Free Republic

During the 1930s, the combination of the Great Depression and the memory of tragic losses in World War I contributed to pushing American public opinion and policy toward isolationism. Isolationists advocated non-involvement in European and Asian conflicts and non-entanglement in international politics. Although the United States took measures to avoid political and military conflicts across the oceans, it continued to expand economically and protect its interests in Latin America. The leaders of the isolationist movement drew upon history to bolster their position. In his Farewell Address, President George Washington had advocated non-involvement in European wars and politics. For much of...

America’s antagonists may not be formally allied, but they are aligned in a critical area — the Eurasian heartland — and in critical ways. An overstretched US cannot react to one problem without considering the impact on its ability to deal with others. The demands on American statecraft will be severe, as Washington confronts an array of problems it can’t easily walk away from and certainly can’t afford to see escalate all at once. In some ways, America’s predicament resembles the period before World War II. Leave aside that no US rival has committed aggression or atrocity on the scale...

One of Beijing's enduring hobbies is accusing Washington of violating or abusing international law. This selective outrage is justifiably ignored, given China’s unwillingness to abide by international law and disregard for U.N. arbitration concerning demarcation in the South China Sea. “International law with Chinese characteristics” was easily mocked and ignored when American deterrence and international safeguards stymied Beijing’s ambitions. Unfortunately, that security architecture is unraveling. In 2009, China began to make expansive claims vis-à-vis the South China Sea when it unveiled its infamous nine-dash line, which claimed vast swathes of maritime territory. In 2016, the U.N.-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration...

Key Takeaways: Iran in the Region: An Israeli airstrike targeted a building directly adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, killing senior IRGC Quds Force commander Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi and some of his top subordinates. Israel targeted Zahedi as part of an air campaign that it has conducted to disrupt the Iranian transfer of military materiel to its proxies and partners in Lebanon and Syria. Iran and its Axis of Resistance may attack US and/or Israeli targets in the coming weeks in retaliation for the killing of Zahedi. Northern Gaza Strip: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) concluded a...

Iran is seeking to create “strategic depth” in the Mediterranean Sea, Iranian military adviser Yahya Safavi said in a recent speech. This appears to admit Tehran’s larger ambitions in the region.Iran has already taken over swaths of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, using proxies, and it has operationalized the Houthis in Yemen to attack ships in the Red Sea. Tehran also backs Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. It now appears to have even larger ambitions.Safavi is a former commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He now works as a military adviser to the Iranian regime and has an academic role...

Last week, Joe Biden issued a schoolmarmish warning to Israel, which he has been browbeating for months to placate his party’s anti-Israel left and Muslim American voters in Michigan, a critical swing state. Speaking to the press, he threatened, “There’s got to be a ceasefire because Ramadan – if we get into circumstances where this continues to Ramadan, Israel and Jerusalem could be very, very dangerous.”This solicitude for Muslims’ sensitivity about their faith bespeaks the West’s long bad habit of caring more about Islam––the faith that conquered and occupied, and to this day still occupies, much of the Christian Roman...

Now it's time for our new feature, Loathe Island. It's a bit like Love Island except it's for people we hate and basically what you're going to do is banish them to an island where they all have to slither around together until they all die.

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has fired two ballistic missiles from launchers disguised as standard shipping containers that were hosted aboard one of its sea base-like vessels. This particular combination, which has not been seen to date, greatly expands the reach with which those weapons could be used to strike potential targets by surprise, especially given that shipping containers can be embarked on any vessel that has the space to accommodate them. The country's IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency reports that two "Fateh class" ballistic missiles were recently launched from Shahid Mahdavi, which the Iranian Navy took delivery of in...

War Cabinet minister Benny Gantz announced that Israel is preparing for an operation in the southern town of Rafah in Gaza after the civilians are evacuated from the area. His statement was made during a press briefing on Wednesday evening. Gantz, the head of the National Unity party, also claimed that unilateral international recognition of a Palestinian state, without bilateral agreements, is “a tailwind for terrorism.” “It would be a mistake to give such a tailwind to terrorism,” Gantz said. “Political arrangements must take place directly, otherwise they will not be sustainable. In any future situation, Israel will maintain its...

"The Middle East looks set for a path of escalation on multiple fronts as Israeli forces close in on what is left of southern Gaza, and as Yemen’s Houthi rebels launch their most damaging strike yet on a ship in the Red Sea.The crew of the British-owned, Belize-flagged bulk carrier MV Rubymar were forced to abandon ship in the Gulf of Aden on Monday, receiving help from a nearby merchant vessel and coalition warship to reach a nearby port after “two anti-ship ballistic missiles were launched from Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist-controlled areas of Yemen,” according to U.S. Central Command." (snip) Twenty-six...

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah threatened on Friday that his armed group possesses rockets capable of reaching “anywhere” in Israel as the IDF says that its forces drilled war scenarios on the northern front. “The Americans and Israelis should know that they are also facing a people in Palestine that will not back down, no matter how many victims there’ll be,” he told his supporters via video link at a memorial event commemorating his terrorist group’s “martyred commanders” who were killed in recent Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon. "Hezbollah possesses tremendous and precise missile capabilities that can reach anywhere from Kiryat...

Israel carried out covert attacks on two major gas pipelines inside Iran this week, two Western officials and a military strategist affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps told The New York Times on Friday. The attacks resulted in explosions that disrupted the flow of heat and cooking gas to provinces with millions of people, the report said. “The enemy’s plan was to completely disrupt the flow of gas in winter to several main cities and provinces in our country,” Iran’s Oil Minister, Javad Owji, told Iranian media on Friday. Owji, who had previously referred to the blasts as “sabotage and...

After months of fighting, Hamas had been forced to fall back to its stronghold in Rafah on the Egyptian border. And the pressure on Israel not to go into Rafah intensified. Not only AOC and Bernie Sanders, but Biden warned Israel not go in because of the “humanitarian impact”. Israel went in and brought out two hostages. After the previous hostage deal, Hamas supporters, including AOC, kept hammering home the claim that the only way to free the hostages is to cut a deal with Hamas. But cutting deals with terrorists just leads to more dead bodies and more hostages....

The Palestinian deceit: The true story after 75 years of unbelievable anti-Israeli fake news.One issue on which the historical assessment is almost unanimously in favour of the ‘Palestinian’ side is undoubtedly that of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The very few publications that offer a more cautious or at least neutral assessment of the Israeli camp come mainly from Jewish or Israeli authors. What was lacking was a counter-cultural and therefore courageous, well-documented, yet fluent and not infrequently ironic vade mecum on a very complex subject, written by someone who is not a party to the conflict. The reader will be surprised...

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that President Joe Biden’s military strikes to dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias only killed “some @#&$@##.” Graham said, “They have four oil refineries you can see from space. If you knocked one of them out, they would stop this. Our American troops are in harm’s way. If the goal is to deter Iran, you’re failing miserably. If the goal is to protect American troops, you’re not achieving your goal. If you’ve convinced Iran you don’t want a wider war, they believe...

Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army and Stalin’s archrival said words to the effect, “You may not be interested in war. But war is interested in you.” In 1940, Trotsky found war personally when he was assassinated in his well-guarded compound in Mexico City by one of Stalin’s people. Mexico for years was a playground for KGB and now FSB personnel, with the American Government essentially ceding Mexico to the foreign adventurism of Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea; a veritable Mos Eisley of international rogues. Currently, the ungoverned spaces of Mexico are the domain for Chinese overseers of...

Over the years, it has become de rigueur and increasingly predictable to state that “there is no military solution to the conflict” regarding Israel’s long-standing conflict with its enemies. Nonetheless, the Hamas massacre of October 7 has demonstrated that, regardless of the frequency of its usage, it is increasingly understood not to be true. Regarding Gaza, Israel has tried any number of other solutions, whether diplomacy during the Gaza-First phase of Oslo: autonomy, disengagement, and enfranchisement. None of them worked to end Hamas’s irredentist and extremist beliefs and goals. In fact, its leadership has gone on record claiming that it...

President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have not spoken in over a month, according to a new report, after a tense phone call ended with Biden hanging up abruptly on the Israeli premier. Four U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the issue told Axios this week that tensions are mounting between the Biden administration and the Prime Minister’s Office, leading to a break down between the president and prime minister. While the two spoke at regular intervals following the October 7th invasion of southwestern Israel, the Biden administration’s growing demands of Israel – including to scale down...

LONDON: Strategic deals launched by powers including Saudi Arabia could reshape a region simmering with tensions, an Israeli journalist on a panel at the World Economic Forum said on Friday. In the panel titled “Anticipating the Middle East in 2024,” experts and government officials discussed the turbulent regional situation, with the Gaza conflict, Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and potential Saudi normalization with Israel high on the agenda. “If the US wants to manage the (Gaza) conflict … it needs to embrace a pathway to two states,” said Jane Harman, chair of the US Commission on the National Defense Strategy. “I...

According to media reporting on documents leaked from the German Ministry of Defense, European leaders are preparing for a “hybrid” Russian attack in Eastern Europe. The first stage, dubbed “Alliance Defense 2025,” would start this February with Russia mobilizing an additional 200,000 soldiers. Fox News reported on Tuesday that classified German documents outlined how the militaries of several European countries are planning to prepare for an offensive by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The story was first reported in the BILD newspaper based on information obtained from the German Ministry of Defense. The “Alliance Defense 2024” could start in February as...