Free Republic

The Russian offensive against Ukraine unleashed by Russian President Vladimir Putin is now two days old. There are two big things to consider as the conflict grinds on: strategy and morale.The first is the survival of Ukraine’s young president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy and his democratically-elected government are the focus of Putin’s war. The German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “The talent of the strategist is to identify the decisive point and to concentrate everything on it, removing forces from secondary fronts and ignoring lesser objectives.” Zelenskyy is that decisive point.For an opposing force, the contrary is often true. In...

Deterrence is the ancient ability to scare somebody off from hurting you, your friends or your interests -- without a major war. Desire peace? Then be prepared for war. Or so the Romans believed. It's an easily understood concept in the abstract. But deterrence still remains a mystical quality in the concrete since it is only acquired with difficulty and yet easily forfeited. The tired democracies of the 1930s learned that lesson when they kept acquiescing to Hitler's serial aggressions. Hitler's Germany foolishly later attacked a far stronger Soviet Union in 1941, given Moscow's lost deterrence after its lackluster performances...

Chinese state-run media revealed for the first time this week that Beijing’s nuclear submarines can attack American cities as a means to counterbalance U.S. nuclear deterrence in the Pacific. On Monday, leading media outlets including China Central TV, the People’s Daily, the Global Times, the PLA Daily, the China Youth Daily and the Guangmin Daily ran identical, top-headlined reports about the “awesomeness” of the People's Liberation Army navy’s strategic submarine force. “This is the first time in 42 years since the establishment of our navy’s strategic submarine force that we reveal on such a large scale the secrets of our...

Some European officials, speaking under conditions of anonymity, are expressing concerns that Senator Obama may become the next U.S. president. “It’s not that we don’t like Obama on a personal level,” said one source. “He is a lot like us, but that is a cause for worry. We have always counted on America. America saved us from Hitler. America deterred the Red Army from marching into Western Europe. America was there to ward off the bullies who picked on us.” “Maybe having a gauche ‘cowboy America’ to rely on is a crutch we don’t really want to part with,” said...

It's clearly necessary to begin thinking about what form deterrence will take against future terrorist attacks on the U.S. At least 5 such attacks have been prevented at the operational stage by Bush administration policies over the last six years. What is needed is more serious consideration of the value of policies that deter such attacks. This is likely to become a more pressing concern, as America's ability to interrupt such attacks, if a Democrat becomes President, will be severely eroded. The Democrats are profoundly indifferent to national security, and have even managed to convince themselves that terrorism is some...

America vs. Human Nature From the audacious title, to an opening that quotes Thomas Paine's rebuke of the "sunshine patriot," to a proposal for immediately widening the war against al-Qaeda to include Hamas and Hezbollah, An End to Evil is a worthy election-year polemic from Richard Perle and David Frum. The work is clearly meant to help define foreign policy for a second Bush Administration, and it may well do that if sloganeering continues to displace actual strategic planning. Perle and Frum (P-F, for now) are very good at what they do: arguing for a robust exercise of American power...

Aug. 12, 2002 Ben-Eliezer: Demolitions deter terrorists By JANINE ZACHARIA The demolition of the homes of suicide bombers is starting to reduce the number of people willing to carry out such acts, the cabinet said on Sunday. "We're seeing initial signs that this action has a certain deterrent effect," read a cabinet statement based on a briefing by Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. "We already have several testimonies about parents trying to stop their children from entering the circle of attacks," the statement added, citing an instance in which a father informed on his son who was planning an attack. Seventeen...

Israel Ups The Ante For Perpetrators of Terror Attacks By Julie Stahl CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief July 19, 2002 Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Israel sees its current military operation - including curfews on the Palestinian cities - as a "very effective" method of fighting terror despite two more attacks this week, a senior military official told CNSNews.com . He said the operation is likely to continue indefinitely. Israel upped the ante in its war against terror overnight, when troops arrested the families of two militants suspected of involvement in this week's deadly attacks and destroyed their homes. It is the first...