Free Republic

A British author has called for King Charles III to remove Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's royal titles "swiftly and decisively", as he claimed an award given to the Sussexes was an "insult" to the monarchy. Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy analyst and former aide to Margaret Thatcher, spoke out after it emerged that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will receive a human rights award for standing up to "structural racism" in the Royal Family....

Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order to ‘safeguard’ abortion access which will support patients traveling out of state for abortions. White House reporters peppered Karine Jean-Pierre with questions about Joe Biden’s new executive order and how it squares with the Hyde Amendment. Biden’s White House spokeswoman actually claimed that the Supreme Court overturning one of its previous rulings is “unconstitutional.” She can’t be this stupid? “There has been an urgency from this president from day one, when the Supreme Court made this extreme decision to take away a constitutional right, it was an unconstitutional action by them,” Jean-Pierre...

LOL: WH Press Sec Jean-Pierre Calls Roe v. Wade Reversal ‘Unconstitutional’ White House press propagandist Karine Jean-Pierre rightly took heat Wednesday on social media after she claimed that the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade was an “unconstitutional action.” “From day one, when the Supreme Court made this extreme decision to take away a constitutional right, it was an unconstitutional action by them,” she said. She then described abortion as “a right that was around for almost 50 years,” as well as “a right that women had to make a decision on their bodies and how they want to...

Countless European officials have told me privately that they simply can’t trust the Biden presidency. Some are actually reminiscing about the Trump days, with a high degree of buyer’s remorse – even in Paris. I suspect that anti-Biden sentiment in the democratic world outside the U.S. is probably highest in the U.K., where there already existed a considerable degree of skepticism even before he became president. President Trump had a significant amount of support from Brexiteers, and was seen by sections of the Conservative Party as a strong British ally. Trump’s administration was arguably the most pro-British since the Reagan...

The Obama administration's Russian reset, designed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was premised on the idea of Russia as a partner with the United States. Hand in hand, the former rivals would address the major international crises of the day. This initiative will be remembered as one of the biggest foreign policy follies of the modern era — a staggeringly naïve exercise in appeasement that emboldened Moscow at Washington's expense. From Damascus to Tehran to Kiev, the Russians have been running rings around a U.S. presidency that believes “leading from behind” is a serious strategy, rather than a policy...

AbstractOn February 28, Russian troops, aided by pro-Russian local militia, occupied important sites across the Crimean Peninsula under the pretext of “protecting Russian people.” Now Crimea is under Moscow’s de facto control and the Russian parliament has voted to annex the region into the Russian Federation. The failure of the Obama Administration’s Russian “reset,” the unilateral disarming of Europe, and the U.S. reduction of forces and disengagement from Europe have led Russia to calculate that the West will not respond in any significant way. The Administration can demonstrate America’s commitment to its NATO allies and support for the Ukrainian...

President Bush knew how to build a coalitionGeorge W. Bush was widely mocked by the Left during the Iraq War, with liberals jeering at the “coalition of the willing,” which included in its ranks some minnows such as Moldova and Kazkhstan. Michael Moore, in his rather silly documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, went to great lengths to lampoon the Iraq War alliance. But the coalition also contained, as I pointed out in Congressional testimony back in 2007, Great Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy, Poland, and 16 members of the NATO alliance, as well as Japan and South Korea. In Europe, France and...

In addition, and most importantly, George W. Bush was a conviction president on foreign policy matters, driven by a clear sense of the national interest. President Bush emphatically made his case to the American people and to the world, explaining why he believed the use of force was necessary, and dozens of countries decided to follow him. In the case of Barack Obama, whose foreign policy has been weak-kneed, confused and strategically incoherent, the president hasn’t effectively made the case for military intervention in Syria, and has made no serious effort to cultivate support both at home and abroad. President...

Ronald Reagan, together with Margaret Thatcher, stood up to Moscow, and brought the Soviet Empire to its knees. In contrast, Barack Obama has gone on his knees to grovel before the Russians. The exchange between President Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Seoul was a display of supplication before a major strategic adversary on an issue of great importance for US national security – missile defence. -excerpt- Barack Obama’s comments are disturbing on several levels. First, they display a willingness to placate America’s enemies, and cede ground over issues of national interest. Second, Obama is linking foreign policy...

Lech Walesa, the great hero of the Polish Solidarity movement, was in Washington earlier this week to receive the Ronald Reagan Centennial Award. He gave a terrific speech, which I attended, in which he referred to Cuba, one of the last remaining Marxist tyrannies, as a “Jurassic Park of Communism”. Walesa remains one of the great political icons of our time, a brave freedom fighter who stood up to the Soviet Empire and led his people to liberty. It has been announced that Walesa has decided not to meet with Barack Obama during the president’s visit to Poland. He has...

This week’s Quinnipiac University national poll should be devastating reading for the White House, against a background of mounting confusion over Libya, paralysis in the face of a massive national debt and deep-seated economic problems, and a possible shutdown of Congress. Liberal hopes of an Obama recovery in the first half of 2012 following disastrous midterm elections in November are proving short-lived. According to the Quinnipiac survey, Obama is now at the lowest approval level of his presidency, with his weakest reelect score ever: American voters disapprove 48 – 42 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing and...

If there is one big takeaway from Barack Obama's State of the Union address last night, it is that this presidency remains in a complete state of denial regarding the massive threat the United States faces with its budget deficit. Across Europe, governments are at last beginning to acknowledge the sheer scale of the debt problem, and in some cases taking immediate action to deal with it, especially in Britain. The Obama administration is sleepwalking America towards long-term economic decline by saddling future generations with a burden of epic proportions. The brutal truth remains that the Obama presidency does not...

Barack Obama is the anti-Reagan of US global leadership: the president lacks true grit in the face of America’s enemies As 2010 draws to a close, the United States faces a world that is ever more dangerous, with the looming spectre of a nuclear-armed Iran in the Middle East, a resurgent and increasingly aggressive Russia in Europe, a rising totalitarian power in the East in the form of China, a malevolent rogue state in North Korea, and the global threat of Islamist terrorism. Yet Washington seems almost passive in the face of these huge challenges, with an administration whose focus...

2010 is a year President Obama will definitely want to forget, after his party’s humiliating drubbing at the hands of voters in the November mid-terms. As I’ve noted previously, there is no sign at all of any kind of recovery for the president, and several new polls show that Barack Obama continues his steep downward spiral. On current projections, the president looks on course to become a one-term president, and a pretty undistinguished one at that. According to the latest Fox News/ Opinion Dynamics poll, just 29 percent of US voters predict that Obama will be re-elected in 2012 –...

There is still no sign at all of any kind of near or long-term recovery for President Obama after his midterm shellacking in early November. If anything, one month on from the Congressional elections which brought the Democratic Party to its knees, the outlook is getting even worse for the Obama presidency, and the notion of an Obama bounce is simply a pipe dream at the moment.

Policies of “engagement” with hostile powers are always risky, and frequently lead to embarrassment, as Hillary Clinton discovered last weekend in Bahrain. Foreign Policy.com has a revealing article today detailing the Secretary of State’s futile attempts to greet Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the 2010 IISS Manama Security Dialogue, where she was the featured speaker. According to Foreign Policy’s report: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to speak with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki twice on Friday, pursuing him both inside and outside the gala dinner here at the Ritz Carlton in Manama. But Mottaki deliberately avoided contact...

While President Obama enjoys his sixth vacation of the year, at the exclusive playground of America’s liberal elites at Martha’s Vineyard, the United States’ most dangerous state-based adversary on the world stage is celebrating the opening of its first nuclear reactor, the Russian-built power plant at Bushehr. Although purportedly for civilian purposes, there can be no doubt that this is a huge leap forward for Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, with US officials acknowledging Iran is just “12 months from a nuclear weapon.” Earlier this week, Tehran announced it was building 10 uranium enrichment plants in protected mountain strongholds, and on...

The last few weeks have been a nightmare for President Obama, in a summer of discontent in the United States which has deeply unsettled the ruling liberal elites, so much so that even the Left has begun to turn against the White House. While the anti-establishment Tea Party movement has gained significant ground and is now a rising and powerful political force to be reckoned with, many of the president’s own supporters as well as independents are rapidly losing faith in Barack Obama, with open warfare breaking out between the White House and the left-wing of the Democratic Party. While...

The last few weeks have been a nightmare for President Obama, in a summer of discontent in the United States which has deeply unsettled the ruling liberal elites, so much so that even the Left has begun to turn against the White House. While the anti-establishment Tea Party movement has gained significant ground and is now a rising and powerful political force to be reckoned with, many of the president’s own supporters as well as independents are rapidly losing faith in Barack Obama, with open warfare breaking out between the White House and the left-wing of the Democratic Party. While...

To all intents and purposes Britain is already at war with the Iranian dictatorship, and has been for several years. This weekend’s disturbing report in The Sunday Times merely confirms what we have known for some time – that Iran is actively training the Taliban in Afghanistan, and is directly involved in the killing of British, American and Allied forces. (See also Con Coughlin’s excellent analysis here.) Tehran’s direct intervention in Afghanistan follows in the wake of the Iranian-backed insurgency in southern Iraq, which led to the deaths of more than a hundred British troops. Just last week, General David...