“Once war is forced upon us, there is no alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory—not prolonged indecision.” So said Gen. Douglas MacArthur in his April 1951 address to Congress after being fired by President Harry Truman as commander in chief in the...
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...
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...
[Srdja Trifkovic’s latest interview with RT] Published time: May 12, 2014 11:48 Those who keep power in Ukraine are a bunch of criminals who will advocate criminal methods in keeping their ill-gotten gains, with the West supporting this farce, Srdja Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor at Chronicles Magazine, told RT. RT: Let’s say Donetsk and Lugansk...
Crimea and Kosovo have much in common: an autonomous status, military bases of other countries on their territories, and a longing for independence among the majority of the population. Crimea’s ethnic composition and Western policy towards Ukraine could create a Kosovo-like scenario. The Voice of Russia talked to Serge Trifkovic, writer on international affairs and...
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...
RT: Joining us in the studio now is Srdja Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor of Chronicles magazine. Thank you very much for joining us at the studio of RT International. So, we have the new peace plan that includes the greater autonomy for eastern Ukraine. Do you think this is something that can really work in...
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...
Last Monday, in a single six-hour period, NATO launched 10 air intercepts to shadow six separate groups of Russian bombers and fighters over the Arctic, North Atlantic, North Sea, Black Sea, and Baltic Sea. Last week also brought reports that Moscow is increasing its troop presence in Crimea and along its borders with Ukraine. Joe...
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...
The war in Ukraine is most unlikely to end in a negotiated compromise because a mutually acceptable agreement is structurally impossible. It will continue until one side concludes that its continuation is not worth the cost.
John “Invade the World, Invite the World” McCain is one of the loudest supporters of the anti-Russian, pro-EU forces in Ukraine, who are in armed rebellion against the legitimate (if bumbling and corrupt), government of Viktor Yanukovych. One of the leaders of this uprising, concentrated in Kiev’s Independence Square (Maidan) is Oleh Tyahnybok, a former...
The president is a much more honest broker than Roosevelt was, and the Ukrainian dictator is no hero.
During the 1930’s many Americans were enamored of the “grand and noble experiment” called the Soviet Union. Movie stars, clergymen, authors, intellectuals, columnists, and other American opinion makers traveled to the USSR and returned with glowing reports of the joys of socialism under Joseph Stalin. Many immigrants from the former Russian empire believed these stories...
Sunday, March 16 – the referendum day – started with a morning visit to three polling stations. By 10 a.m. mainly the elderly turned out to vote in large numbers, some of them very frail and most visibly poor. While those approached outside insist that their vote to join Russia is not affected by material...
The post-Maidan Ukrainian government is often criticized in Poland and Russia (a rare point of convergence) for indulging in historical revisionism over the controversial role of Stepan Bandera during the Second World War, and in particular for glossing over his followers’ slaughter of hundreds of thousands of eastern Poles, Jews, and other minorities in Galicia...
The aborted Wagner coup was an internal conflict within Russia's elites. Although resolved peacefully, it undermined Putin's authority and has increased the chance that he will be tempted to make risky moves—even nuclear ones.
Even in his advanced age Henry Kissinger remains hugely influential, and the remnant of the realist school in Washington’s foreign policy establishment looks upon him as its part-guru, part-patriarch. His recent pronouncements are somewhat disappointing, however, and they reflect the confused state of the realist camp after many years of the neoconservative-neoliberal duopoly’s dominance. As...
President Barack Obama’s commencement address at West Point on May 28 managed to displease pretty much everyone in the nation’s commentariat. Before making an overall assessment of its significance, it is necessary to examine the validity and implications of Obama’s individual statements. “[B]y most measures America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of...
By the end of his second term, President Ronald Reagan, who had called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” was strolling through Red Square with Russians slapping him on the back. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. And how have we husbanded the fruits of our Cold War triumph? This month, China’s...
When it comes to foreign policy America’s two political parties are split—not so much against each other—but against themselves.
President Biden has a history of painting himself as heroic in personal encounters where few contemporaries recall him that way.
I am back from Russia’s capital, where I presented a paper at a conference on World War I at Moscow’s Lomonosov State University. Regarding Ukraine, the consensus of my numerous interlocutors of various persuasions and backgrounds is clear: 1. Russia will not invade. She will support demands for federalization in the east (Kharkov), southeast (the...
The limited mobilization of Russian troops in the Ukraine conflict is the natural result of Putin’s hesitant and risk-averse leadership. It makes sense only if it is the first step toward total mobilization, both military and economic.
Ukraine and Russia were at peace until a civilizational divide: one chose the West and one chose Slavic-Orthodoxy. Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis has proven correct—and predicts a similar rift within America.
In The Stupidity of War, John Mueller takes an absolutist position of noninterventionism in foreign policy. There is much to enjoy in this book, though that joy is tempered when one reads it while war rages in Ukraine.
None of what Putin said is new to those who have closely followed the sad saga of post-Soviet Ukraine, but the tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of people who will watch this interview because of the identity of the interviewer, are unlikely ever again to accept uncritically the standard narrative spewed out by Western regimes and their media lapdogs.
By describing Russia as an heir to the habits of Western imperialism, the current woke psychosis, combined with crisis escalation in Ukraine, has the potential to destroy the remnant of our common European civilization.
On July 1 Croatia became the 28th country to join the European Union, and on current form there will be no further enlargement for many years to come. A look at the glaring dysfunctions in Croatia’s accession, compared to the double standards Brussels imposes on Serbia and Ukraine, is indicative of the peculiar mitteleuropäisch view of what...
In an LA Times op-ed (“Ukraine’s threat from within”), University of South California professor of international relations Robert D. English describes the ugly essence of the Brown Revolution. His take on the neo-nazi dominated rebellion is much needed and sorely lacked in the American media. I already picture the pro-Maidan hacks at NYT, National Review,...
Before the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels this week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin took a side trip to Georgia and Ukraine. Purpose: Assure these nations that America has their back and encourage their hopes of future admission to NATO. Austin, said the Pentagon, would tell both nations there is an “open door to NATO.” “Ukraine...
Russia’s claim about Ukraine’s intent to detonate a false-flag dirty bomb is one more narrative in a long line of political narratives that bombard the average citizen.
The truth is that the vitriolic reaction to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week says everything about the foreign blob’s personal and vocational insecurities, and nothing about DeSantis’ call for measured prudence in Eastern Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was furious following the late-November destruction of a Russian war plane by Turkish fighter jets over Syrian airspace. The Russians had been bombing “terrorist” positions inside war-torn Syria since September. Less than two weeks before the incident, Putin thought he had reached agreement with his Turkish counterpart, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, on...
When British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey famously said on the eve of the Great War that “the lamps are going out all over Europe,” his metaphor struck a chord with generations of Europeans both then and in the ensuing decades. Grey’s words are worth recalling now, as the Old Continent enters the new year...
Here’s how you’ll know the conservative movement means something again: when the Conservative Political Action Conference moves its annual meeting from Washington, D.C., to Rockford. Or Dubuque. Or Peoria. Or Helena. Or San Antonio. Or Bakersfield. Or Murfreesboro. Anywhere but the District of Corruption. Conservatives flock from around the country to CPAC, expecting to advance...
Fairness does not exist and it is no use looking for it. The world got into the habit of taking the wrong side. That was how Christian Serbia was torn apart and Albanian criminals turned Kosovo – holy for every Serb – into a different state, a drug lord state, a human organ trafficking state,...
Turkey’s decision to shoot down a Russian warplane was a provocative and portentous act. That Sukhoi Su-24, which the Turks say intruded into their air space, crashed and burned—in Syria. One of the Russian pilots was executed while parachuting to safety. A Russian rescue helicopter was destroyed by rebels using a U.S. TOW missile. A...
Liberals accuse Trump of being cozy with dictators, but the dictators of Iran's cruel and corrupt regime find comfort only with Trump's Democratic opponents.
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...
Friday, a Russian SU-27 did a barrel roll over a U.S. RC-135 over the Baltic, the second time in two weeks. Also in April, the U.S. destroyer Donald Cook, off Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, was twice buzzed by Russian planes. Vladimir Putin’s message: Keep your spy planes and ships a respectable distance away from...
The advance of U.S.-led NATO is shrinking the buffer of neutral territories that were once Russian lands. But if the West continues to isolate Russia, there is only one direction it can go: to the East, and China.
Democrats are likely to face insurmountable partisan, demographic, and policy challenges during the final weeks of midterm election campaigning.
The push for Finland to join NATO is the latest provocation in a dangerous game the West is playing against Russia, and by extension, it calls into question once again the sanity of U.S. commitment to NATO countries.
“How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.” —Neville Chamberlain Persons with roots in Central and Eastern Europe know that to speak with minimal competence about that part of the world...
The influence of the man known as "Putin's brain" cannot be truly understood without understanding his spiritual beliefs.
While politicians and media stars talk casually of nuclear war, the risk of a catastrophe that could kill the majority of human life rises ever higher.
Hopefully, Russians realize that our House of Representatives often passes thunderous resolutions to pander to special interests, which have no bearing on the thinking or actions of the U.S. government. Last week, the House passed such a resolution 411-10. As ex-Rep. Ron Paul writes, House Resolution 758 is so “full of war propaganda that it...
I was delighted to see that the May issue was focused on Ukraine, the largest European country. While there is no point in polemicizing with those of your contributors who believe in an amoral Realpolitik—after all, if force trumps ideas, what is the point of words?—most of their analyses of Ukraine merit a response. I...
Putin must go if Russia is to recover from the current impasse created by him, if she is to avoid becoming China’s supplicant, or a brutally carved-up Western colony.