Free Republic

"There is no... sound reason for the United States to continue sacrificing precious lives and treasure in a conflict not directly connected to our safety or other vital national interests." So said William Ruger about Afghanistan, our longest war. What makes this statement significant is that President Donald Trump has ordered a drawdown by mid-October of half of the 8,600 troops still in the country. And Ruger was just named U.S. ambassador to Kabul. The selection of Ruger to oversee the U.S. withdrawal came as Gen. Frank McKenzie of Central Command announced plans to cut the U.S. troop presence in...

n december 2018 China hawks in the Trump administration pushed a series of punitive measures in what some referred to internally, according to a new book by Bob Davis and Lingling Wei, as “Fuck China Week”. That was as nothing compared with what happened in the month of July 2020. In recent weeks America has imposed sanctions on senior Chinese officials, including a member of the Politburo, for their part in atrocities against Uighurs in Xinjiang; added 11 Chinese companies to the Commerce Department’s blacklist, for complicity in those atrocities; declared China’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea illegal;...

Is the United States, preoccupied with a pandemic and a depression created by that medical crisis, prepared for a collision with China over Beijing's claims to the rocks, reefs, and resources of the South China Sea? For that is what Mike Pompeo appeared to threaten this week. "The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire," thundered the secretary of state. "America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources ... and [we] reject any push to impose 'might makes right' in the South China...

In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House...

While it may be too costly for Beijing to attack the United States directly, Beijing is getting its message out at relatively minimal cost through attacking U.S. allies like Australia. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison gave his strongest response to Communist China this week after enduring months of bullying from Beijing. He let Beijing know loud and clear that Australia is “an open trading nation, but I’m never going to trade our values in response to coercion.”It all began back in April, when Australia led a draft resolution, which demanded the World Health Organization (WHO) conduct an “impartial, independent and...

If the United States doesn’t follow through to revoke Hong Kong’s special treatment, Beijing may be emboldened to take aggressive actions against Taiwan. May 22, 2020 will go down in history as an important milestone. On this day, Beijing announced it will impose a new national security law on Hong Kong, which will effectively end the “One Country, Two Systems” era.Beijing made the move at this week’s “Two Sessions,” annual legislative meetings of two organizations: the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). In the past, more than 5,000 delegates, representing the elites in China,...

“Come not between the dragon and his wrath,” King Lear enjoined, but this we must do to upend the wrath that has emanated from the most powerful foe America has faced. As terrible as the coronavirus crisis is, we must imagine a world ten or 20 years from now, in which the People’s Republic of China’s nominal gross domestic product is 50 percent larger than that of the United States.What power would an unconstrained China wield? What force of arms would they muster to intimidate and to control?If China’s actions in the coronavirus catastrophe offer any window into this...

China placed 50 million people under quarantine in Hubei Province in January. Since then, many liberal democracies have taken aggressive authoritarian measures of their own to fight the novel coronavirus. By mid-March, almost all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries had implemented some combination of school, university, workplace, and public transportation closures; restrictions on public events; and limits on domestic and international travel. One country, however, stands out as an exception in the West. Rather than declare a lockdown or a state of emergency, Sweden asked its citizens to practice social distancing on a mostly voluntary basis. Swedish...

China placed 50 million people under quarantine in Wuhan Province in January. Since then, many liberal democracies have taken aggressive authoritarian measures of their own to fight the novel coronavirus. By mid-March, almost all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries had implemented some combination of school, university, workplace, and public transportation closures; restrictions on public events; and limits on domestic and international travel. One country, however, stands out as an exception in the West. Rather than declare a lockdown or a state of emergency, Sweden asked its citizens to practice social distancing on a mostly voluntary basis. Swedish...

A recent Foreign Affairs essay predictably gives the public a false binary choice, blames the current administration, and defends the foreign policy establishment. Who do you think is responsible for the current coronavirus foreign influences fiasco? If you ask the Washington foreign policy establishment, the answer is evident. It is President Trump’s disdain for “the foreign policy establishment” that has led to this current crisis.This is their same answer for every problem humanity has faced since 2016. If only we listened to the establishment! If only they learned their lesson in 2016. Apparently not, if you go by the Foreign...

In our exultation, we forgot to finish the job. Communism lived on in mainland China, and is once again challenging the free world for dominance. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved, the Western world thought, with considerable justification, that the generational struggle with communism had ended. But in our exultation, we forgot to finish the job. Communism lived on in mainland China and is once again challenging the free world for dominance.This time, theyÂ’re doing it with our money. As we have begun to realize these past few years, and as the coronavirus outbreak has made...

In this digital media world, despotic lies and authoritarian propaganda spread at light speed, with the goals of manipulating emotions and weakening a targeted audience's will to resist the tyrant. The antidotes to a 21st-century dictatorship's destructive falsehoods -- justice and its ally, truth -- often react slowly. In the Age of the Internet, slow has a price. Slow doesn't generate hot headlines and wag the tongues of talking heads, so the dictators make the first impression and set the agenda. But to paraphrase former President John Adams, facts and evidence are stubborn things, and when ethical human beings pursue...

A senior leader of one of the Dominican Republic’s most prominent conservative political parties told Breitbart News he is concerned the island nation, just a little over 200 miles from the United States, could become a “hostage” in China’s growing bid for hegemony... Chinese Ambassador to the Dominican Republic Zhang Run...is openly advocating for the country to open a public bidding war for the development of the Manzanillo Port, rather than sign an agreement with U.S. developers that would keep China’s “Belt and Road” workers out of the area... Zhang also said that China had offered Santo Domingo a $600...

Not only has the “Phase One” trade deal now been signed by the United States and China, but official texts have now been released. And my initial read indicates that the Trump administration just might have come up with an effective enforcement regime – though success here will depend on U.S. governments (including this one) displaying nerves of steel. At the same time, the enforcement terms raise the question of why the President felt the need to reach this point via a treaty, rather than simply punish China unilaterally for economic transgressions – as his tariffs on hundreds of...

The crash of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 is a tragedy, the culpability for which lies unequivocally with Iran. To suggest otherwise is to cheapen the deaths of hundreds to score political points against the 'bad orange man.' Something grotesque is unfolding on the left, particularly about Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752, which domestic and foreign governments indicate was likely shot down by an Iranian antiaircraft missile. One-hundred and seventy-six individuals perished as the airplane caught fire and came crashing to the ground in Iran early Wednesday morning.Those on the left have opted to blame President Trump for the IraniansÂ’ error,...

What do the Iranian regime, the New York Times and Sen. Rand Paul have in common? “I believe Mr. Trump does not seek war. But Mr. Bolton and Netanyahu have always sought war.” Thus spoke Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, at a Monday press conference in Tehran. It’s not the first time Mr. Zarif has tried to drive a wedge between President Trump and his national security adviser, John Bolton—or between the president and his most steadfast international ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But for Mr. Bolton, Mr. Zarif implies, we could have peace in the Middle East tomorrow....

Facebook has targeted politicians around the world – including the former UK chancellor, George Osborne – promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on Facebook’s behalf against data privacy legislation, an explosive new leak of internal Facebook documents has revealed. The documents, which have been seen by the Observer and Computer Weekly, reveal a secretive global lobbying operation targeting hundreds of legislators and regulators in an attempt to procure influence across the world, including in the UK, US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all 28 states of the EU. The documents include details of...

The unfitness of Rep. Ilhan Omar for the House Foreign Affairs Committee has already been brought up based on her persistent anti-Semitism, her strange habit of repeating Russian propaganda, and her apparent abuse of U.S. immigration law. Now a new and very big reason has come up: Her cringe-inducing ignorance of actual foreign affairs.  In a hearing on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Omar got her big moment to show her foreign policy chops, and started in by misstating the actual name of the State Department's grizzled old special envoy for Venezuela, the well-known Elliott Abrams, calling him 'Adams.' Then, sneering and smiling weirdly, she brought...

Sims, unlike many others who have left the White House and gone on to attack the president in books or public comments, remains loyal to Trump and is trying to out leakers–or sleeper cells, as they are called–in the West Wing. One alleged leaker exposed in another excerpt in Sims’ book is White House counselor KellyAnne Conway, who, Sims recounts in an excerpt published by Vanity Fair, asked him to write a statement on her computer saying she was not disloyal or leaking–while he watched messages appear on her screen between her and media figures in which she allegedly trashed...

It appears that the leadership of the Democratic Party has gone completely anti-Israel and is warming up to Jew-hatred. The appointment of Rep. Ilhan Omar to the House Foreign Affairs Committee – and the welcome extended to her by the chairman, (former) Israel-supporter Rep. Eliot Engel – confirms that the Democrats' big tent now extends to those who believe that Jews in Israel wield magical power to "hypnotize" non-Jews into acquiescence to their "evil." Omar was triumphant yesterday on her appointment to the plum committee: Ilhan Omar ✔@IlhanMN I finally have committee assignments and I am excited 1st choice- House...