Victor Davis Hanson Historian’s Corner The California governor, on the scent of a progressive effort to ensure Joe Biden does not run in 2024, is touring the country. Oddly, he talks of a “free” California, as he tries to contrast his record with the terms of Texas governor Greg Abbott and Gov. Ron DeSantis of […]
Victor Davis Hanson An Outsider’s Superficial Impressions For a supposed global recession, COVID pandemic, and war in Ukraine, Israel seems booming. Traffic is snarled. Tourist spots are full. Prices are high. People are upbeat. We talk about the ex-nihilo boom of modern China from a Maoist hellhole to a gleaming autocracy. But that was material
Victor Davis HansonHistorian’s Corner In these three dark years, the military, especially the retired generals and admirals, soon were politicized as well. Suddenly it became normal to smear the commander in chief as Nazi-like, a Mussolini, or similar to the architects of Birkenau. It was as if the Uniform Code of Military Justice went the
Victor Davis HansonHistorian’s Corner One way of looking at America since January 2020 is to imagine that we were hit by some sort of self-created neutron bomb: the infrastructure remains, but the people as we knew them are gone. The COVID-19 plague killed hundreds of thousands, sickened millions, and left hundreds of thousands with bizarre
Victor Davis Hanson Historian’s Corner 3) Is it really so wise that Ukraine, with the help of U.S. and NATO intelligence, is beginning to conduct operations inside Russia to destroy oil and natural gas depots among other targets? In a logical world, of course, it is. Aggressors deserve their just desserts. But a war of
Victor Davis Hanson Historian’s Corner On the battlefields of Ukraine, the Ukrainians are getting stronger and the Russians weaker, despite their great disparities in population, GDP, and financial clout. That is both a good and an increasingly more dangerous thing. Russia is exhausting its munitions supplies faster than they can be resupplied. Ukraine is drawing
Victor Davis Hanson What’s Next? For the all the fog of war, the back-and-forth Biden/Putin boasting and name-calling, and the Russian goblin-talk of using nukes, we are beginning to see the outlines of a cease-fire. Before the invasion, Ukraine had mostly lost its Russian-majority borderlands and much of Crimea to Putin. After the invasion, Russia
Victor Davis Hanson Why and how did Putin Miscalculate? So when Putin entered central Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he had assumed that the United States would only mildly protest. In a sense, he was right. Biden quickly withdrew American embassy personnel. He made it known to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the U.S. could
Victor Davis Hanson Why Did Putin Invade Now? (Continued) We have seen why Putin did not trust Trump to be silent if he invaded Ukraine. Here are ten reasons why Biden assured him of a flabby response to an envisioned invasion. Biden appeared doddering, non compos mentis, and mentally enfeebled. His diminished state suggested (to
Victor Davis Hanson Why Did Putin Invade Now? Wars usually start with the loss of deterrence. So legitimate questions are raised why Putin chose to invade Ukraine in February 2022, and not say during 2017, 2018, 2019, or 2020? After all, these were all periods when Donald Trump was under attack by a special prosecutor,