Free Republic

For a country constantly chest-thumping about the size of its economy, the United States is remarkably over-reliant on one form of "export" – war. For decades, the American-led political West used proxy wars to hurt its geopolitical adversaries. While most of these weren't a direct existential threat to US rivals and were relatively limited in scope, recent years brought a major shift to this strategic approach. Washington DC has become more bellicose than at any point in its history, aggressively attacking the very heartlands of its opponents. In the case of Russia and China, the only reason America isn't directly...

China’s satellite coverage in the Western Pacific has doubled since 2018, the Pentagon reported last week in its annual assessment of the Chinese military. That gives China the ability to detect American surface ships with an array of sensors that can guide its 2,000 land-based missiles to moving targets, including US aircraft carriers. The Defense Department’s November 29 report “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” reflects a grimly realistic rethinking of China’s military capacity in its home theater. China hawk Elbridge Colby, a prominent advocate of a Western Pacific military buildup to deny China access to...

Vice President Kamala Harris said during her first official visit to the Philippines on Monday the United States will honor a 1951 bilateral defense treaty and defend Filipino ships against Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. The issue is pertinent because the Philippines on Monday accused China of using force to retrieve debris from a rocket near the contested Spratly Islands.

- Ukraine said on Thursday it had received U.S. supplies of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), a powerful long-range weapon system that Kyiv hopes can help turn the tide on Russia's invasion. "Thank you to my U.S. colleague and friend Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for these powerful tools! Summer will be hot for Russian occupiers. And the last one for some of them," Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov tweeted of the HIMARS delivery. He did not say how say many of the systems had arrived. Ukraine says it needs the HIMARS systems to better match the range of Russian...