Free Republic

Few meetings ever started with dimmer prospects for success than the recent meeting between Presidents Obama and Putin. The real call for the meeting stemmed from the EU refugee crisis. With a human catastrophe brewing in Europe and the Middle East, EU leaders are urgently demanding that the U.S. and Russia set aside their differences and begin to work together in an effort to resolve the Syrian conflict, the major cause of the massive movement of people seeking sanctuary. Now, U.S./EU leaders are no longer insisting on the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from office as a pre-condition to...

New Mexico has a wealth of energy resources. And now it has a comprehensive plan to help guide development of those riches to grow the state’s economy. Last week at the 2015 Southeastern New Mexico Mayor’s Energy Summit in Carlsbad, Gov. Susana Martinez laid out a broad “all of the above” energy policy. “There is no reason we shouldn’t be an energy leader,” she later told attendees at the eighth annual Domenici Public Policy Conference in Las Cruces. Her plan embraces a wide range of energy sources, ranging from oil and gas to solar, wind and up-and-coming technologies, such as...

Dr. Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy, explains how an oil price war led by Saudi Arabia impacts the prospects for drilling off the N.C. coast

Dr. Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy, discusses the impact of falling oil prices on the domestic energy industry.

Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler's new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese government had redrawn the map of Asia and the Pacific. Japan had occupied or annexed Indochina, Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in addition to swaths of coastal China. Attacking Hawaii, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia was merely the logical 1941 follow-up...

Saudi Arabia’s unwillingness to follow its longstanding policy of propping up oil prices means North Carolina might have to wait for offshore energy exploration. That’s the assessment of Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy and project leader of a group developing New Mexico’s state energy policy. Fine described a Saudi-led oil “price war” during a presentation to the John Locke Foundation’s Shaftesbury Society. In the video clip below, Fine explained how falling oil prices tied to Saudi Arabia’s new policy affect North Carolina’s energy options.

It’s not even 8 a.m. and rush hour is on in northwestern New Mexico. Dozens of big white trucks and water tankers, neon flags flying, head north to the gas patch. I’m driving south, through Aztec, and as I pass the retro-orange A&W on the edge of town, I pull up alongside a drilling rig. The thing’s huge, too huge, it seems, to be rolling along the same road as my little Nissan. Yet the strange, rolling infrastructure has been a familiar site around here for decades — back in 1948, when a UFO purportedly crashed out on a nearby...

I'm going to comment on the ethics of nuking Japan. This is one of those perennial issues that America-bashers constantly raise. There are two extremes we need to avoid: "my country right or wrong," and "blame America first." For me the war has a personal dimension. My late father was a WWII vet who served in the Pacific theater. He was radio operator in the Air Force. His squadron conducted reconnaissance over Japan. He had some interesting stories to tell: i) He trained on B-17s in Alaska, then flew on B-29s in Florida. ii) Our pilots discovered the jet stream....

The situation on the ground in Ukraine has been described as a high-stakes chess game, and Garry Kasparov, world chess champion and chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, expressed little confidence in the players yesterday.

The words come as the EU suspends new sanctions - including visa bans and asset freezes - to give peace efforts a chance Vladimir Putin will not be spoken to in the language of ultimatums, a Russian radio station has quoted the Kremlin as saying. Reports suggest German Chancellor Angela Merkel had given him until Wednesday to agree a peace plan over Ukraine or face new sanctions.

The concept that has underpinned the modern geopolitical era is in crisis Libya is in civil war, fundamentalist armies are building a self-declared caliphate across Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan's young democracy is on the verge of paralysis. To these troubles are added a resurgence of tensions with Russia and a relationship with China divided between pledges of cooperation and public recrimination. The concept of order that has underpinned the modern era is in crisis. The search for world order has long been defined almost exclusively by the concepts of Western societies. In the decades following World War II, the...

The United States on Monday accused Russia of violating a Cold War arms treaty governing both powers’ use of intermediate range missiles. If true, it marks the latest in a series of Russian breaches of international norms since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in 2012. Russia’s violation of the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibits both America and Russia from deploying ballistic and cruise missiles that are launched from the ground and have a range of between 500 and 5,000 kilometers, was first reported by The New York Times in January. An American government official confirmed the...

“In principle, Ukraine does not independently exist,” said Russian Orthodox Church leader Kirill i during a June 18 address. Ukraine is instead part of “the historical territory of Russia,” the patriarch said, according to a report by the Kiev-based Espreso tv. Such a stance on Ukraine mirrors that of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2005, Mr. Putin said the demise of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.” Ever since, his prime objective has been the rebuilding of Russia’s influence in its former Soviet periphery—especially in Ukraine. Although Putin never tried to hide what he...

“In principle, Ukraine does not independently exist,” said Russian Orthodox Church leader Kirill i during a June 18 address. Ukraine is instead part of “the historical territory of Russia,” the patriarch said, according to a report by the Kiev-based Espreso tv. Such a stance on Ukraine mirrors that of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2005, Mr. Putin said the demise of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.” Ever since, his prime objective has been the rebuilding of Russia’s influence in its former Soviet periphery—especially in Ukraine. Although Putin never tried to hide what he...

In view of the public frustration with a decade of largely unsuccessful U.S. war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the impending cuts to the U.S. military budget, there is an active debate at present as to what military strategy and force structure should be fashioned for the future. Unfortunately, many taxpayers and most politicians are totally illiterate when it comes to the subject of warfare. (Judging from the dismal results in the last ten years, a similar conclusion might to drawn concerning the U.S. officer corps.) In an attempt to fill this critical knowledge void and perhaps raise the level...

The evolution of geopolitics is cyclical. Powers rise, fall and shift. Changes occur in every generation in an unending ballet. However, the period between 1989 and 1991 was unique in that a long cycle of human history spanning hundreds of years ended, and with it a shorter cycle also came to a close. The world is still reverberating from the events of that period. On Dec. 25, 1991, an epoch ended. On that day the Soviet Union collapsed, and for the first time in almost 500 years no European power was a global power, meaning no European state integrated economic,...

Will North Korea ever open up? Not if China has a say. And China does have a say. A big say. China is North Korea’s best friend in the world – a friendship that was cemented with blood when Chairman Mao sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to their deaths in North Korea in 1950. Back then it was all about showing the world that a young People’s Republic of China could throw her weight around in Asia. It was also about doing the bidding of Stalin – the man who created the Korean war and played his two biggest...

The Emperors’ ClothesCyril AlmeidaMay 6, 2011 PAKISTAN this week has been confronted with a deeply unsettling question. Could the self-appointed custodians of the national interest themselves be the greatest threat to national security? There is no joy in asking this. Pakistan exists in a tough neighbourhood. A strong and vibrant army is necessary and desirable. But as the initial shock and disbelief wears off, there is a deep, deep sense of unease here. Did they know he was here? Surely, they knew he was here? Nobody has come out and said it openly yet. It’s too early, the story still...

The nation of Israel accounts for only 1/10000 of the earth’s land mass. It could fit inside the borders of Texas 33 times. Svalbard and Tokelau are bigger. (Who? Exactly.) Yet one-third of the UN's resolutions focus on Israel. Why is this microscopic country the ongoing focus of world politics? The next world war (inching inexorably closer) would seemingly hinge on nothing more than the validity of this tiny country's existence. Amazingly, the words of Jewish prophets --writing more than 2500 years ago from an Israel that was a scrappy, backwater upstart in comparison to the grandeur of the successive...

68 Dead in Karachi, Pakistan Political Killing Spree Russia, Venezuela Sing Nuclear Power Station Deal Washington Eyes Billions in India Deals Netherlands Antilles Ceases to Exist Iran Lashes Out at BP for Refusing to Refuel Commercial Jets Tajikistan Attempts to Buy Russian Help over Uzbek Water Dispute -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 68 Dead in Karachi, Pakistan Political Killing Spree Violence began over the weekend in Karachi, Pakistan, by Tuesday the death toll had risen to 68, according to Pakistani media reports. On Tuesday, at least 10 people were killed and more than a dozen others injured by gunmen on motorbikes who stormed the...