Free Republic

Donald Trump’s runaway success in the GOP primaries so far is setting off alarm bells among neoconservatives who are worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy that has dominated Republican thinking for decades. Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan — one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq War and an advocate for Syrian intervention — announced in the Washington Post last week that if Trump secures the nomination, “the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.” Max Boot, an unrepentant supporter of the Iraq War, wrote in the Weekly Standard that a “Trump presidency would...

The betting markets on the American primary elections show an 87% probability that Hillary Clinton will head the Democratic ticket and a 76% probability that Donald Trump will lead the Republicans. Between the two, Trump is the pro-Israel candidate. First, his daughter Ivanka is an observant Orthodox Jew after her conversion and marriage to Jared Kushner, the scion of a prominent family of Jewish philanthropists. Second, and most decisive, Trump feels no obligation to win favor among Muslims, proposing a temporary ban against any Muslim entering the United States. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, surrounded herself with advisers openly hostile to...

Writing in The Washington Post, foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan announced that he is through with the Republican Party. He has washed his hands of them. They got what they deserve, because they have created a "Frankenstein's monster, brought to life by the party, fed by the party and now made strong enough to destroy its maker." As a "former Republican" he is throwing his support to Hillary Clinton for both the Democratic nomination and then the presidency. His column is undoubtedly making waves inside the Beltway.For many years Kagan was a staple in the broad neo-conservative community. He was...

Here are five reasons Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should politely decline House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to address a joint session of Congress: ● It’s inappropriate. It doesn’t matter what good allies the United States and Israel are, and it doesn’t matter how bad relations may be between Netanyahu and President Obama. Allies don’t go big-footing around in each other’s politics. It also doesn’t matter how worthy the cause. In 1793, when Citizen Genêt traveled through the United States, drumming up support for revolutionary France (and overtly violating President George Washington’s policy of U.S. neutrality), he no doubt thought...

WASHINGTON -- Is it not a thing of wonderment that the two leading families of the Party of the Poor and Down-and-Out are ending the summer in Martha's Vineyard? Both the Obamas and the Clintons are renting spacious mansions, probably from Wall Streeters, on that enchanted isle. They're playing golf and tennis, and -- who knows -- croquet, just like the Rockefellers or Vanderbilts. Yet do not expect them to be dining together in the moonlight. In fact, relations between them have turned downright hostile. Hillary this week has made it all but final. She is a neoconservative, a genuine,...

Last Thursday, the United States Senate confirmed President Obama’s choice Victoria Nuland as chief envoy to Europe. This was done by a voice vote with no debate, one day after the one year anniversary of last year’s deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya. Victoria Nuland served as the State Department spokeswoman during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure, which included the Benghazi attack in which Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and former Navy Seals, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were all killed. ... Ms. Nuland had a direct hand in the changing of these talking points and has...

There is a great deal of ruin in a nation, and even more of it in the nation's publishing catalogue. Robert Kagan has noticed the resurgence of declinism; he doesn't care for it; and The World America Made is his response to it. For the record, I am not a declinist: I'm way beyond that, and am more of a collapsist, as may be adjudged from the title of my own contribution to the genre, After America, and even more from its subtitle, "Get Ready for Armageddon." As I'm always at pains to point out, an author doesn't get into...

Robert Kagan can’t understand why declinists, such as Fareed Zakaria and Francis Fukuyama, assume Barack Obama shares their pessimism about America. He writes of Obama: “His view of America’s future, at least as expressed in this campaign, has been appropriately optimistic, which is why he is doing well in the polls.” It’s an interesting point. But Obama’s message is only optimistic in that it takes for granted that the U.S. has already hit rock bottom. You can pick an Obama stump speech at random and find multiple references to America’s broken promises, failed ideals, dejected citizens, and disappointed friends. Obama’s...

Ideology matters again. The big development of recent years is the rise not only of great powers but also of the great-power autocracies of Russia and China. True realism about the international scene begins with understanding how this unanticipated shift will shape our world. Many believe that when Chinese and Russian leaders stopped believing in communism, they stopped believing in anything. They had become pragmatists, pursuing their own and their nation's interests. But Chinese and Russian rulers, like past rulers of autocracies, do have a set of beliefs that guide their domestic and foreign policies. They believe in the virtues...

I. In the early 1990s, optimism was understandable. The collapse of the communist empire and the apparent embrace of democracy by Russia seemed to augur a new era of global convergence. The great adversaries of the Cold War suddenly shared many common goals, including a desire for economic and political integration. Even after the political crackdown that began in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the disturbing signs of instability that appeared in Russia after 1993, most Americans and Europeans believed that China and Russia were on a path toward liberalism. Boris Yeltsin's Russia seemed committed to the liberal model of...

This is the aspect of China that does not seem to change, despite our liberal progressive conviction that it must. In the 1990s, China watchers insisted it was only a matter of time before China opened. It was precisely this current generation of technocrats, not schooled in Soviet-style communism, who were supposed to begin reforming the system. Even if they didn't want to reform, the requirement of a liberalizing economy would leave them no choice: The growing Chinese middle class would demand greater political power, or the demands of a globalized economy in the age of the Internet would force...

In the frenzied final week of the Iraq Study Group's deliberations, co-chairmen James Baker and Lee Hamilton took time out to pose for a photo spread for a fashion magazine, Men's Vogue. This might seem a dubious decision given the gravity of the moment and their self-appointed roles as the nation's saviors. The "wise men" who counseled Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam and the members of the Kissinger Commission who tried to reshape Ronald Reagan's Central American policies did not sit for Annie Leibovitz in the middle of their endeavors. Nor did they hire a mega-public relations firm to sell their...

Foreign policy realism is ascendant these days, we are told. This would be encouraging if true, because our foreign policy must indeed be realistic. But what passes for "realism" today has very little to do with reality. Indeed, if you look at some of the "realist" proposals on the table, "realism" has come to be a kind of code word for surrendering American interests and American allies, as well as American principles, in the Middle East. Thus, the "realists" advise us to seek Syria's help in Iraq even as the Syrian government engages in a concerted campaign of assassinating every...

Surrender as 'Realism' Retreat would win us no friends and lose us no adversaries. Foreign policy realism is ascendant these days, we are told. This would be encouraging if true, because our foreign policy must indeed be realistic. But what passes for "realism" today has very little to do with reality. Indeed, if you look at some of the "realist" proposals on the table, "realism" has come to be a kind of code word for surrendering American interests and American allies, as well as American principles, in the Middle East. Thus, the "realists" advise us to seek Syria's help in...

Serious scholars still debate whether the Civil War was necessary, never mind the more obvious "wars of choice" such as World War I, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, wars in Vietnam and Kosovo, and the Persian Gulf War. To a certain brand of American isolationist, even World War II was unnecessary and counterproductive. So there is nothing remarkable about polls showing Americans wondering whether the recent Iraq war was "worth it." It is a great American myth, voiced by John Kerry last year, that the nation goes to war only when there is no question...

"What kind of world order do we want?" asked Joschka Fischer, Germany's Foreign Minister, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. That this question remains on the minds of many Europeans is a telling sign of the differences that separate the two sides of the Atlantic - because most Americans have not pondered the question of world order since the war. They will have to. The great trans-Atlantic debate over Iraq was rooted in deep disagreement over world order. Yes, Americans and Europeans debated whether Saddam Hussein posed a serious threat and whether war was...

Vladimir Putin, the aspiring dictator of Russia, has forced President Bush to reveal how committed he really is to the cause of democracy around the world. Putin's decision on Monday to end the system of direct popular election of Russia's governors, and to have the Russian parliament elected on the basis of slates chosen by national party leaders he mostly controls, is an unambiguous step toward tyranny in Russia. It cannot be justified as part of the war on terrorism. Putin has had these plans ready for months. He is cynically using the horrific terrorist attack in Beslan as his...

One day, this Iraq War will be thought of as the Intellectuals' War. That is, it was a war conceived of by people who possessed more books than common sense, let alone actual military experience. Disregarding prudence, precedent and honesty, they went off - or, more precisely, sent others off - tilting at windmills in Iraq, chasing after illusions of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and false hope about Iraqi enthusiasm for Americanism, and hoping that reality would somehow catch up with their theory. The problem, of course, is that wars are more about bloodletting than book-learning. Tilting at...

If 2001, that annus horribilis, was the year of Western unity in the face of terror, then 2002 appeared to herald a schism between America and Europe. As Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace put it in a groundbreaking article for Policy Review, "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world," Kagan warned. The Europeans, it seems, are realizing Kant's fantasy world of Perpetual Peace, a place wherein international law, international conventions and international opinion settle disputes. Negotiation, persuasion...