Free Republic

Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday called on Ukraine to accept an American peace proposal that closely aligns with longstanding Russian goals, including a “freeze” of territorial lines in the three-year war, acceptance of the annexation of Crimea by Russia and a prohibition on Ukraine becoming part of the NATO alliance.It was the first time a U.S. official had publicly laid out a plan to end the war that favors Russia in such stark terms.A peace plan that leaves Russian forces deep inside eastern Ukraine would be welcome news in Moscow. President Vladimir V. Putin has said for almost year...

Britain has watched President Trump’s tariffs with a mix of shock, fascination and queasy recognition. The country, after all, embarked on a similar experiment in economic isolationism when it voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Nearly nine years after the Brexit referendum, it is still reckoning with the costs.The lessons of that experience are suddenly relevant again as Mr. Trump uses a similar playbook to erect walls around the United States. Critics once described Brexit as the greatest act of economic self-harm by a Western country in the post-World War II era. It may now be getting a...

Free trade has been so beneficial to so many countries that the world may find a way to live without its biggest player.President Trump’s self-proclaimed “liberation day,” in which he announced across-the-board tariffs on the United States’ trading partners, carries an echo of another moment when an advanced Western economy threw up walls around itself.Like Brexit, Britain’s fateful vote nearly nine years ago to leave the European Union, Mr. Trump’s tariffs struck a hammer blow at the established order. He is pulling the United States out of the global economy much as Britain withdrew from a continentwide trading bloc, in...

LONDON — Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor of the Exchequer, was poised to become Britain’s next prime minister as soon as Monday, after Boris Johnson pulled out of the race to succeed Liz Truss on Sunday evening. If Mr. Sunak wins, he will become the first person of color, the first person of Indian heritage and the first person of Hindu faith to lead Britain. Mr. Sunak, who lost a leadership contest to Ms. Truss this summer, is the clear front-runner, with the public backing of 192 Conservative lawmakers as of Monday afternoon, according to the BBC. That number represents...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain spoke with President Trump by phone on Tuesday, and to judge by the dueling summaries of the call provided by the White House and 10 Downing Street, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Trump were involved in two completely different conversations.....Such divergent accounts of a leader-to-leader call are not unheard-of, but the timing of this one, on the eve of Britain’s general election campaign, was telling. It shows just how much of a liability Mr. Trump has become for Mr. Johnson. Once, the prime minister talked up the benefits of having a close friend in the...

WASHINGTON — President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis. Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.

There may have been a real White House briefing with real White House officials, but The New York Times couldn't be trusted to accurately summarize what the White House official said. And it wasn't on a minor point. On the path to the June 12 summit with North Korea, journalists claimed President Donald Trump would not be willing to walk away from the negotiating table because he was too desperate for a win. The Washington Post’s David Nakamura wrote that “critics fear that a president determined to declare victory where his predecessors failed will allow his desire for a legacy-making...

WASHINGTON — The White House sent out a message aimed at mollifying Turkey’s president on Tuesday, suggesting that the United States was easing off its support for the Syrian Kurds. That message was quickly contradicted by the Pentagon, which said it would continue to stand by the Kurds, even as Turkey invaded their stronghold in northwestern Syria. The conflicting statements appeared to reflect an effort by the administration to balance competing pressures. Turkey, which has been furious over American support for the Kurds, is a NATO ally, while the Kurds have been critical American partners in the war against the...

President Trump has transformed the world’s view of the United States from an anchor of the international order into something more inward-looking and unpredictable. WASHINGTON — President Trump was already revved up when he emerged from his limousine to visit NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels last May. He had just met France’s recently elected president, Emmanuel Macron, whom he greeted with a white-knuckle handshake and a complaint that Europeans do not pay their fair share of the alliance’s costs. On the long walk through the NATO building’s cathedral-like atrium, the president’s anger grew. He looked at the polished floors and...

John Kerry is going to have a rough tenure as secretary of state. But let’s face it, whoever came after Hillary Clinton was going to have to deal with a foreign affairs press corps that has been sleeping for four years. From the moment Hillary entered Foggy Bottom, political reporters have treated their beloved secretary of state with kid gloves. Watching media outlets now play catch-up on just how dangerous the world really is makes you feel a bit sorry for Kerry. Suddenly the State Department reporters have realized that Iran is about to get a nuclear weapon, GITMO is...