Free Republic

Fifty years ago, one American faced Independence Day having just lost much of his personal freedom. Dwight Elliot Stone, the U.S. military’s last draftee, was inducted into the United States Army on June 30, 1973. Private Stone served not in Vietnam but in the safer yet equally humid swamps of Fort Polk, Louisiana. His 17 months in uniform brought down the curtain on the draft. Stone was the last of more than 17 million men conscripted into the U.S. military. Those who joined the American military in July of 1973, and in the five decades since, have been part of...

Qassem Soleimani is first senior official to reveal Tehran’s ambitions in Hashemite kingdom. A top commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said this weekend he believed Tehran had the ability to control events in Jordan, as it does in Iraq and Lebanon. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the elite Quds force — the foreign wing of the Revolutionary Guards — was addressing a youth conference in Tehran. His remarks were the first time a senior Iranian official has openly discussed Iranian ambitions in Jordan.

The moment of truth seems to be coming closer by the minute. China will become the world's largest economy by 2050, according to HSBC. No, it's 2040, say analysts at Deutsche Bank. Try 2030, the World Bank tells us. Goldman Sachs points to 2020 as the year of reckoning, and the IMF declared several weeks ago that China's economy will push past America's in 2016. There's probably someone out there who thinks China became the world's largest economy five years ago. In an interview with WSJ's John Bussey, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer insists that for China to become the...

America is the richest country and the most sophisticated high-tech military power in the world, and is spending more on defence in real terms than at any time since the end of the second world war. Yet it is being exhausted by insurgents armed with AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and improvised bombs. With strong pressure on President George Bush to withdraw from Iraq, jihadist militants scent a victory as momentous as the eviction of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989—a defeat that helped to dissolve the Soviet empire. True, America has recovered from previous disasters, not least the Vietnam...

POLITICS Beyond Hegemony Related Resources On NationalJournal.com Poll Track: 2006 Polling On Foreign Affairs · Well-Read Wonk: "The Case For Goliath" (10/5/06) · National Journal: "Reunited Nations?" (3/12/05) · Off Message: "The China Canard" (7/1/05) · Social Studies: "Europe is the Next Rival Superpower. But Then, So Was Japan." (1/28/05) · Well-Read Wonk: "After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order" (4/15/04) · National Journal: "The New New World Order" (11/1/02) Additional Resources On The Web Robert Kaplan, "How We Would Fight China" (Atlantic Monthly, 6/05) · Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton Discusses Internationalism (12/15/03) · Then-Under Secretary of...

Chinese Naval Buildup Surprising, But Not Yet Alarming, Says AdmiralDefense Daily, June 8, 2006 The pace of Chinese naval expansion is faster than expected, but is not alarming yet, although Chinese intentions are not evident, a U.S. Navy admiral said last week. "Clearly...we kind of continue to be surprised by the growth of the Chinese Navy," said Rear Adm. Joseph Walsh, director of Submarine Warfare (N77), on June 1 during a speech on the future of the U.S. Navy at a symposium in Washington, D.C. "That is clearly something we watch." Walsh said the Chinese are focusing on fielding surface...

This week, President Bush visits the People's Republic of China. As with all such high-level diplomatic missions, he will doubtless be tempted to accentuate the few, putatively positive aspects of the Sino-American relationship, and gloss over the increasing number of negative ones. In that happens, history may record this as a moment when the failure to speak truth to the Chinese communists condemned the two nations to conflict later.

Page 6 of 7 Realist View of China Let's look at another problem, and that is future relations with the People's Republic of China. This is an area that you've written about, and your theory may be applicable there. How should we look at China as it emerges as a potential hegemon in the Asian theater?The most important question about China is whether or not it will continue to grow economically over the next twenty or thirty years, the way it's grown over the past twenty years. It's almost impossible to say whether or not China is going to look...

Middle East BEIJING - "Hegemonism" has recently become a derogatory byword of US foreign policy. Unilaterally, driven by the selfish pursuit of its national interests, the US is said to be willing to step on anybody's head to keep and protect its primacy in the world. But even if this blunt analysis is accurate, this in the end amounts to a normal imperial policy. Empires are made of blood. The cross, which now symbolizes Christianity and its ideals of mercy and tolerance, was for centuries the sign of power and of the most atrocious death the Roman Empire could devise....