Learning From Failure: Formulating A New U.S. Middle East Foreign Policy Please read a new essay by my colleague, Edward N. Luttwak in Strategika. A commentator recently complained that President Trump does not have a “Syria strategy” and therefore awful Assad is winning. Countless Op-Ed writers before him likewise commented that President X “did not have […]
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The bluest state’s public officials have been warning for weeks that California will be overwhelmed, given federal-government unpreparedness and the purported inefficacy of the local, state, and federal governments. California governor Gavin Newsom has assured his state that over half of the population — or, in his words, 56 percent
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness President Donald Trump has courted endless controversies for promoting nonconventional policies and entertaining contrarian views. From the outset, he oddly seemed to have believed that having navigated the jungles of the Manhattan real estate market—crooked politicians, mercurial unions, neighborhood social activists, the green lobby, leery banks, cutthroat rivals—better prepared
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The ancient Greeks believed that true leadership in a crisis came down to what they called pronoia — the Greek word for “strategic foresight.” Some statesmen, such as Pericles and Themistocles, had it. Most others, such as the often brilliant and charismatic but impulsive Alcibiades, usually did not. “Foresight” in crisis means
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness In all the gloom and doom, and media-driven nihilism, there is actually an array of good news. As many predicted, as testing spreads, and we get a better idea of the actual number and nature of cases, the death rate from coronavirus slowly but also seems to steadily decline.
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review More data is critical in understanding the virus in general and in particular its transmission in particular countries. Anyone who looks at rates of morality and lethality of influenza and related pneumonia, especially in the elderly and infirm, can be shocked at the wide variances between particular countries. 52 Reliable data alone
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In director Frank Capra’s 1946 holiday classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life, an initial bank panic sweeps the small town of Bedford Falls. Small passbook account holders rush to George Bailey’s family-owned Bailey Building and Loan to demand the right to cash out all of their deposits — a sudden run
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review There are a lot of known unknowns and paradoxes in these times of uncertainty. Here are a few. 1) Trump is criticized as both “racist” and “xenophobic” in his condemnations of the “Chinese” virus, while he’s also criticized for “appeasing” President Xi when he makes friendly references to their
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Editor’s Note: The following is the second excerpt from the revised and updated edition of The Case for Trump, out Tuesday from Basic Books. You can read the first excerpt here. So what had happened to the Democrats’ predicted blue wave that supposedly would rack up huge House majorities and win back the
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review For most of early 2019, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden — the declared custodian of liberalism who would continue the Obama glory years — seemed unstoppable. He led all other rivals for months. Biden seemed above the fray. Many Democrats saw the pre-debate and pre-election race for the nomination as