Section: The American Conservative (USA)
The 22 Dems Who Want to Strip Ivanka Trump’s Clearance
As a Baltimore Republican who is a child of Manhattan, I am twice a politically homeless person. Our president has told us that the first species is nonexistent, while New York County gave Governor Kasich his only county-level primary victory outside of Ohio. But not only Baltimoreans have seen H. L. Mencken’s famous reflection on the...
The Left’s Love Affair With the Bolshevik Revolution
Exactly a century ago, the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia and began a reign of terror unprecedented in human history. What is the place of the Soviet Revolution and the communist ideology that inspired it in the American cultural imagination in 2017? American Reds, a 2016 documentary film about the American Communist Party (CPUSA) and its...
Georgia Shouldn’t (and Won’t) Be a NATO Member
Will Ruger noticed that Pence repeated the pledge to bring Georgia into NATO during his visit there last week: Pence stated, “President Trump and the United States stand firmly behind the 2008 NATO Bucharest statement which made it clear that Georgia will, someday, become a member.” Since this week marks the ninth anniversary of the August 2008...
Is Trump’s Russia Policy Being Hijacked?
In crafting the platform in Cleveland on which Donald Trump would run, America Firsters inflicted a major defeat on the War Party. The platform committee rejected a plank to pull us deeper into Ukraine, by successfully opposing new U.S. arms transfers to Kiev. Improved relations with Russia were what candidate Trump had promised, and what...
Unveiling the Reagan-Gorbachev Statue in Moscow
For all the anti-Russian fervor in congress and on cable news, an important ceremony recently occurred in Moscow. On July 3, just prior to the first meeting between President Trump and President Putin, a statue was unveiled of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Attending the ceremony were various Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials,...
Arming Ukraine Is Still Folly
There is a new proposal to send arms to Ukraine: The U.S. Pentagon and State Department have devised plans to supply Ukraine with antitank missiles and other weaponry and are seeking White House approval, U.S. officials said, as Kiev battles Russia-backed separatists and ties between Moscow and Washington fray. American military officials and...
Shall We Fight Them All?
Saturday, Kim Jong Un tested an ICBM of sufficient range to hit the U.S. mainland. He is now working on its accuracy, and a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop that missile that can survive re-entry. Unless we believe Kim is a suicidal madman, his goal seems clear. He wants what every nuclear power wants — the ability to strike his...
Washington’s Addictive Foreign-Policy Drug
Congress has overwhelmingly passed legislation imposing new economic sanctions on North Korea, Russia and Iran. There was some speculation that President Trump might veto the measure, both because of concerns that it would prevent an improvement in America’s troubled relations with Moscow and because of stringent limitations imposed on the...
How Romney Loyalists Hijacked Trump’s Foreign Policy
In 2015, as Trump’s rise in the polls raised alarms among establishment Republicans, notable proponents of the neoconservative foreign policy began hedging their bets. Ready to back anyone but Trump, they laid plans for a fallback position in case their favored candidates, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, failed to stop Trump’s populist...
When Pushing Democracy on Others Backfires
In her July 13 op-ed in Foreign Affairs, “How U.S. Officials Can Craft Innovative Human Rights Policy,” former Ambassador Sarah Mendelson recalls her work as a senior, politically-appointed foreign policy official in the Obama administration. Her personal mission, as she recalls, was to “elevate human rights”–first within USAID, and later when...
