Section: The American Conservative (USA)
The Folly of Arming Ukraine Revisited
Daniel DePetris responds to a new call from hawkish senators to send arms to Ukraine: It merely explains why the Russian government acted the way it did, and why further U.S. military assistance to the Ukrainian security forces would be ill-advised. In fact, one could make a convincing case that providing hundreds of millions of dollars in...
Arming Ukraine Is a Bad Idea
The first several months of a new administration are inevitably seen as an opening for those who hope to influence the White House over the next four years. The Senate Ukraine Caucus—a bipartisan group of senior lawmakers who have lobbied intensively for a closer U.S.-Ukraine relationship—hopes to take advantage of this sensitive period, in which...
The Real Saboteurs of a Trump Foreign Policy
The never-Trumpers are never going to surrender the myth that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee to defeat Clinton and elect Donald Trump. Their investment in the myth is just too huge. For Clinton and her campaign, it is the only way to...
‘We Had A Future. And A Past.’
I’m telling you, the book Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich is a stunner. I’m finding it hard to put down. It’s an oral history of life in post-Soviet Russia. Alexievich simply lets people talk — all kinds of people. In the US, most of us figured that all Russians, aside from Communist Party officials, would be thrilled to...
Will Trump Defy John McCain and Marco Rubio?
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, Putin is...
The ‘Failure’ to Bomb Syria and the Myth of ‘Credibility’
Mark Moyar repeats a very tired and discredited argument: Mr. Obama’s passivity in the face of provocations and his failure to enforce the “red line” in Syria led Russia, China and other adversaries to seek new gains at America’s expense. There are other problems with the way Moyar describes Obama’s foreign policy record, but...
For a Concert of Powers
The history of Western diplomacy alternates between periods of “realism” and ideology. In the first, regimes maneuver for marginal advantage, their conflicts tempered by shared beliefs and interests. In the second, they seek to destroy or transform one another, with much less concern for means. Warfare occurs in both, but it is more limited,...
Another Pointless Round of NATO Expansion
Another pointless round of NATO expansion has moved one step closer to completion: Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) presided over a unanimous vote Tuesday ratifying a treaty to accept Montenegro as the latest member of NATO. Backers want the Senate to take up the measure later this week, when two-thirds of senators would need...
The Case Against Mitt Romney for State
Frank Bruni makes the case for Romney as Secretary of State: Over his own two presidential campaigns, Romney became ever more fluent in international issues, and he even showed some prescience, identifying Vladimir Putin’s Russia as a grave menace before other politicians woke up to that. He was ridiculed for dwelling in the past. Turns out...
The Populist-Nationalist Tide
Now that the British have voted to secede from the European Union and America has chosen a president who has never before held public office, the French appear to be following suit. In Sunday’s runoff to choose a candidate to face Marine Le Pen of the National Front in next spring’s presidential election, the center-right Republicans...
