley called an emergency meeting Friday of the Security Council regarding the riots in Iran. The session left her and us looking ridiculous. France’s ambassador tutored Haley that how nations deal with internal disorders is not the council’s concern. Russia’s ambassador suggested the United...

From the December 2016 issue of Chronicles. It is seven o’clock on a peaceful late-summer evening here in suburban Seattle, and I’m sitting in my back garden smoking marijuana. Passively smoking, I should add, lest I shock any reader by this sorry lapse, but smoking nonetheless.  This time of year, my property is especially fragrant...

As tens of thousands marched in the streets of Tehran on Wednesday in support of the regime, the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps assured Iranians the “sedition” had been defeated. Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari is whistling past the graveyard. The protests that broke out a week ago and spread and became riots are...

From the September 2015 issue of Chronicles. Two thousand fifteen was the year that we Americans broke history.  By “breaking history,” I do not mean something like “breaking news,” or “breaking records,” or even “breaking the Internet” (though the Internet certainly played a role).  Yes, the “historic moments” of the Summer of #LoveWins and #HateLoses—the...

The North German Plain is not an exciting place. It lacks the charm of the Palatinate, the fairytale quality of the Middle Rhineland, or the drama of the Bavarian Alps. It is peopled by staid burghers who are hard-working, practical, and (in contrast to the Oberpfälzers, say) rather quiet. It rains a lot, and now...

What caused the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016, which evolved into the criminal investigation that is said today to imperil the Trump presidency? As James Comey’s FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller have, for 18 months, failed to prove Donald Trump’s “collusion” with the Kremlin, what was...

If you thought comedy was dead, take a look at the newest Napoleon on the block, the one wearing sandals on his feet and a tablecloth on his head, and striking an heroic pose with his hairy legs wrapped around a camel’s hump.  This ludicrous figure resides in Riyadh and is fawned over by people...

A few years ago, a respected Chronicles editor disagreed with my judgment on the behavior of a deceased Trappist abbot who had repeatedly bowed down in a mosque to the god of the unhappy Saracens in order to chum it up with his Mohammedan neighbors.  I wrote that this constituted apostasy, and he wrote back...

Thor: Ragnarok Produced by Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Pictures Directed by Taika Waititi  Screenplay by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, and Christopher Yost Distributed by Walt Disney Studios  The Killing of a Sacred Deer Produced and Distributed by A24  Written and Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos  Mudbound Produced by Armory Films Directed by Dee Rees  Screenplay...

The liberal print media, like all things liberal, are never more themselves than when searching out, discovering, and deploring violence in America—gun violence, police violence, violence against women, violence against children, violence against racial and ethnic minorities, violence against immigrants, violence against Muslims, violence against homosexuals and “transgender people,” violence against foreign countries and cultures,...

To say I was a difficult child is something of an understatement: I was a wild child.  In retrospect, I can only feel sorry for my poor parents, who had no idea what to do with me.  I was simply unmanageable.  Unwilling to sit still in class, or to obey the simplest instructions, I did...

As the calendar rolls over to 2018, we need to take stock of where we are as Americans, noting the dangers that lie ahead.  Those dangers involve politics, culture, economics, foreign policy, and religion, as well as our capacity as postmodern people for thinking in terms of unchanging moral truths and applying them.  For there...

“What’s past is prologue.” —Shakespeare, The Tempest Situated between Austria and Rumania, Hungary has a rich history worthy of many books.  And though this country of less than ten million people is the size of the state of Maine, her role on the world stage is only increasing.  She has declared war on billionaire deconstructionist...

Cats, I’ve sometimes been told, make better pets than dogs, because cats are more independent, which is just another way of saying that dogs have been domesticated for so many thousands of years, they are genetically the kinds of creatures that find their fulfillment in loving and serving man, while cats are not.  I love...

A key source of volatility in today’s international system is the propensity of the U.S. government to reject any conventionally ordered hierarchy of American global interests.  Washington’s deterritorialized policy of full-spectrum dominance is based on ideological suppositions that are unreceptive to rational debate.  America’s “global engagement” constantly creates results—notably in Iraq and Libya—that run counter...

Only the most delusional limey would deny that, when it comes to popular culture, Britain is downstream from America.  In politics, too, we follow your lead.  Tony Blair pursued Bill Clinton’s middle way; David Cameron adopted George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism—although Tories won’t readily admit that.  A whole generation of British politicians grew up watching...

Asked what he did during the French Revolution, Abbe Sieyes replied, “I survived.” Donald Trump can make the same boast. No other political figure has so dominated our discourse. And none, not Joe McCarthy in his heyday in the early ’50s, nor Richard Nixon in Watergate, received such intensive and intemperate coverage and commentary as...

From September 2000 issue of Chronicles. “The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.” —William McKinley In his classic study of “isolationism,” Not to the Swift, Justus Doenecke takes note of a phenomenon called “Asia Firstism”—the view of conservative politicians and publicists of the postwar era who opposed meddling in Europe but...

The original question the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign was to answer was a simple one: Did he do it? Did Trump, or officials with his knowledge, collude with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to hack the emails of John Podesta and the DNC, and leak the contents to damage Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump?...

President Trump, every Republican senator, and the GOP majority in Speaker Paul Ryan’s House just put the future of their party on the line. By enacting the largest tax cut since the Reagan administration, the heart of which is cutting the corporate rate from 35 to 21 percent, Republicans have boldly bet the farm. They...

On December 20 the European Commission (EC) took the unprecedented step of activating Article 7.1 of the Lisbon Treaty against Poland. The EC accuses the Law and Justice (PiS) government in Warsaw of “putting fundamental democratic rights at risk” by enacting 13 laws to reform the country’s judiciary which make it easier to replace the...

From the December 2014 issue of Chronicles. It has been argued that, after Shakespeare, Charles Dickens is the finest writer in the English language.  His works have forged their way into the canon to such a degree that it is much more difficult to know which of his novels to leave off the recommended reading...

In the run-up to Christmas, President Donald Trump has been the beneficiary of some surprisingly good news and glad tidings. Sunday, Vladimir Putin called to thank him and the CIA for providing Russia critical information that helped abort an ISIS plot to massacre visitors to Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Monday found polls showing Trump...

Last week I saw an article about a proposal, currently part of the tax bill, to levy a 1.4% tax on investment income earned by private colleges with endowments of more than $500,000 per student. Thirty-two colleges currently have such enormous endowments, including Harvard, whose endowment is an astonishing $38 billion. One might think that...