Free Republic

Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West - and will likely lose - if the West mobilizes its resources to resist the Kremlin. The West’s existing and latent capability dwarfs that of Russia. The combined gross domestic product (GDP) of NATO countries, non-NATO European Union states, and our Asian allies is over $63 trillion.[1] The Russian GDP is on the close order of $1.9 trillion.[2] Iran and North Korea add little in terms of materiel support. China is enabling Russia, but it is not mobilized on behalf of Russia and is unlikely to do so.[3] If we lean in and...

If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week's end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history. Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his troops will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded. Erdogan's foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the U.S. to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian border with Turkey east of the Euphrates, all the way to Iraq. If the Turks attack Manbij, the U.S. will face a choice: Stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon...

In nominating Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state, Donald Trump is attaining one of his major political goals: he is putting a distinctive personal stamp on U.S. foreign policy at a time when Washington’s relations with Russia are fraught with the possibility of a hot war from Ukraine to Syria. Not that Tillerson’s confirmation is guaranteed: Democrats and Republicans are suspicious of his ties to Vladimir Putin, and they will subject the ExxonMobil chief executive to intense scrutiny during next month’s Senate hearings. But Trump has an idea of where he wants to go in dealing with the Kremlin...

Ten days ago, we reported that as a result of Obama's vow to extend the Iran Sanctions Act for another 10 years, Iran threatened to retaliate, saying it violated last year's deal with six major powers that curbed its nuclear program. While US officials said the ISA's renewal would not infringe on Obama's landmark nuclear agreement (which may or may not be voided by Trump), and under which Iran agreed to limit its sensitive atomic activity in return for the lifting of international financial sanctions that harmed its oil-based economy, senior Iranian officials took odds with that view. Iran's...

Microsoft is taking its HoloLens virtual reality glasses to the next stage of its evolution from demoware to market development. The company will release an SDK next quarter and is kicking off a multicity road show next week to provide demos of the HoloLens. At the Windows 10 Devices launch event earlier this week, the company gave airtime to HoloLens and demonstrated a game code-named" Project Xray" that would let players engage in shooting matches with holographic guns. Besides "mixed reality gaming" and entertainment, the company's top brass is bullish on the prospect for HoloLens in a variety of industrial...

The BBC's new director general Tony Hall has complained that actors aren't speaking clearly enough in TV drama. Is it time to cut the mumble, asks Ben Milne. "I don't want to sound like a grumpy old man," Lord Hall tells the Radio Times, "but I think muttering is something we could look at." ... Trends in acting haven't necessarily helped. Method acting tries to capture the "truth" of a character - even if that character can't be heard properly - rather than bowing to stodgy old considerations about being audible from the cheap seats. Its foremost proponent was Marlon...

WHEN IT COMES to foreign policy, John F. Kerry is no John F. Kennedy. In his 1961 inaugural address, the 35th president of the United States declared that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden" in their ongoing defense of liberty and human rights "at home and around the world." Like other presidents before and since – Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush – JFK believed that it was America's destiny to advance freedom and democratic self-government, and oppose the world's tyrants. This is the "idealist" approach to US foreign policy. Kerry sees America's role differently. For nearly...

The truth about North Korea's glittering 'Hotel Of Doom' built to symbolize country's supremacy: There's nothing but a derelict shell inside From the outside, its shiny windows and soaring towers make it look decidedly futuristic and luxurious. But after visitors walk through the doors of North Korea's Ryugyong Hotel - which has taken twenty years to build - they see it is just a concrete shell. The interior of the 105-story, pyramid-shaped resembles a multi-storey car park, with its concrete floors and bare columns. Beijing-based Koryo Tours got a peek at the vast interior of the hotel in Pyongyang, the...

This scene is a microcosm of how liberals seek to silence the opposition by censorship and leveling personal attacks while avoiding the issues at hand. It further elucidates their ignorance of the issues, their bad habits of changing the subject during the debate, and their wild self-constructed fantasies of the world at large. Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our...

The culture war might be likened to fighting a war against a coalition of powers. Imagine WWI-style trench warfare on a long front. In the center of the enemy lines are the forces of moral relativism. These forces oppose the idea that there is a universal moral law. On one flank are the forces of the sexual revolution, including gays, feminists, adulterers, the promiscuous, and the pro-abortion folks. On the other flank are the cultural relativists, and multiculturalists. This camp opposes the ideas of truth, beauty, and intrinsic quality. It seeks to suppress the literary, philosophical, and artistic heritage of...

Since the end of the Cold War, neo-conservatives have routinely employed two powerful words to criticize traditional conservatives uneasy with their big government approach to international affairs: appeasement and isolationism. On ABC's "This Week," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) employed both words, labeling Republican criticism of the military adventure in Libya as "isolationist" all while making an allusion to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s ...

You'd think with a $1.65 trillion deficit, adding 4 trillion to the debt in 3 years, unemployment between 9-10% after promising it wouldn't go above 8, a foreign policy that's a disaster, a domestic policy that's a disaster Mike Huckabee would list all the reasons why Obama can't be reelected. Sadly, he tells Stephanopoulos why it's an uphill battle for Republicans

"We're All Realists Now." No. Pragmatists maybe, but not "realists." Barack Obama's election as U.S. president delighted many people, especially the self-described foreign-policy "realists" who accused his predecessor, George W. Bush, of denying reality in favor of dangerous idealism. Obama has praised the realpolitik of Bush's father, George H.W. Bush. And a White House official recently told the Wall Street Journal, "[Obama] has really kind of clicked with that old-school, end-of-the-Cold-War wise-men generation." The elder Bush's national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, called Obama's election a rejection of the younger Bush "in favor of realism." Of course foreign policy should be...

Welcome to the Common-Sense Environmentalism Issue Suite, a comprehensive resource for people who support a common-sense approach to protecting the environment. What is Common-Sense Environmentalism?Common-sense environmentalism recognizes that almost everyone today is an environmentalist. We all want a healthy, green environment for ourselves and our families. What distinguishes common-sense environmentalism from more extreme environmental activism is a commitment to fight real environmental problems rather than imagined ones and a realization that free markets are an ally rather than an enemy of environmental stewardship.Common-sense environmentalists recognize that environmental scares are frequently unsupported by sound science and are often launched to...

Now, What If…? Now, what if our ideals destroy our sense of reality and lead us down the wrong path? What if Bush is really a great president? By Mogens Rukow What if Bush…? What if Islam…? Think, what if the intelligentsia…? What if multicultural…? Think, what if Arafat…? What if my a.. was…? What if you could go on forever? Now, what if there existed the equivalent of contrafactual history writing? What if there were the equivalent of hypothesizing what the world would be like out if history hadn’t turned out the way it did? What if Hitler had...

After virtually ignoring happiness for more than 100 years, social scientists are making up for lost time. They're churning out hundreds of research papers on the subject each year. There are happiness conferences, a Journal of Happiness Studies, a World Database of Happiness. Happy, you might say, is the new sad. All of this cogitating about contentment has revealed much about who's supposedly happy and who isn't. Most studies show that wealthy people are marginally happier than poor ones. People with pets or children are no happier than those without. People with active sex lives are -- surprise! -- happier...

Resistance by partisan ”shadow warriors” at the Department of State has limited the president’s options and is bringing us dangerously close to a military showdown with Iran, former Bush administration official John Bolton told Newsmax in an exclusive interview. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice initially had planned to provide significant aid to the pro-democracy movement in Iran, as a means of giving the president more policy options, Bolton said. But resistance by the State Department bureaucracy crippled the programs and rendered them ineffective. “[T]he outcome has been no overt program of support for democracy and no clandestine program to overthrow...

“You don’t roll out a new product in August,” said President Bush’s aide, Andrew Card, apropos Iraq in the summer of 2002. But in this seventh September of a no longer new war a somewhat battered product is in need of a rebranding. It was launched in the days after 9/11 as a “war on terror,” an artful evasion deemed necessary on the grounds that a war on any enemy beginning with “Islamist,” “Islamo-,” or “Islamic” might give the impression we had some, ah, issues with Islam itself and only complicate things further with various “friends” like Mubarak and the...

(Editor's note: the Secretary of State delivered the following address to the Economic Club of New York on June 7, 2007.) Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: It's an honor to join you tonight to help you celebrate your centennial anniversary. For 100 years now, the Economic Club of New York has been one of the intellectual capitals of the most dynamic city in the world. You have shaped the world of ideas. You have done so with reason, and passion, and civility. And you have helped to guide America, thoughtfully and confidently, though times of change and challenge.