Free Republic

Although Russia and Ukraine have captured the world’s attention, it’s hard to get an accurate picture of what exactly is going on. But despite the info ops, elitist jibber-jabber, and declarations that Russia has lost, we can know one thing for sure: This war is nowhere close to being over. That hasn’t stopped the self-appointed “experts” in foreign policy and media from making sweeping declarations about the outcome, namely that Russia is losing or has already lost, just a few days in.“Russia has proved unable to secure air superiority over the tiny Ukrainian air force — despite having the second-largest...

The author is anonymous due to government threats against the author’s family. The Federalist verifies the identities of all anonymous authors we publish. ************************************************************************ In lashing out against Beijing through The New York Times, the Biden administration revealed their incompetence in handling China. ************************************************************************ The Biden administration’s weakness and incompetence were on full display in a New York Times article last week recounting the White House’s repeated—and failed— attempts to urge China to help avert war in Ukraine. The purpose of the article was to allow senior administration officials to take their duplicitous Chinese counterparts to task, but the account...

Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden predicted potential conflict for Ukraine under a hypothetical second term of Donald Trump’s presidency on the campaign trail in 2019. The remarks resurfaced this week in light of the ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine under current President Biden ordered by leader Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

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...

As a candidate for Congress who is also a U.S. Army Reservist, I pay particular attention to the President’s duty as our Commander-in-Chief…and I’m disturbed by what I’m seeing. Millions of U.S. Forces at home and around the world are ready to deploy, serve, and risk their lives at a moment’s notice to defend the United States and her allies. Conflicts abroad can have major impacts on life at home, from endangering our physical security to affecting the price of gas and other critical resources. Having confidence in our Commander-in-Chief’s decision-making—whatever the decisions may be—matters. Unfortunately, resident Biden’s decision-making when...

Is the territorial integrity of Ukraine a cause worth America's fighting a war with Russia? No, it is not. And this is why President Joe Biden has declared that the U.S. will not become militarily involved should Russia invade Ukraine. Biden is saying that, no matter our sentiments, our vital interests dictate staying out of a Russia-Ukraine war. But why then does Secretary of State Antony Blinken continue to insist there is an "open door" for Ukraine to NATO membership -- when that would require us to do what U.S. vital interests dictate we not do: fight a war with...

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...