[Above: Kurt Volker, Volodymyr Zelensky, Rick Perry, and Gordon Sondland at the 20 May 2019 inauguration of Volodymyr Zelensky] Was there linkage between the withholding of U.S. military aid and the U.S. demand for a Ukrainian state investigation of the Bidens? “Was there a quid pro quo?” This question has bedeviled this city for months now....
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Tribalism Marches On!
Recently, a columnist-friend, Matt Kenney, sent me a 25-year-old newspaper with his chiding that my column had been given better play. Both had run in The Orange County Register on June 30, 1991. “Is there no room for new nations in the New World Order?” was my title, and the column began: “In turning a...
The Immoral Principle of Territorial Integrity
The Crimean parliament’s proposal to exit the Ukriane and join the Russian Federation has raised the question of the legality and morality of secession. Inevitably, most of the discussion is based on the short-sighted and tortured reasoning of modern and postmodern political theory. A good example is Ilya Somin’s, “Crimea and the Morality of Secession“—a...
The Civil War and Perestroika
To calculate where a cannonball will land, it is necessary to know its initial angle of trajectory and the amount of force that propels it. It is the persuasive thesis of W. Bruce Lincoln that the Russian Civil War was the historic explosion that ever since has determined the direction and velocity of the Soviet...
After the Great Orange Whale
“Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord”—a pretty flat declaration as reported by the Apostle Paul, leaving few gaps for politicians to fill at their own discretion. But you know politicians. Here we go with the impeachment hearings, an intended spectacle meant more as payback to President Donald Trump for winning the election...
A Biden Family Special Prosecutor in 2021?
If Joe Biden loses on Nov. 3, public interest in whether his son Hunter exploited the family name to rake in millions of dollars from foreign donors will likely fade away. It will not matter, and no one will care. But if Joe Biden wins the presidency, a prediction: By the Ides of March 2021,...
Bad Intel
A pair of recent news items unintentionally demonstrated the ways the Intelligence Community is a primary source of our confused foreign policy in the Middle East, while also undermining President Trump here at home. First, substantial doubts have arisen regarding the source and even the actuality of the 2018 gas attacks in Syria. These attacks...
Moldova’s Partition
Moldova’s Partition may be imminent. While the U.S. Embassy in Moscow denied that American spooks and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) intend to divide that tiny country, the denial itself was enough to convince most Russian and Moldovan/Rumanian patriots that the plan is probably already under way. The State Department was...
Kissinger in China
Henry Kissinger’s fears and misgivings about the future of U.S.-Chinese relations may prove just as prophetic as George Kennan's warnings about Russia and NATO expansion.
U.S. Flunks Its Own Election Standards
Freedom House sees election corruption everywhere except in the U.S., where the government pays its bills, and the legal system coordinates with the administration to impoverish and imprison the conservative opposition.
Sochi Olympics, Ukraine, and the Media
One of the biggest accomplishments of the Sochi Olympics has been its role in dousing the fires of the unrest in Ukraine – a fiery sequence of events that took the woefully unstable country to the brink of civil war. Crowds of bloodthirsty hooligans, goaded on by the terrible trio of anti-Yanukovych leaders (Tyahnybok, Yatsenyuk,...
Russia and the West: The Tragedy of 1204 Redux
In April 2008 I published this article on our website (the link is no longer available). In view of the crisis in and over Ukraine and the ongoing overall deterioration of relations between “the West” and Russia, its key points are even more pertinent today – over six years later – than they were then....
Robert Conquest Demolished Myths About Communism
The following article by Allan C. Brownfeld appeared originally at the website of FGFBooks.com and is reprinted with permission. Robert Conquest, a historian whose landmark studies of the Stalinist purges and the Ukraine famine of the 1930s documented the horrors perpetrated by the Soviet regime against its own citizens, has died at 98, having outlived the...
Brown Revolution in Ukraine: Vitali Klitschko, A Profile in Opportunism
The Brown Revolution leader most known, recognized, and respected by the West is former heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko. Unlike his allies Yatsenyuk and Tyahnybok, Klitschko’s past makes him an unlikely participant in the neo-nazi led overthrow of legitimate rule in Ukraine. Vitali “Dr. Ironfist” Klitschko was born to an exclusively Russian-speaking family in Soviet Central...
Brown Revolution in Ukraine: The Odessa Inferno
Last week, a brawl between supporters of a federalized Ukraine (known in the Western media as “pro-Russian separatists” and supporters of the neo-nazi dominated Brown revolution (known in the Western media as “pro-government demonstrators”) escalated into a massacre. A crowd of anti-Maidan demonstrators was chased into the Trade Unions building. The building was then torched...
Hagel Didn’t Start the Fire
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam war veteran and the lone Republican on Obama’s national security team, has been fired. And John McCain’s assessment is dead on. Hagel, he said, “was never really brought into that real tight circle inside the White House that makes all the decisions which has put us into the incredible...
A Day of Infamy in Europe
The destruction of two Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea fits into a suspicious pattern of U.S. economic sabotage, and will have disastrous long-term consequences for both Europeans and Americans.
Stumbling Into (Another) War
On August 26, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Washington has sharply criticized Moscow for this, while the European Union has threatened sanctions. Russia and Georgia have signed a cease-fire agreement stipulating that Georgian forces must move back to their bases, while Russian troops are supposed to withdraw to...
Russia to Veto UN Tribunal on MH17 Crash
Srdja Trifkovic’s live RT interview, published 28 July 2015 Results of the ongoing investigation of the MH17 crash are almost preordained because the five countries taking part in it are all politically motivated to blame Russia, Srdja Trifkovic told RT in his latest live interview for the global TV network. RT: Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin...
Reset—or Russian Spring?
The Russian powers that be (vlast) had been nervously preparing for the December 4 elections to the Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) for months. A command decision was made not to overuse “administrative resources” in amassing a victory for the “party of power,” United Russia (Yedinaya Rossiya, ER), and its unofficial leader, former...
The Russians Are Coming!
When the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union imploded shortly afterward, the world breathed a sigh of relief—except in the faculty lounges of our more exclusive universities, the last bastion of Marxism in the developed world. But these hothouse exotics weren’t the only losers. Their opposite numbers, the professional anticommunists, had far more to...
Letter from Italy: Signs of Hope in Veneto
The popular and fearless Stefano Valdegamberi, of Verona, speaks openly about Italy's corrupted political establishment, which is at odds with the true welfare of Italians.
Will Tribalism Trump Democracy?
On July 19, the Knesset voted to change the nation’s Basic Law. Israel was declared to be, now and forever, the nation-state and national home of the Jewish people. Hebrew is to be the state language. Angry reactions, not only among Israeli Arabs and Jews, came swift. Allan Brownfeld of the American Council for Judaism...
Will Trump Defy McCain & Marco?
When word leaked that Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, a holder of the Order of Friendship award in Putin’s Russia, was Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of state, John McCain had this thoughtful response: “Vladimir Putin is a thug, a bully, and a murderer and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying.” Yet,...
Eyes on the Prize of Central Asia
In August, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan announced that the capitol of the country would be moved several hundred miles north, from the green city of Almaty, where the presidential palace stands against a background of snow-capped mountains, to the bleak and windy steppes of north-central Kazakhstan, to the present city of Akmola. The official...
JFK—Accept Our Diverse World as It Is
Seven months after the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy, at American University, laid out his view on how the East-West struggle should be conducted to avoid a catastrophic war that could destroy us both. Kennedy’s message to Moscow and his fellow Americans: “If (the United States and the Soviet Union) cannot end now...
Joe Biden Is Too Dangerous to Mock
If the right keeps laughing at Joe Biden, it risks sleepwalking into another devastating defeat for itself and the country.
The Punishment That Europe Imposed on Itself
The hegemonic clique that conducts American foreign policy has managed to bring Europe under control more firmly and radically than at any time during the Cold War. And this is not a temporary, transient phenomenon.
More Western Voices of Reason
My friend, former Canadian ambassador in Belgrade James Bissett, published a noteworthy article in last Tuesday’s Ottawa Citizen (“NATO at the Heart of the New Cold War,” September 9). He starts by reminding us that NATO was born at the mid-point of the 20th century, which by that time had already seen two world wars...
Non si muove più
Being consistent has the consequence of being predictable, a quality welcome, perhaps, in husbands and dogs, but somewhat a defect in journalists – at least as far as their readers, desirous of truth yet relentless in pursuit of variety, are concerned. Those who have followed my political commentary in these posts – next Wednesday, as...
Transnational Injustice
The International Criminal Court is a political court, no less than the one which convicted Donald Trump in New York.
Kosovo and Its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy
The struggle for Kosovo between Christian Serbs and Muslim Albanians dates back to 1389, when the Serbs were defeated by, and their lands annexed to, the Ottoman Empire. Muslim rule lasted over four centuries and resulted in several waves of forced migrations of Serbs from Kosovo. The current Albanian majority there was achieved more recently—the...
Modi and the Art of Realpolitik
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an unabashed realist who has been using the crisis between Russia and the collective West to increase his country’s global clout.
Crimea: Myths and Memories
With the Brown Revolution running into a war of Russian resistance in the Crimea, the pleasant Peninsula, forgotten for two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union is all of the sudden at the top of all media headlines and is being discussed by talking heads on both sides of the Atlantic. As to...
A Melancholy Parade
Russian President Vladimir Putin had nothing to offer that could be passed off as victory at this year's traditional military parade. His power may be weakening after a long list of failures—but the world may come to regret the consequences if he falls.
Will the GOP Kick It Away?
With Hillary Clinton scrambling to explain her missing emails, much of America is wailing, “Please don’t make us watch this movie again!” Why, then, would the Republican Party, with a chance to sweep it all in 2016, want to return us to the nightmare days of George W., which caused America to rise up and...
Is 18th Century Liberalism to Blame for All Our Problems?
Many conservatives insist that some distant, long-past event supposedly causes all our current woke silliness. I call this the "inverted Whig interpretation of history."
The Cold War Never Ended: U.S.-Russian Relations Since September 11
The recent invasion of South Ossetia by the U.S.-trained and -equipped Georgian army turned into a debacle for both Tbilisi and Washington. It also demonstrated that, for the U.S. government, the fall of the Soviet Union on December 8, 1991, did not mean the Cold War had ended. Washington simply shifted focus to the newly...
Who Paid the Authors of the Border Bill?
Everything we know about the so-called “bipartisan” border bill suggests that it is has been worked out at the behest of powerful interests that have nothing to do with the will or interests of the American people.
The Future of War
The United States and almost all other states are caught up in the biggest change in war in about 350 years. The state is losing its monopoly on war.
When Character Assassination Becomes the Real Thing
Routh took both literally and seriously Democrats and progressives who say Trump is a threat to America's institutions and the rule of law itself.
Spirited Young Men Should Stay Out of Biden’s Military
Do not serve a regime that hates you. When it comes to the American military, it is time for the nation’s spirited young men to meme on, stand up, and drop out.
Global Anarcho-Tyranny
The kind of regime that is being imposed on the world by what still passes for the West has two basic forms. The form preferred by the Democratic Party in the United States and by the European Union is multilateralist and therapeutic. The form favored by the people who currently control U.S. foreign policy is...
‘International Chaos’—Connect the Dots to Biden
Biden's retreat from leadership is in keeping with his long-standing policies and example, with predictable results on the international scene.
Germany Encapsulates the West’s Totalitarian Drift
The recent totalitarian drift in Germany shows what happens when Western people cannot suppress the nagging doubt that they are not morally responsible actors but unquestioning consumers of predigested choices.
How the World Works
The Panama Papers appeared in April, promising to be the biggest bombshell dropped on the international community since Nagasaki. Combing through the 11.5 million documents that were (what follows is a euphemism for stolen) leaked by a purported whistleblower to the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, an international team of journalists has connected a lot of...
Bolton Must Go
Donald Trump won in November 2016 in part because he had promised to turn a new leaf in America’s global engagements. Three years ago he spoke against his opponent’s imperial delusions, voiced doubt about the utility of NATO, expressed certainty that he’d find a common language with Putin (declaring Crimea none of our business), promised...
Conservative Russia, Imperial America
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to yield to Western pressure and accept Kosovo’s independence at the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm has prompted a new round of Russia-bashing at both ends of the political spectrum. Editorial columns were filled with references to Putin’s “posturing,” “bluff,” “intimidation,” and “empty rhetoric.” His “hard line” may “reignite ethnic violence,”...
Ukraine: The Debaltsevo Plot Thickens
With the fall of Debaltsevo some interesting military-technical questions are starting to emerge. Is the Ukrainian general staff grossly incompetent, or outright treasonous? “A colonel is a rank,” says my source, a former general officer of a NATO-affiliated army, “but a general is a clinical diagnosis.” Ever since Hannibal’s masterful double-pincer maneuver at Cannae it...
The French Center Holds—In a World Coming Apart
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” So wrote William Butler Yeats in the wake of the Great War of 1914-1918 that had ravaged the Christian civilization he had known. In France on Sunday, the center held, as President Emmanuel Macron rolled up a crushing 59 percent to 41 percent victory in the runoff election...