For all its many faults, the Obama administration has scored one notable success: It has done significantly better than its recent Republican and Democratic predecessors in normalizing relations with Russia. Washington’s visceral antagonism toward Moscow needed to be replaced by a more pragmatic, mutually beneficial relationship. The “Reset” has been imperfectly applied, but its conceptual...
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Financial Shenanigans?
The “scandal” surrounding House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) has all the earmarks of a Washington feeding frenzy—which means, in short, that most ordinary Americans couldn’t care less. Financial shenanigans in the Imperial City? I’m shocked, I tell you—shocked! Yet there is a lesson here, albeit not the one the Democrats and other “good government”...
On Beslan
Srdja Trifkovic’s conclusion to his piece on the Beslan tragedy (“After Beslan,” The American Interest, November) hits the mark precisely. Orthodox Christians have had it proved to them over and over again that the West will prefer the friendship of the Mohammedan to ours, unless we volunteer to forsake our convictions and identity to become...
Who Got Us Into These Endless Wars?
“Isolationists must not prevail in this new debate over foreign policy,” warns Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The consequences of a lasting American retreat from the world would be dire.” To make his case against the “Isolationist Temptation,” Haass creates a caricature, a cartoon, of America First patriots, then thunders that...
Confronting Russophobia
There is a paranoid, hysterical quality to the public discourse on Russia and all things Russian in today’s America. The corporate media machine and its Deep State handlers have abdicated reason and common decency in favor of raw hate and fear-mongering. We have not seen anything like it before, even in the darkest days of...
Plant and Ye Shall Find
The Bush administration says that Iran has “proliferated weapons of mass destruction.” This time, Condi will make sure they can find some. On March 28, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Henry Paulson, and Alberto Gonzales determined that Iran’s military-industrial complex, the Defense Industries Organization (DIO), has contributed to the spread of “weapons of mass destruction.”...
Putin and the Polish Gesture
In 2002, Vladimir Putin told a French reporter who asked about “innocent civilians” killed in Chechnya that—since the journalist evidently sympathized with Muslims—he would arrange to have him circumcised, adding: “I will recommend that they conduct the operation in such a way so that afterwards nothing else will grow.” People of the pompous persuasion were...
Trump’s Map to the White House
A strategic choice of VP and a party unified in the battleground states, plus Biden's dismal record, might be all it takes to turn the 2020 map back into Trump's winning 2016 map.
Appointment of Special Counsel for ‘Russiagate’ Could Derail Trump’s MAGA Agenda, Lead to War
Letter from Pergamum-on-the-Potomac On the heels of Donald Trump’s Oval Office visit with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other American and Russian officials, it finally seemed the fledgling US administration was turning the corner and making progress toward cooperation with Moscow against radical Islamic terrorism, particularly in Syria. Then the fake news came flying...
Obama Goes to Moscow
President Obama’s July trip to Moscow was intended to “reset” U.S.-Russian relations but also suggested that there is a continuing tug-of-war in the administration between realists and “democracy builders” regarding Russia policy. The struggle was publicly kicked off by the March report of a commission headed by former Sen. Gary Hart and Sen. Chuck Hagel...
Are You Ready for War With Demonized Iran?
How much attention do elections in Japan, India, Argentina or any other country, get from the U.S. media? How many Americans and American journalists even know who is in political office in other countries besides England, France and Germany? Who can name the political leaders of Switzerland, Holland, Brazil, Japan ...
Dump Duterte—for Starters
Alliances are transmission belts of war. So our Founding Fathers taught and the 20th century proved. When Britain, allied to France, declared war on Germany in 1914, America sat out, until our own ships were being sunk in 1917. When Britain, allied to France, declared war on Germany, Sept. 3, 1939, we stayed out until...
There is No Monopoly on Post-Truth
Jennifer Rubin’s Washington Post op-ed calling for Americans to put an end to our new post-truth society might have been laudable. Unfortunately for her, she fails to realize that her piece is a fine example of politically-biased, mainstream media spin-doctoring. Furthermore, Rubin’s piece demonstrates that when either side pretends that one party or one ideology...
Down Goes the Mammoth
So, the great nation builder is leaving the White House, his vision of a peaceful Middle East just a pipe dream, something poor old W used to know something about. I say poor old W because he was, after all, taken in by his very own Vice President, a treacherous and cowardly man, a character...
Were the Wars Wise? Were They Worth It?
Through the long Memorial Day weekend, anyone who read the newspapers or watched television could not miss or be unmoved by it: Story after story after story of the fallen, of those who had given the “last full measure of devotion” to their country. Heart-rending is an apt description of those stories; and searing are...
A Double Standard for Santos
Listening to the Democrats and their media lapdogs complain about George Santos’s embellished résumé gives chutzpah a new meaning. They are blatant hypocrites, and too many Republicans are happy to endorse the double standard.
Europa Delenda Est?
Europe as we knew it is far away, and it will not come back.
The Voice That Won’t Be Silenced
Tucker Carlson's voice is too important to silence because he speaks for so many people.
America’s Dangerous Overreach
All recorded history can be viewed as a long record of the use of force, or threats of force, in relations between human communities. This applies to all epochs, civilizations, and geographic spaces. Violence is immanent to man. Its constant presence is indicative of the immutability of his nature, regardless of the cultural context or...
Is Obama’s World a Utopian Myth?
Speaking in Greece on his valedictory trip to Europe as president, Barack Obama struck a familiar theme: “(W)e are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude form of nationalism, or ethnic identity, or tribalism that is built around an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ . . . “(T)he future of humanity and...
Donald Trump, Europe’s Best Friend
According to the media machine and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic, President Trump’s recent attendance at two summits—in Brussels (NATO) and Sicily (G7)—went very badly. He went through many tense encounters, made a number of statements his interlocutors did not like, notably on the uneven burden of defense costs, on his dislike of...
What Is America’s Cause in the World?
“Take away this pudding; it has no theme,” is a comment attributed to Winston Churchill, when a disappointing dessert was put in front of him. Writers have used Churchill’s remark to describe a foreign policy that lacks coherence or centrality of purpose. For most of our lifetimes, this has not been true of the United...
DeSantis’s ‘Participation Trophy’—Why Good People Don’t Run for Office
Ron DeSantis is a decorated Navy vet who served in a war zone and, among other commendations, earned a Bronze Star. So, how about a little respect?
Suspicious Minds
Will Russian philosophy gain a foothold in Russia? It already has, laments David Brooks in a New York Times op-ed (“Putin Can’t Stop,” March 3). Brooks finds disturbing Vladimir Putin’s tendency to quote the likes of Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Soloviev, and Ivan Ilyin; more worrying still, the Kremlin has recently sent copies of these three philosophers’ works to...
Halting the Leftward Lurch
The centrist right has capitulated to the triumphant march of the left, but true conservative opposition, such as Sam Francis offers, is attacked as far-right extremism.
Playing the Trump Card
In August, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) published a report documenting a startling increase in immigration over the past year. The study indicated that America’s immigrant population had grown by 1.7 million and that 44 percent of the new immigrants were from Mexico, with illegal immigration increasing during a “protracted period of legal immigration...
The Wheel and War
We may long for the romantic and heroic days when acts of military derring-do were performed by Medal of Honor recipients, but it looks like the future belongs to the ugly, impersonal, and utilitarian.
Putin and Biden’s Geneva Date Validates Low Expectations
Presidents Joseph Biden and Vladimir Putin met in Geneva on Wednesday, June 16. Both separately noted that the talks went well. “There’s been no hostility,” Putin said. “On the contrary, our meeting took place in a constructive spirit.” Biden meanwhile declared “the tone of the entire meeting… was good. Positive.” The spirit may have been constructive and the tone...
Marriage in America—March 2009
PERSPECTIVE Self-Evident Liesby Thomas Fleming VIEWS Mainline Marital Mélangeby William MurchisonWhen the culture preaches to the church. Immigration and Marriage in Americaby R. Cort KirkwoodBeyond definitions. Moonstruck Morality Versus the Cosmosby Hugh Barbour, O.Praem.Romancing the self. NEWS School of Rapeby Beverly K. EakmanFrom health class to hotties. REVIEWS Romancing the Skullby Jack Trotter John Carroll:...
Stalking the Bear
Washington desperately needed a new enemy, so the timing of Putin’s bloodless “invasion” of Crimea was just right. Al Qaeda’s value as a fear generator has been seriously compromised ever since the death of Osama bin Laden, and now that it looks like the U.S. government has taken the Syrian affiliate of the group under...
Is ‘Autocracy’ America’s Mortal Enemy?
'Autocracy' has not been America's mortal enemy for that long.
Biden Meets Xi
China’s grand strategy of building and projecting its “comprehensive national power” is a long-term geopolitical design fundamentally incompatible with Washington’s determination to maintain its open-ended “full spectrum dominance.”
Here, on the Other Side of the Ring of Fire
Americans read the increasingly panic-stricken reports of deepening catastrophe at Fukushima 1, speed to the pharmacy to buy iodine and ask, “It’s happened there; can it happen here?” Along much of California’s coastline runs the “ring of fire,” which stretches round the Pacific plate, from Australia, north past Japan, to Russia, round to Alaska,...
Browning Europe
With every passing day, Europe is turning browner and browner, the Old Continent being overrun by a tide of humanity not seen since the upheavals following World War II. Just think about it: 3,000 migrants from Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Niger, and Eritrea pass daily through the Balkans on their way to Germany, France, Austria, and...
All Is Hype for the Biden-Putin Summit
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Karl Marx’s comment came to mind as President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to equate their tete-a-tete at the G7 confab in Cornwall, England, to the Atlantic Charter conference of 80 years ago. Those were historic days, to which these days cannot compare....
Why Does the GOP Elite Hate Its Own Base?
The scorn of the GOP elite for rank-and-file Republicans is simply unsustainable for the party.
Against Terrorism—But for What?
Following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that France “is at war with terrorism, jihadism and radical Islamism.” This tells us what France is fighting against. But what is France fighting for in this war on terror? For terrorism is simply a tactic, and arguably the most effective tactic of the national...
China, Russia, and NGOs
Russia’s January 2006 law limiting the operation of NGOs, especially those with foreign funding, has earned her pariah status. What Western audiences rarely hear is that Russia has good reasons to crack down on some NGOs. A network of high-profile, internationally funded NGOs (specifically, the Russian Privatization Center and its offshoots) were instrumental in the...
The Unpardonable Heresy of Tucker Carlson
Our diversity is our greatest strength. After playing clips of Democratic politicians reciting that truth of modern liberalism, Tucker Carlson asked, “How, precisely, is diversity our strength? Since you’ve made this our new national motto, please be specific.” Reaction to Carlson’s question, with some declaring him a racist for having raised it, suggests that what...
Hitler’s Great Soviet Mistake, 80 Years Later
Hitler’s Germany attacked Stalin’s Soviet Union 80 years ago today, thus unleashing the greatest, bloodiest, and most meaningless clash of titans in history. Thanks to the German Führer’s obsession with Lebensraum (“Living Space”) in the East, and his equally self-defeating, criminal race theory, Operation Barbarossa resulted in the mutual near-destruction of the two nations. Flawed from the outset,...
The Long Retreat
“The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating,” said President Obama, as he announced deployment of 17,000 more U.S. troops. “I’m absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region, solely through military means.” “(T)here is no military solution in Afghanistan,” says Secretary of Defense Robert Gates....
Booby-Trapping Trump
As I write, the attempted CIA coup against the Trump administration is ongoing. Yes, you read that right: We’re getting awfully close to Seven Days in May territory. Through a series of leaks to the “mainstream” media, the Langley spooks have launched a propaganda campaign that outdoes any of their overseas operations by a long...
Polemics & Exchanges, September 2022
A note from our new Publisher, Robert Roach, and a letter on 'staying sane' during these crazy times.
Biden Holds a Losing Hand
As President Joe Biden’s poll numbers sank this fall, and the presidentially ambitious in his party began to stir, the White House put out the word. Forget all that 2020 campaign chatter about Biden being a “transitional president.” He intends to run and win a second term. Well, perhaps. Yet, skepticism abounds. First, if Biden...
The Real Saboteurs of a Trump Foreign Policy
The never-Trumpers are never going to surrender the myth that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee to defeat Clinton and elect Donald Trump. Their investment in the myth is just too huge. For Clinton and her campaign, it is the only way...
Dilbert’s Tips for Separating Fact from Propaganda
Dilbert cartoonist, Scott Adams, dedicates much of his daily podcast to educating listeners about the way to consume the news skeptically. Americans should take heed.
Trump’s First Year
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...
10,300 Nights in the Gulag
The memory of the victims of communism has been honored with various initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic. To that end, a spate of symposia and panel discussions were held in November and December 2003 in Italy, mostly in Rome and Milan. The symposium “Memento Gulag—Communism in the history of the XIX century,” jointly...
The Coming Counter-Coup Against the GOP
The right’s failure in 2020’s election may herald the start of a new conservative ascension. But it cannot happen under the current Republican Party leadership. The problem is greater than the Republican-in-Name-Only politicians ignoring the legitimate charges of election-rigging and jumping Trump’s ship. For years, the established conservative political class has looked away from...
January 2024: A Perfect Global Storm Brewing
The global mix is becoming volatile in the extreme. Dealing with it demands prudence, wisdom, and strategic clarity. None of this is present in Washington today.