With never-Trump conservatives bailing on the GOP and crying out for the Party of Pelosi to save us, some painful truths need to be restated. The Republican Party of Bush I and II, of Bob Dole and John McCain, is history. It’s not coming back. Unlike the Bourbons after the Revolution and the Terror, after...
780 search results for: Ukraine
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...
Homegrown
This speech was delivered in April at the Webb School, a private secondary school in Knoxville, Tennessee. I try not to put on airs about what I do for a living. I would never tell you that writing is dignified enough to be called a profession, like being a doctor or an architect. Writing is...
On ‘Post-Cold War’
Murray N. Rothbard’s “Foreign Policy for the Post-Cold War World” (May 1990) covers much territory in a fine fashion. However, his assessment of the Soviet situation does not rest on solid ground. John T. Flynn prophesied the coming of fascism in the United States without realizing that fascism is merely communism in uniform with white...
Is Trump the Peace Candidate?
With Democrats howling that Vladimir Putin hacked into and leaked those 19,000 DNC emails to help Trump, the Donald had a brainstorm: Maybe the Russians can retrieve Hillary Clinton’s lost emails. Not funny, and close to “treasonous,” came the shocked cry. Trump then told the New York Times that a Russian incursion into Estonia need...
A Coup Most Foul
We have seen coups of sorts in Washington before, not that anyone one calls them that. (Remember JFK, Nixon.) The one against Trump is of a different order of magnitude. It had been plotted by the Deep State even before he was inaugurated. Significant power nodes had always refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of this...
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...
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...
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,
How Far Will Trump’s Enemies Push to Drag Him and America Down?
As he completes his third week in office Donald Trump has already stunned the world with his “shock and awe” campaign to keep promises made when he was a candidate. The mere fact of a politician doing what he said he would do seems to have unsettled the nerves of his opponents. What is called...
Trump Calls Off Cold War II
Beginning his joint press conference with Vladimir Putin, President Trump declared that U.S. relations with Russia have “never been worse.” He then added pointedly, that just changed “about four hours ago.” It certainly did. With his remarks in Helsinki and at the NATO summit in Brussels, Trump has signaled an historic shift in U.S. foreign...
Avoiding War With Russia
The Biden regime’s frantic moves in recent weeks to escalate tensions with Russia—at a time of China’s continued economic and military rise—are irrational, inexplicable by any standard method of foreign policy analysis, and perilous to this country’s security interests. Mr. Biden’s decision less than two weeks after his inauguration to move B-1 bombers to Norway “to...
Bosnia, Hillary’s Playground
At a time when the U.S. power and authority are increasingly challenged around the world, the incoming team sees the Balkans as the last geopolitically significant area where they can assert their “credibility” by postulating a maximalist set of objectives as the only outcome acceptable to the United States, and duly insisting on their fulfillment....
Russian Reset in Peril
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...
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...
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...
Religion Is Always There
The varied and complex relations between religion and power can be understood only by means of extensive comparisons, between nations and across time. Who better to demonstrate this than Prof. David Martin, the doyen of the comparative sociology of religion? Martin’s first achievement is to refute “the general theory of secularisation,” which has enjoyed so...
Books in Brief: April 2024
Short reviews of The Myth of Left and Right by Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis, and Myth America by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer.
Can Japan Rise Again?
We can thank Providence that the earthquake was not 150 miles closer to Tokyo, else Japan's dead might number in the millions. Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls it the worst crisis since World War II. Yet, horrendous as it is, it does not, thus far, compare with that. For the ...
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...
Israel’s Strategic Dilemma
Israel will face an impossible strategic situation if it enters urban warfare in Gaza. Far from being a sign of weakness, exercising restraint in the face of Hamas’ provocations is the sound and politically profitable course of action.
‘Compact’ Makes an Impact
Michael Lind was a good fit for Compact magazine’s first event in New York City. Neither Lind nor the magazine has shied away from confrontation and challenging the managerial state.
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...
‘Authoritarianism’ Is the Least of Our Problems
Donald Trump is not brining authoritarianism to America in '24. If anything, Trump is a victim, not a perpetrator, of authoritarian chicanery.
Is Donald Trump an Uneducated Lout?
Columnist Wes Pruden, writing in the Washington Times, calls the presumptive GOP nominee an “uneducated lout.” But give him credit for balance: he also gives Hillary a hard time though he spares her any ad hominem insults. He finds the choice we face in the presidential election this November terrifying, and thinks we should, too. He...