Section: The American Conservative (USA)
The Sacramental Laurus
I was reading to the kids the other night from Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, by Suzanne Massie. It’s a wonderfully written book. Here’s a passage that caught my eye. Christianity first came to Russia in 988, with the conversion of the Kievan Prince Vladimir to Orthodoxy. In this passage, Massie explains how the Slavs...
Will Trump Put ‘America First’?
I am “not isolationist, but I am ‘America First,’” Donald Trump told the New York Times last weekend. “I like the expression.” Of NATO, where the U.S. underwrites three-fourths of the cost of defending Europe, Trump calls this arrangement “unfair, economically, to us,” and adds, “We will not be ripped off anymore.” Beltway media may be...
Will Trump Put ‘America First’?
I am “not isolationist, but I am ‘America First,’” Donald Trump told the New York Times last weekend. “I like the expression.” Of NATO, where the U.S. underwrites three-fourths of the cost of defending Europe, Trump calls this arrangement “unfair, economically, to us,” and adds, “We will not be ripped off anymore.” Beltway media may be...
Trump’s Jumbled, Deal-Obsessed Foreign Policy
Leon Hadar does a good job making some sense out of Trump’s recent rambling interviews on foreign policy with The New York Times and Washington Post: We should reassess the American role in NATO and the rationale for continuing to maintain it. But Trump needs to explain to us why we need to do that, not like a technocrat going through the...
The Cult of ‘Credibility’ Revisited
Nicholas Burns trots out the very tired “credibility” argument in a recent op-ed: However much Mr Obama may believe the old rules do not apply, it is an ancient truth that a great power has to back up its threats if it wishes to be respected by its friends and feared by its adversaries. If Mr Obama did not intend to honour his red-line threat, he...
Non-Interventionists Don’t Want an “Aggressive U.S. Posture in the World”
Trump spoke with The Washington Post editors about his foreign policy views, which they described as “unabashedly non-interventionist” in one place but also described this way: Speaking ahead of a major address on foreign policy later Monday in front of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Trump said he advocates an aggressive U.S....
Restraint in Short Supply in the Pentagon Budget
Last Thurssday, the Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Joseph Dunford testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). The topic? The President’s defense budget request for next year. The nearly three-hour hearing covered everything from the fight against ISIS in Syria to NASA’s...
The ‘Credibility’ Argument Isn’t Credible
Stephen Sestanovich offers up a remarkably bad defense of the importance of “credibility”: A great power values credibility so opponents know not to challenge its interests. That’s why Susan Rice, his own national-security adviser, said the damage done by backtracking on the “red line” would be severe. Has it been? Obama says no, but surely...
What President Trump’s Foreign-Policy Team Might Look Like
To: DJT From: McConnell Since the Romney attack, it’s clear that much of the GOP establishment will fight your nomination tooth-and-nail, won’t support you after you win, would prefer Hillary. One guy who advises Marco on foreign policy took that further and said he’d prefer mass murderer Joseph Stalin to you. This attitude...
Syria Hawks Were Completely Wrong About the “Red Line” and Ukraine
Julia Ioffe talked to some Russian officials and experts about the silly idea that refusing to attack Syria in 2013 encouraged Russian intervention in Ukraine, and this is what they told her: “Wow, it’s kind of a revelation what you just said,” said a very surprised source from the Russian Foreign Ministry, who was not authorized to speak...
