Free Republic

Joe Biden is a president in denial. As Americans suffer with record-breaking inflation, skyrocketing gas prices and empty store shelves, he claimed in a recent press conference to have done more in his first year than any other president in history. However, he has done more than any other president to run America into the ground. Biden is blind to the domestic disasters created by his socialist policies, and even more so to his inexcusable foreign policy blunders. In just one year, Biden has allowed our country to be outmaneuvered on the world stage by Communist China and Russia, to...

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the breakup of the USSR began. But the dissolution did not stop with the 14 Soviet "republics" declaring their independence of Moscow. Decomposition had only just begun. Transnistria broke away from Moldova. South Ossetia and Abkhazia seceded from Georgia. Chechnya broke free of Russia but was restored to Moscow's control after two savage wars. Crimea and the Donbass were severed from Ukraine. Besides these post-Cold War amputations, assisted by Russia, what do Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia have in common? All seek admission to NATO, and with it Article...

Washington -- At the end of the Cold War, former President Ronald Reagan and his successor, President George H.W. Bush, were two happy statesmen. They had achieved their prized goal, an end to hostilities with the USSR. For that matter, the Russian President, Mikhail Gorbachev, and his successor, President Boris Yeltsin, were pretty happy, too. Gorby was perhaps less happy than his American counterparts, but he came around to accepting that the conclusion of hostilities between America and the USSR was not a bad thing. Gorby, you will recall, had objected when Reagan famously said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this...

I’d like to wish a very Happy New Year to everyone, but unfortunately I’m very concerned that might not be in our future for 2022. Our country is currently in its weakest, most vulnerable condition since the late 1920s - early 1930s. The period before World War II when our military had been drawn down after World War I, and there was little concern about international threats. We had whipped the Kaiser in Germany during the ‘War to end all wars’, and our attention as a nation was instead to focus on our nation’s economic development and prosperity, instead of...

The Biden administration is taking new actions in an attempt to facilitate humanitarian aid to people in Afghanistan, with the Department of Treasury allowing some financial transactions with the Taliban. "The United States is the largest single provider of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan," Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in a statement Wednesday.... ...While the Treasury's new general licenses put certain conditions in place on transactions with the Taliban, critics warn that it could serve to legitimize and assist Taliban rule. House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, was critical of the move....

When last we heard about Tariq Ramadan, at one time the most famous Muslim “public intellectual” in the Western world, he had fallen from grace. The curtain was pulled back and as one woman after another came forward to charge him with rape, he was revealed to be not only a serial rapist, but one who enjoyed humiliating – and physically hurting – his victims. He has been allowed out of prison, and awaits trial in Paris. He may also have to face trial in Geneva, with a different set of accusers. In the wake of these charges, he was...

"Get off our front porch. Get out of our front yard. And stay out of our backyard."This might stand as a crude summary of two draft security pacts Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov delivered last week as Russia's price for resolving the crisis created by those 100,000 Russian troops on Ukraine's borders.Ryabkov's demands appear to be a virtual ultimatum, designed to be rejected by the U.S. and NATO and provide Moscow with a pretext for an invasion and occupation of part or all of Ukraine.Among the maximalist Russian demands:Written guarantees from NATO that it will not admit into the...

Leaders in the Group of Seven are looking for a consensus regarding Russia’s “malign behavior” towards Ukraine. The leaders of the U.K., U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Italy are meeting at the Museum of Liverpool for two days of talks, with Russia-Ukraine tensions one of the key issues on the table, The Associated Press reported. The meeting is hosted by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who wants “a show of unity against global aggressors” and a coordinated response....

On December 7, 2021, resident Biden had a two-hour telephone conference with Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, to discuss the tense situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border. Mr. Biden's objective was to dissuade Mr. Putin from his apparent, imminent plan to invade Ukraine. However, given that Putin is a former KGB officer, cold, calculating, and a sharp thinker and President Biden is not exactly known for his intellect, it is unlikely that Biden convinced Putin to order Russia's troops on the Ukrainian border to stand down. A war between the United States and Russia over Ukraine is doubtful, and Putin knows it....

American corporate and political leaders are more eager than ever to burnish their do-gooder credentials. Companies are taking stands on social issues more than ever before. Politicians also want to make sure the voters know they are socially just. It's no surprise, therefore, that each house of Congress has passed a bill to stop the importation of goods made with Chinese slave labor. What's more interesting is just how much top American companies and our political leaders have done to slow down the process and weaken the protections. It's a case study in how Congress, the White House and big...

Commercially available quadcopter drones carrying small amounts of explosives are “the most concerning tactical development since the rise of the improvised explosive device in Iraq,” U.S. Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., senior U.S. commander for the Middle East, said last February. But now drones are political weapons as well, and it will get worse. Two weeks ago three quadcopters flew into the heavily fortified ‘Green Zone’ in Baghdad to attack the home of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who won last month’s national election and is working to form a new coalition government. Two of the drones were shot down,...

The U.S. government is curtailing admissions of refugees to focus on the massive effort to process and resettle tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees, the State Department said Monday. Through January 11, the U.S. will stop booking travel for refugees who don't qualify for certain exceptions. Refugees who need to reunite with family in the U.S., who are travel-ready, who have "urgent cases" or whose medical and security screenings are set to expire soon will continue to be resettled, the State Department said. The limits on refugee admissions were requested by the local nonprofit refugee resettlement agencies that partner with...

In a surprise announcement at the Glasgow summit, U.S. climate czar John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart declared that their two countries have pledged to work together to slow global warming. Yet, the arrival a day earlier in Taiwan of a U.S. Navy plane from Clark Air Base in the Philippines, carrying a U.S. congressional delegation, set off a different reaction from Beijing: "The Chinese People's Liberation Army will ... take all necessary measures to resolutely smash any interference by external forces and 'Taiwan independence' separatist plots." The incidents touch on one of the great questions of our time. Are...

The Veterans Day holiday this week, coming just a few months after the national humiliation that was resident Joe Biden's botched Afghanistan withdrawal, ought to serve as a wake-up for Washington's myopic foreign policy and national security establishment, as well as our decadent ruling class more broadly. The best way to honor our veterans in the aftermath of the Afghanistan boondoggle would be to finally end the delusional fantasy that America can, let alone should, attempt to cavalierly export its values unto foreign lands. For decades, varying stripes of neoconservatives, neoliberals and humanitarian interventionists have dominated America's sclerotic foreign policy...

Isn’t great that America is back and the adults are back in charge? America is back, all right: all the way back to 1979, the last time we had a president so weak that enemies of the United States stormed one of our embassies and took hostages. On Thursday, the Yemeni media outlet Al-Masdar Online reported that Houthi jihadis in Yemen, which are backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, stormed our embassy in Sana’a, seizing “large quantities of equipment and materials.” Just days before that, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), they “kidnapped three Yemeni nationals...

What do you call a country whose prime minister chairs Russia’s six-nation military alliance, hosts a permanent Russian military base, holds a bilateral mutual defense pact with Russia, and whose customs and tariff policy is subsumed within Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union trade zone? The answer is, surely, “Russia’s ally.” Today, Armenia, the nation in question, is more under the control of the Kremlin than at any point since the collapse of the Soviet Union to which it once belonged. But it’s not what Armenians want. Who would? Still, the United States allowed this to happen to a Christian nation whose...

"Colossal Stakes as Leaders Meet to Talk Climate," ran the headline. "The Last Best Hope," ran the subhead, which turned out to be a quote from resident Joe Biden's climate czar John Kerry. But these alarmist headings were not atop an editorial. They topped the lead news story in Sunday's New York Times, the opening line of which set the tone for Glasgow: "The future is on the line." Somini Sengupta, climate reporter, then laid out the "colossal stakes" of the summit. "As presidents and prime ministers arrive in Glasgow this week for a pivotal climate summit, the outcome will...

“'My Cuban Missile Crisis tryst with JFK': When the United States stood on the brink of nuclear Armageddon during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F Kennedy sent his wife and children away to stay at the family's summer farm in Virginia. But he pulled his 19-year-old mistress (Mimi Alford) close, summoning her from her college while he stared down the Soviet Union.” But don’t take this appalling datum from me. After all, I’m an “embittered right-wing-Cuban exile with an axe to grind.” Fine. Take it from JFK’s mistress-of- the-minute herself. Details here. Presidential mistress (while a teenager) Mimi...

Human rights usually feature prominently in America's political rhetoric but fade insignificance when it comes to concrete action. That trend can take a historic turn when it comes to Iran, where a genocidal madman has taken the presidency. That the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi in Iran hasn't galvanized governments in the West and in the U.S. in particular to pursue his prosecution is still a mystery. Human rights groups, UN experts, Nobel laureates, scores of elected officials, lawmakers, and journalists have already expressed outrage over Raisi's rise to power. And justifiably so. In 1988, Raisi was one of the members...

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed a quartet of former senators and widows of former senators to key ambassadorial posts, in a rare move by the chamber to approve some of President Biden’s diplomatic nominees. The Senate unanimously confirmed former senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) as U.S. ambassador to Turkey; former senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.) as ambassador to New Zealand; Victoria Reggie Kennedy as ambassador to Austria; and Cindy McCain as ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, which encompasses three U.N. agencies.... ...Tuesday’s votes came as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has threatened to delay the confirmations of dozens...