With tensions rising between nations such as Taiwan and China, as well as between Russia and Ukraine, many are wondering how involved the Biden administration will be. Should the United States leave these nations alone, or should they interfere? A look at the past through Stephen Wertheim’s new book, Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S....
802 search results for: Ukraine
What Should We Fight For?
“We will never accept Russia’s occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea,” declaimed Rex Tillerson last week in Vienna. “Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine.” Tillerson’s principled rejection of the seizure of land by military force—”never accept”—came just one day after President Trump recognized Jerusalem as...
Letter From Budapest: A Hungarian Rhapsody
Last week I traveled to Budapest to attend a conference on the thorny issue of EU-Ukraine relations. The visit prompted me to explore an apparent paradox. Here is a decent little country in the heart of Europe—good food, safe streets, rich soil—which could be a Pannonian version of Holland, but it is not a happy place....
A Little Misogyny…
Last week the British government stopped considering the usual trifles – Ukraine, ISIS, UKIP, the budget deficit, as well as the unsurprising news that, now according to Forbes, America’s nuclear arsenal is a pile of rusting junk – and turned to the vital affairs of state, notably the urgent need to block the entry into...
Mikhail Gorbachev: Failed Politician
Mikhail Gorbachev was perhaps the most abject failure among late 20th-century leaders. He let a destructive genie out of the bottle that led to NATO’s eastward expansion and laid the groundwork for the war in Ukraine.
Now Is Not the Time for Indifference
Freedom now hangs in the balance in America. Staying alert and knowing what’s at stake are key in this fight for liberty.
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...
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...
The Harris-Walz Cosplay Campaign: A Theater of the Absurd
Best get your tickets to the Harris-Walz cosplay campaign’s theater of the absurd. Their show closes in November.
Black Op, Continued
Last Wednesday I wrote in this space that Chechnya’s strongman Ramzan Kadyrov put pay to my own feeble attempts at black humor when he said there was “not the slightest doubt” that the assassination of Nemtsov had been the work of the Western secret services. Since then the joke has grown even funnier – so...
Books in Brief: February 2023
Brief reviews of Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations, by Benedict Beckeld, and The Collapse of Manifest Destiny, 1845–1872, by Daniel J. Burge.
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...
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...
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...
Virginia Turns Toward Trump
Biden received the benefit of the doubt in 2020 from suburbanites who wanted competence and calm. He won't get that this year, after the record he's run up.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964)
The Soviet Union in 1964 was about the last place on earth where anyone could find respect for traditional ways and reverence for ancestors. For the most part, the thuggish bureaucracy controlling that unlamented establishment exuded an almost eager desire for drabness that was downright studied in its gleeful love ...
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...
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...
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.”...
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”...
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...
The Struggle for the Gate of Tears
Houthi attacks on Israeli allied vessels in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait are disrupting the world economy and prompting the U.S. to intervene. Known as "The Gate of Tears," this strait is the gateway for much of the world's commerce.
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...
So-Called Fascism, Canadian-Style
The Canadian left and right are equally guilty of slinging the word “fascist” at their opponents. The partisan reinvention of this term is problematic for the left, as Pierre Trudeau once subscribed to an ethnic and organic nationalism.
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...
‘Civil War’ Shows American Divisions Through a Glass, Darkly
Civil War centers around an imagined conflict within America set in a disturbingly near future or an alternate present.
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 ...
Germany’s AfD Derangement Syndrome
The leftist hysteria that frames its opposition as Nazis has finally subsided in the U.S., but in Germany it’s just getting started.
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...
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...
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.
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...
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.
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...
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;...
American Women Don’t Need a ‘Momala’s Day’
The cringeworthy appearance of Kamala Harris on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” highlights the low regard in which the Biden administration holds both women and motherhood.
Jews Without Judaism
Certainly no confusion of the ethnic with the religious presents more anomalies than the mixture of ethnic Jewishness and religious Judaism that American Jews have concocted for themselves. But the brew is fresh, not vintaged. For nearly the entire history of the Jews, to be a Jew meant to practice the religion set forth in...
The Decline and Splendor of Nationalism
No political phenomenon can be so creative and so destructive as nationalism. Nationalism can be a metaphor for the supreme truth but also an allegory for the nostalgia of death. No exotic country, no gold, no woman can trigger such an outpouring of passion as the sacred homeland, and contrary to all Freudians more people...
Are All the World’s Problems Ours?
In 2003, George W. Bush took us to war to liberate Iraq from the despotism of Saddam Hussein and convert that nation into a beacon of freedom and prosperity in the Middle East. Tuesday, Mike Pompeo flew clandestinely into Baghdad, met with the prime minister and flew out in four hours. The visit was kept...
A Deserved Death Denied
A new plea deal spares the life of three surviving masterminds of the 9/11 terrorist attack. It's indicative of our legal system’s refusal to mete out fitting punishment for even the most vile criminals.
The Mississippi Hippies and Other Denizens of the Deep (South)
January in Jackson—well, it wasn’t April in Paris, but it had its pleasures, among them the chance to compare the Magnolia State to the more northerly South I know better. I was lecturing at Millsaps College, staying in a nearby motel with a view from my window of the quaint little observatory that figures in...
Europa Delenda Est?
Europe as we knew it is far away, and it will not come back.
After Helsinki: A Coup in the Making
President Donald Trump’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and their joint press conference in Helsinki on July 16 have ignited an ongoing paroxysm of rage and hysteria in the U.S. media. Morbid Russophobia and Putin-hate are déjà-vu, but the outpouring of vitriol against Trump has been raised to an entirely new level. The...
The Voice That Won’t Be Silenced
Tucker Carlson's voice is too important to silence because he speaks for so many people.
Polemics & Exchanges: May 2024
Chronicles contributors and readers tussle over Japanese culture, slavery, and NATO!
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:...
Moscow’s Weakness
“It is obvious that the elites of the West – U.S. government, the EU, NATO and the banking interests wish to overthrow Putin and his government and open Russia to ideological, economic and material exploitation,” a perceptive reader commented on my December 19 posting. “It is obvious that there are factions deep within the Russian...
Lehayyim—”To Life,” Not Abortion
Since many Jewish institutions and individuals speaking “as Jews” (or so they say) favor unrestricted abortion, pro-life people often assume that Judaism does, too. But when we distinguish the personal opinions of individuals from the doctrines of a faith set forth in authoritative holy books, matters prove more complex. And when we realize that, from...
Is ‘Autocracy’ America’s Mortal Enemy?
'Autocracy' has not been America's mortal enemy for that long.
Letter From Budapest
Observation of intellectual life in Hungary today provides a fascinating picture of a nation living in two worlds and, in certain ways, profiting by both. “East” and “West” become suddenly realities, cultural as well as political. Soviet occupation has compelled the intellectuals to study Marxist writings, in fields where their Western colleagues, even the leftist...