Over the years, John McCain has acquired a reputation as a maverick Republican. Independents and even some Democrats who loathe George W. Bush’s foreign-policy record seem to believe that McCain would be a significant improvement. In several GOP primaries earlier this year, most notably those in New Hampshire and Michigan, nearly one third of voters...
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Will Trump Turn Nationalism Against America?
The more America acts like an imperial power, the more nationalist movements in other countries will treat us like one.
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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 Cobbler’s Sons
The cobbler’s son goes barefoot. This English proverb could almost serve to illustrate the entry for “paradox” in a dictionary of philosophy. The paradox of capitalism is that, instead of selling their souls to the devil, its adepts give them away for free. One would think that all those masters of the universe, well used...
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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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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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Silvio Berlusconi: An Italian Saga
Berlusconi was a singular phenomenon in Italian politics, a revolutionary and explosive blend of dynamic innovation and respect for tradition. With his death, a major chapter in the history of the Italian Republic comes to a close.
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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 Decline and Fall of the American Economy: Offshoring Our Security
The United States has three large economic problems. The overarching one is that the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency is wearing out from continuous and large trade deficits and from government budget ...
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Graydon Carter and the ‘Golden Age of Magazines’
The era of original, tough-minded, and seriously cultivated magazine journalism is over, replaced by an age of random digital ephemera.
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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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Kissinger’s Legacy
One of Henry Kissinger’s greatest virtues was his political realism and his resistance to America’s messianic urge, relentlessly promoted by both neoconservatives and neoliberals, to dominate the world as global hegemon.
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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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An Armenian Joke
In my childhood there was a soi-disant “Armenian” joke that we used to tell, and it went more or less as follows. Is it true, one Armenian asks another, that Sarkisyan won a million in the state lottery? “Yes, it’s true,” replies the other Armenian, “but it wasn’t in the state lottery, it was at...
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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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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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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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The Way Our World Ends
“This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper,” wrote T.S. Eliot in the closing couplet of “The Hollow Men.” Eliot’s poem was written after the Great War of 1914-1918 had carried off 9 million soldiers, wounded twice as many more, brought down the Romanov, Hohenzollern and Habsburg empires, and ushered...
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Lebed in Siberia
“The situation in Krasnoyarsk,” opined Communist Party (CPRF) boss Gennadi Zyuganov, “is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930’s.” Fascism, claimed the national Bolshevik boss, who should know a thing or two about the subject, is threatening Russia, incubating in a Siberian womb. He was not alone in making such dubious charges. In fact, in the...
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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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Russia, Russia, Russia Again
The Trump-Russia collusion play is hardly legitimate, but it is strategically savvy. Democrats have their reasons for playing this card once more.
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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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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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Can Trump Win Trade Wars Before They Start?
Trump’s tough treatment of Canada and Mexico sent a message to the world and protects America’s interests.
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Allies on the Transatlantic Right
Conservative nationalists in Europe face the same uphill struggle against the dominant left as do their American counterparts.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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A Report from Europe: There is Hope
A quiet majority of Europeans who do not cherish self-annihilation are waking up.
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Our Pushover President
Our Pushover President by Patrick J. Buchanan • November 24, 2009 • Printer-friendly “This state visit is . . . a terrible mistake,” said Rep. Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. “He is illegitimate with his own people, and Brazil is now going to give him the air of legitimacy...
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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...
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Why Are the Nutjobs Trying to Kill Political Opponents All Left-Wingers?
The Left has had a violent streak going back at least as far as Karl Marx's calls for a global revolution of the proletariat—and the French Revolution even before that.
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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...
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The War Party is Recycling Their ‘Unpatriotic Conservatives’ Mantra
The fight for the soul of the new Trump administration looks an awful lot like the last one.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Memo to Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi
“For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end.” Donald Trump, circa 2016? Nope. That denunciation of John Bolton interventionism...
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Newt, Sarah and a New GOP
“Sometimes party loyalty asks too much,” said JFK. For Sarah Palin, party loyalty in New York’s 23rd congressional district asks too much. Going rogue, Palin endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over Republican Dede Scozzafava. On Oct. 1, Scozzafava was leading. Today, she trails Democrat Bill Owens and is only a few points ahead of...
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Food, Felons, and Foreign Aid
America’s attempts to help the former Soviet Union have proven exceptionally frustrating. Nearly all government officials. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, realize that something ought to be done. The possibility that continued economic crises will mean a return to a belligerent totalitarian state is both reasonable and justifiably dreaded. Even the most coldhearted lifelong...
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POSTMODERN STALINISM
In his latest Sputnik Radio International interview Srdja Trifkovic discusses the Czech Republic government’s establishment of an information unit to counter what it says is pro-Russian, anti-Western and anti-NATO propaganda. “We want to get into every smartphone,” said Milan Chovanec, the Czech interior minister. Audio (unedited verbatim transcript) ST: It is strangely reminiscent of the...
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Is Putin the ‘Preeminent Statesman’ of Our Times?
“If we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the preeminent statesman of our time. “On the world stage, who could vie with him?” So asks Chris Caldwell of the Weekly Standard in a remarkable essay in Hillsdale College’s March issue...
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RFK Jr.’s Masterpiece of Political Oratory
The former Democrat demonstrated what it takes to deliver a convincing and rousing political speech. The old and nearly lost art is due for a revival.
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Sleepwalkers Awake
The House of Lords European Union Committee is chaired by Lord Tugendhat. I don’t know anything about the man, and it may well be that his is a noble title going back to the Battle of Hastings, but I think most people will agree it’s one hell of a funny name. Then there’s Nigel Farage,...
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George Soros and the Cult of Death
The Financial Times has selected George Soros as its Person of the Year. According to the paper, this choice was made both as a reflection of his achievements and for the values he represents: He is the standard bearer of liberal democracy and open society… For more than three decades, Mr Soros has used philanthropy...
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Getting Europe Straight
An American foreign policy based on a national-security strategy consistent with this country’s traditions and values would have three main objectives in relation to Europe. The first would be to promote the preservation of the Old Continent as the cradle of our common civilization, with which North America shares a similar world outlook. The second...
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Imperial Overstretch
Toward the end of the presidency of George H.W. Bush, America stood alone at the top of the world—the sole superpower. After five weeks of “shock and awe” and 100 hours of combat, Saddam’s army had fled Kuwait back up the road to Basra and Bagdad. Our Cold War adversary was breaking apart into 15...
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‘For the Good of the Country’
Democrats need to learn that voters want one question answered above all others in making policy: “Is this policy for the good of the country?”
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The Attempt to Hoodwink the U.S. Into a Cold War With Russia
For years conservative movement figures have engaged in “value talk,” a rhetorical means of winning acceptance for pet causes that often have little to do with conservatism or traditional morality. Such value talk has often been used as a way of prodding Washington into foreign entanglements. Leon Aron’s recent article for The Dispatch, “Welcome to the new Cold War”...