Free Republic

Russia has been burning through equipment, ammunition and weaponry at rates that have raised questions about how effectively and for how long it can continue to prosecute its war against Ukraine. The challenge of sustaining the military effort isn’t unique to Russia, which after making significant territorial gains early in the war has been yielding territory back to Ukraine in phases. Both sides have suffered heavy losses of men and materiel since the invasion began in February, but Moscow is more dependent on its own shrinking economy to replenish supplies than Kyiv is. Ukraine’s economy has been more devastated than...

In a relatively rare admission for an American scholar, a leading U.S. historian who authored a provocative new tome about North American military conflicts states bluntly that Canada won the War of 1812. Johns Hopkins University professor Eliot Cohen, a senior adviser to former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, writes in his just-published book Conquered Into Liberty that, “ultimately, Canada and Canadians won the War of 1812.” And Cohen acknowledges that, “Americans at the time, and, by and large, since, did not see matters that way.”

(CNN)A former George W. Bush administration official who once encouraged recalcitrant Republicans to serve in the incoming Trump administration is now issuing a warning against getting on board, cautioning that those Republicans "would probably have to make excuses for things that are inexcusable and defend people who are indefensible." Eliot Cohen, who served as a State Department counselor from 2007 to 2009, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post published Tuesday explaining why he had changed his mind after engaging with the Trump transition team. Earlier Tuesday, he had tweeted: "After exchange w Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay...

Eliot A. Cohen served in the Defense and State departments in the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations, respectively. It's over. Donald Trump, a man utterly unfit for the position by temperament, values and policy preferences, will be the Republican nominee for president. He will run against Hillary Clinton, who is easily the lesser evil but is trailed by clouds of scandal and misconduct and whose party's left wing poses its own threats to liberties of speech, religion, enterprise and association. It is time for a third candidate, and probably for a third party.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rice's "Sunni strategy" is running into trouble. Her idea was to bolster a ring of moderate Sunni Arab allies as a front-line defense against Iran's regional ambitions. But the Sunnis don't appear to be cooperating, and the proponents of the plan within the State Department are heading for the exits. This weekend, Iran's Holocaust-denying president was fêted by King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch who rules the linchpin Sunni state in Ms. Rice's attempted anti-Iran alliance. Meanwhile, Iran's Sunni proxy in Gaza, Hamas, is divvying up key posts with Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah Party in a Palestinian...