Albanian separatists have been attacking policemen in the Serbian province of Kosovo for years, though only recently has the conflict escalated to the point where Slobodan Milosevic felt compelled to respond with a show of force. Not surprisingly, Milosevic’s action was met by the familiar media barrage against the cruelty of “the Serbs” and bellicose...
777 search results for: Ukraine
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War in the Democratic Party—and at the Opera
In art as in politics, liberals find wickedness only in our own institutions.
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Arms, Violence, and the State A Historical Perspective
Governments today seek to monopolize violence and to control the ability of people to defend themselves, their families, and their communities. In doing so, governments present themselves not only as representatives and protectors of their people, but also as the necessary end of the historical process. These views can be contested, not only by appealing...
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Armistice Day, 95 Years Later
After four years and three months of unprecedented carnage, the Great War ended 95 years ago today. The most tragic event in the history of mankind, that war destroyed a vibrant, magnificently creative civilization. A fundamentally decent and well-ordered world was shattered for ever. The floodgates of hell in which we live now were opened....
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Glimpses Delightful and Rare
One of the root problems facing our beleaguered world is that many of our contemporaries are belaboring the past as a burden, believing that the legacy and traditions of Western Civilization are a millstone around modernity’s neck. Cast off the shackles of the past, with its outmoded morality and outdated way of doing things, and...
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The Misguided System Without Historical Precedent
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...
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Inheriting a Mess
President Putin is inheriting a mess. After almost a decade of Boris Yeltsin, Russia is reduced to a neocolonial wreck with collapsing birthrates, moribund industry, and a fractured body politic. A narrow stratum of robber barons, who do not give a hoot for the country or its people, are busy squandering Russia’s still ample resources...
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US Embraces a Diversity China Fears
The first returns from the delayed census of 2020 are in, and they have made for celebratory headlines in the mainstream media. Big takeaway: Between 2010 and 2021, the white American population declined in real and relative terms, with more deaths than live births, as the white share of the U.S. population fell from 63...
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Letter From Serbia
CORRESPONDENCErnLetter From Serbiarnby Momcilo SelicrnNotes From the Front,rnPartirnIn the twilight, the machine gunnerrnholds aloft the dissembled barrel of hisrnweapon, his hands oily and stained, andrngrins at me. White-toothed, red-haired,rnhe wears his beret like a bonnet. Cocky,rnnot too large, he laughs, then swears arnheavy, loaded Serbian curse, unsparingrnof the Croats.rnThe machine gunner is a Kraina Serb:rnhe...
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GOP Platform: War Without End
If the sadists of ISIS are seeking—with their mass executions, child rapes, immolations, and beheadings of Christians—to stampede us into a new war in the Middle East, they are succeeding. Repeatedly snapping the blood-red cape of terrorist atrocities in our faces has the Yankee bull snorting, pawing the ground, ready to charge again. “Nearly three-quarters...
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The Fall of Rome All Over Again
The great American Empire is collapsing, like Rome before it, but not for the reasons our academic elites give.
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The Globetrotters: Bush and Gore on Foreign Policy
“It’s the economy, stupid” is once again the slogan of the Democratic presidential campaign, but this time around it is also the Republican slogan. The exclusive focus on domestic issues may reflect a general American contempt for all things foreign, but there is another reason for the lack of debate on foreign policy: There is...
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The President’s Painted Corner
A prudent power will always seek to keep open as many options as possible in its foreign-policy making. An increasingly rigid system of alliances, coupled with mobilization blueprints and railway timetables, reduced the European powers’ scope for maneuver in the summer of 1914 and contributed to the ensuing catastrophe. The United States, by contrast, entered...
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A World Safe for Stalinism
Long ago, a British veteran of World War II offered this sober moral judgment on the war: It was just such a sunny, breezy Mediterranean day two years before when he read of the Russo-German alliance, when a decade of shame seemed to be ending in light and reason, when the enemy was plain in...
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Trump’s Crucial Test at San Ysidro
Mass migration “lit the flame” of the right-wing populism that is burning up the Old Continent, she said. Europe must “get a handle on it.” “Europe must send a very clear message—’we are not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support.'” Should Europe fail to toughen up, illegal migration will never...
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Americans and War
World War II seems to be getting a lot of what might be called revisionist treatment these days. Such rethinking of history is, on principle, a good thing, although sometimes it does little more than revive old propaganda and partisanship. It is good, for instance, that people who are concerned by the overgrown and uncurbed...
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Giving Up Saddam
From October 23 to October 26, 2002, all of Russia—and much of the world—was focused on the Dubrovka theater complex in Moscow. A band of Chechen terrorists had seized the complex during a performance of the popular musical Nord Ost, holding a group of about 750 hostages captive as the band’s leader, Movsar Barayev, nephew...
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Paid to Hate Putin
It seems that National Review Editor Rich Lowry never tires of carrying water for the sponsors of his magazine, whether it’s the high-tech giants who help pay his gargantuan salary, or his neoconservative donors, whom he also faithfully serves. Most recently he honored his patrons with a dutiful denunciation of Russian President Vladmir Putin entitled...
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Iran Nuclear Deal—Alive or Dead?
Though every Republican in Congress voted against the Iran nuclear deal, “Tearing it up . . . is not going to happen,” says Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Hopefully, the chairman speaks for the president-elect. During the campaign, Donald Trump indicated as much, saying that, though the U.S. got jobbed in...
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NATO, R.I.P.
At the European Union summit in Nice last December France initiated plans for a new European military structure. While the stated purpose of the emerging 15-member alliance is to complement NATO rather than replace it, there is growing concern in Washington that the ultimate objective of French and German strategic planners is to sever the...
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To a Saxon Poet
Gonna be here the rest of my life / Andrnall I did was shoot my wife”). To Clarksdale,rnhome of the Delta Blues Museum,rnand beyond, past Graceland, into Memphis.rnFor the last part of the trip I was on oldrnHighway 61, the way out to the north forrncountless black Mississippians and arngood many white ones, too. Bill...
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Best of Times or Worst of Times?
Last week, John Kerry seemed to be auditioning for the role of Dr. Pangloss. Despite jihadi violence across the Middle East and ISIS terror in Iraq and Syria, Kerry told Congress, we live in “a period of less daily threat to Americans and to people in the world than normally—less deaths, less violent deaths today...
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Goodbye to Lady Justice
Are we witnessing the end of justice and equality before the law in America? On April 15, the Department of Justice announced that the still-unnamed police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt during the protests at our Capitol in early January would not be charged with her death. We still have no real explanation as to why the...
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A Reminder of Hope
As our country plunges into yet another foolish war in the Moslem world and teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, it is easy to be focused on the negative. But today’s news also brought a small reminder of hope. The synod of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, meeting in Lvov, just elected 40-year old Sviatoslav Shevchuk,...
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Selective Amnesia
Selective pernicious amnesia is the endemic disease of Establishment politics. Its symptoms are evident whenever the Soviet Union does something awful—like delivering six sophisticated Su-24D bombers to Libya, as it did in March 1988, or excusing the sinking of an advanced Soviet attack submarine in the Norwegian Sea last April, a submarine that, the Soviet...
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The Coming Clash With Iran
When Gen. Michael Flynn marched into the White House Briefing Room to declare that “we are officially putting Iran on notice,” he drew a red line for President Trump. In tweeting the threat, Trump agreed. His credibility is now on the line. And what triggered this virtual ultimatum? Iran-backed Houthi rebels, said Flynn, attacked a...
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The Bankrupt PIGS of Europe
They are called the PIGS—Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain. What they have in common is that all are facing deficits and debts that could bring on national defaults and break up the European Union. What brought the PIGS to the edge of the abyss? All are neo-socialist states that provide welfare for poor people, generous unemployment,...
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Is Democracy Versus Autocracy the New Cold War?
“He may be an SOB, but he’s our SOB.” So said President Franklin D. Roosevelt of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, and how very American. For, from its first days, America has colluded with autocrats when the national interest demanded it. George Washington danced a jig in 1778 when he learned that our diplomats had effected...
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The World Goes Its Way
A French writer argues that “humanity” has become the accepted “version of the universal” in contemporary Western thought, functioning as the “action” of modern democratic polity. While Pierre Manent’s thesis is a convincing one, political and social occurrences in the past decade seem to indicate that the West’s humanitarian “version” is becoming discredited at an...
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Muddling the Missile Crisis
The Abyss, a pop history treatment of the Cuban Missile Crisis, revives unhistorical myths in an effort to chalk the whole thing up to American hysteria, and to portray the bumbling JFK as having masterfully handled the crisis.
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Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Water
Our sixth-grade daughter’s class made the “Hiroshima lanterns” late in May when the North Dakota Peace Coalition came to her parochial school. The kids painted the paper sides of the 8″ x 8″ boats with rainbows and flowers and the word “peace,” and made plans to light the candles and set the boats afloat on...
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Can America Fight Two Cold Wars at Once?
Kim Jong Un, angered by the newest U.S. sanctions, is warning that North Korea’s commitment to denuclearization could be imperiled and we could be headed for “exchanges of fire.” Iran, warns Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is testing ballistic missiles that are forbidden to them by the U.N. Security Council. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan...
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Letter from Bosnia: A Fraudulent “Spring”
There is more than meets the eye to the wave of ostensibly “non-ethnic” anti-corruption demonstrations in several majority-Muslim cities of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which started on February 6 and largely fizzled out a week later. The Nulandesque agenda became obvious within days, as protest leaders and various NGO activists, journalists and politicians all over “the international community”...
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Soviet Spies and Agents of Influence
Probably the greatest triumph in public opinion manipulation in modern history was the West’s elevation of the Soviet Union into a symbol of righteousness and a country beyond criticism. This triumph was all the more notable because from day one of the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin’s system, to quote Robert Conquest, “had as one of its...
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Moral Supremacy and Mr. Putin
Is Donald Trump to be allowed to craft a foreign policy based on the ideas on which he ran and won the presidency in 2016? Our foreign policy elite’s answer appears to be a thunderous no. Case in point: U.S. relations with Russia. During the campaign Trump was clear. He would seek closer ties with...
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The End of Liberalism Nears
In his latest book, Francis Fukuyama sees liberalism under threat from extremists on both the populist right and the identitarian left.
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American Overstretch: The Good News
Imagine you are a denizen of Melos enslaved by the Athenians during the brutal sack of that island in 416 BC. A year later you learn that your masters are preparing a massive expedition to Sicily as a starting point for the conquest of Italy and Carthage; and, furthermore, that they are hoping that the...
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A Reminder of Hope
As our country plunges into yet another foolish war in the Moslem world and teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, it is easy to be focused on the negative. But today’s news also brought a small reminder of hope. The synod of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, meeting in Lvov, just elected 40-year old Sviatoslav Shevchuk,...
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Twenty Years after 9/11—Are We Better Off?
When the hijacked planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that first 9/11, the Taliban were in control of Afghanistan and providing sanctuary for al-Qaida. Today, the Taliban are in control of Afghanistan and providing sanctuary to al-Qaida. What then did our longest war accomplish? The Afghan army and...
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Film: La Condition Humaine
There is another film about the humanrncondition or, more specifically, thernlimitations of mortals when they presumernto meddle in one another’s business.rnMuch Ado About Nothing is, on itsrnsurface, a comedy, but it is a stern, evenrndisagreeable piece that the verse and thernglitzy Plautine repartee of Beatrice andrnBenedick make palatable. The play isrnabout eavesdropping—the “nothing” inrnthe title...
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What Would Ike Do?
In November 1956, President Eisenhower, enraged he had not been forewarned of their invasion of Egypt, ordered the British, French and Israelis to get out of Suez and Sinai. They did as told. How far we have fallen from the America of Ike and John Foster Dulles has been on painful display this March. An...
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Dance With the Devil in the Pale Moonlight
There was a notable convergence some decades ago, one that was noticed musically as two separate and distinct phenomena, but not as a convergence—or even as a conspiracy, or a rivalry. I never heard or saw any acknowledgment that two of the foremost instrumentalists in the world were fiddling around pretty much at the same...
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The New World Order GOP
A federal program, Ronald Reagan used to say, is the closest thing to eternal life here on earth. Even the Gipper conceded he failed to get control of the federal behemoth. At least he tried. But what can be said for the conservative movement today, as one witnesses the Wall Street Journal battle to save...
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Memo to Trump: Declare an Emergency
In the long run, history will validate Donald Trump’s stand on a border wall to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States. Why? Because mass migration from the global South, not climate change, is the real existential crisis of the West. The American people know this, and even the elites sense it. Think...
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The Yoke of Democracy
In a strange way, it appears that Adolf Hitler is still ruling Germany. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the forces of “democracy,” in the form of political parties, make political decisions by implementing the opposite of what they assume Hitler would have wanted. Those political parties, the governing opposition, are “democratic” because American military...
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The Deep State Targets Trump
When Gen. Michael Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser, Bill Kristol purred his satisfaction, “If it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.” To Kristol, the permanent regime, not the elected president and his government, is the real defender and rightful repository of our liberties. Yet it was...
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Trump in Helsinki (II): A Long View
Five days after the Helsinki summit I am inclined to believe that President Donald Trump either knows exactly what he is doing—that there is uncanny finesse and foresight behind his bluster—or else that he is guided by an almost unfailing intuition, with similar results. Trump’s refusal to parrot the Intel-deepstaters’ “Russiagate” narrative at last Monday’s...
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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,
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The Perils of “United Europe”
A visitor to Prague in the immediate aftermath of the Czech Republic’s formal entry into the European Union will find few outward signs that something rather momentous has taken place. Your documents are still checked at the border crossing as you drive into the country from Germany; the koruna (crown) is still the legal tender;...
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Don’t Tread on Un
PERSPECTIVErnDon’t Tread on Usrnby Thomas FlemingrnIn the closing days of 1993 two familiar specters, recently absentrnfrom our nightmares, returned to haunt the globalrnconsciousness: the Russian bear, in the person of VladimirrnZhirinovsky, and the Yellow Peril, in the form of North Korea.rnThere were, of course, other bugbears to frighten the childrenrnof democracy—the parade of new Hitlers...