President Joe Biden set off international alarms over the weekend when he committed the United States to the goal of regime change in Russia. "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden said of Russian leader Vladimir Putin during a speech in Poland. The last time the United States set itself to removing a foreign leader, in…

One – Reassuring an enemy what one will not do ensures that the enemy will do just that and more. Unpredictability and occasional enigmatic silence bolster deterrence. But President Joe Biden's predictable reassurance to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will show restraint means Putin likely will not. Two – …

The public needs straight talk about what's happening in Eastern Europe. President Joe Biden and the United Kingdom's Prime Minister Boris Johnson need to level with their own countrymen about the rising risk of war against Russia. The public's getting double talk – praise for the Ukrainians' courage but also empty promises that what…

After the end of the Cold War, foreign policy experts across the spectrum assured us that things had changed. Wars of pure border conquest were over. Wars over oil would soon be a thing of the past. Instead, the increasingly intertwined world would move toward peace. Thomas Friedman suggested in his massive 1999 bestseller "The Lexus and the Olive…

"One small thing to be thankful for is that DJT is not in the White House as the Ukraine crisis unfolds. He'd side with Russia," tweeted Francis Fukuyama, author of "The End of History and the Last Man." The headline on Eugene Robinson's Washington Post column reads, "With Biden standing firm, Putin must wonder: Where's Trump…

While the Biden administration's chaotic and inept withdrawal from Afghanistan was unfolding in August 2021, a suicide bomber murdered 13 American service members, and at least 170 Afghans, at the Abbey Gate outside Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport. It was one of the deadliest attacks on our troops in our 20 years in that nation. "Know…

One way of understanding the 2009-2014 Obama Administration policy of "reset" with Vladimir Putin's Russia is to recall two iconic incidents. The first was the 2009 "reset." Newly appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that she would pursue a "reset" detente with Russia. America would relax the prior…

Americans want an autonomous Ukraine to survive. They hope the West can stop Russian President Vladimir Putin's strangulation of both Ukraine and NATO. Yet Americans do not want their troops to venture across the world to Europe's backyard to fight nuclear Russia to ensure that Ukraine stays independent. Most Americans oppose the notion that Russia…

At 9:05 Monday night, State Department spokesman Ned Price issued a plaintive message to the new rulers of Afghanistan. "The Taliban needs to meet its commitments and obligations in Afghanistan," Price tweeted. Those commitments and obligations include respecting freedom of travel, safeguarding the "basic rights of the people,"…

The unfolding disaster in Afghanistan is a bipartisan, transadministrational failure. It is a humiliation. The fact is that after 20 years, after thousands of lives were lost and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on the military, police, training, infrastructure and education, the country fell in days.  Whatever your position is on the…

The Biden administration says it does not know how many U.S. citizens are in Afghanistan hoping to leave in the face of the American withdrawal and Taliban takeover. For days, Pentagon officials said they had no ability to venture outside the Kabul airport to find those Americans and bring them to safety. Now the military says it is doing just that…

The American-nurtured Afghan military of the last 20 years that had suffered thousands of prior casualties evaporated in a few hours in the encirclement of Kabul. Enlistees apparently calculated that their own meager chances with the premodern Taliban were still better than fighting as a dependency of the postmodern United States – …

For months, President Joe Biden has opened the borders to Hispanic illegals, but he has turned a deaf ear to our Afghan allies desperate to get to America.  Some 20,000 pro-American Afghanis and their families are in danger of being killed by the Taliban because Biden refused to speed up the bureaucratic, 14-step visa application process and…

President Joe Biden heads to Europe Wednesday to meet with European leaders. He says the goal is to work together to "deliver real results" on critical issues, like climate change and cybersecurity. Biden is ducking the most important issue – the cause of the pandemic. He should be marshaling allies to act in unison by squeezing…

Only a few months ago, the Biden administration argued that Nord Stream 2, a proposed natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany, was "a bad deal" that "exposes Ukraine and Central Europe." White House press secretary Jen Psaki had noted at the time that any new pipeline carrying the fossil fuel on the continent "goes…

I’m just old enough to remember Ronald Reagan’s election, and the earliest days of his administration.   Among those early memories, which returned to the fore this week amid renewed conflict between Israel and Hamas, is Israel’s daring June 7, 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor using American-made F-…

With more than 3,000 rockets having been fired into Israel by Hamas recently, the Democratic Party seems paralyzed over how to respond to the latest Middle East war. It is not just that they fear that "The Squad," Black Lives Matter, the shock troops of antifa, and woke institutions such as academia and the media are now unapologetically…

Wars often arise from uncertainty. When strong countries appear weak, truly weaker ones take risks they otherwise would not. Sloppy braggadocio and serial promises of restraint can trigger wars, too. Empty tough talk can needlessly egg on aggressors. But mouthing utopian bromides convinces bullies that their targets are too sophisticated to counter…

Last week in Anchorage, Alaska, Chinese diplomats dressed down Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Both seem stunned by the broadsides. Not since newly elected President John Kennedy was humiliated at the Vienna summit in June 1961 by USSR strongman Nikita Khrushchev have American diplomats been so roughly…

President-elect Joe Biden named his national security team last week. Antony Blinken will be nominated for secretary of state; Jake Sullivan for national security adviser; Avril Haines for director of national intelligence; and Alejandro Mayorkas for secretary of homeland security. All but Sullivan will require Senate confirmation. How that goes depends…

October 28, 2020   The Honorable Donald Trump Office of the President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. 20006  Re:  Renewal of U.S. Business Licenses to Protect Assets and Operations in Venezuela  Dear Mr. President:   Over the past four years, your administration…

After Israel's resounding victory over the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies in 1967, the Jewish state again offered the Arab world peace in exchange for recognition. And it was again rebuffed. Instead, the Arab League convened in Khartoum to formulate a consensus response that became known as "The 3 Noes" – no recognition…

Almost daily, Greek and Turkish aircraft and ships fight mock battles over disputed oil and gas rights in the eastern Mediterranean. Since the loss of much of the Christian Balkans to the Ottomans in the 15th century, Greece and what would later become modern Turkey have been rivals, outright enemies and often at war. Mutual NATO membership and shared…

It took approximately 20 seconds for former Secretary of State John Kerry to drop the first flagrant lie in his Democratic National Convention speech on Tuesday, when he claimed that the Obama administration's so-called Iran deal had "eliminated the threat of an Iran with a nuclear weapon." It didn't get any better from there. Kerry knows…

President Trump recently ordered a 12,000-troop reduction in American military personnel stationed in Germany. That leaves about 24,000 American soldiers still in the country. A little more than half of the troops being withdrawn will return home. The rest will be redeployed to other NATO member nations such as Belgium, Italy, and perhaps Baltic and…

The world was a dangerous place before – and will be after – the coronavirus pandemic. While Americans debate the proper ongoing response to the virus and argue over the infection's origins, nature and trajectory, they may have tuned out other, often just as scary, news. Many Americans are irate at China for its dishonest and…

The depraved totalitarians, nefarious barbarians, two-bit gangsters, odious scoundrels and bigoted scum who run the United Nations recently set up a new "database" to help anti-Semites around the world target Jewish businesses in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria – businesses that not only offer economic opportunities…

When candidate Donald Trump campaigned on calling China to account for its trade piracy, observers thought he was either crazy or dangerous. Conventional Washington wisdom had assumed that an ascendant Beijing was almost preordained to world hegemony. Trump's tariffs and polarization of China were considered about the worst thing an American president…

It's unlikely that Donald Trump's new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan will succeed. Yet, it's the best of any recent offerings because it dispels poisonous fictions that have held back negotiations for decades. The reality is that there will never be a Palestinian "right of return" to Israel, since such a policy would destroy the Jewish character…

Whether by accident or by deliberate osmosis, Israel and the U.S. have adopted similar solutions to their existential problems. Before 2002, during the various Palestinian intifadas, Israel suffered hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries from suicide bombers freely crossing from the West Bank and Gaza into Israel. In response, Israel planned…