by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review We are in the middle, not at the end, of a long North Korean crisis. No one really knows all that much about North Korea’s nuclear or conventional military capability or its strategic agenda. Are its nuclear missiles reliably lethal, are they as long-ranged and accurate as […]
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Far from being inevitable, World War II resulted from the Allies’ failure to muster their combined resources and power in the service of deterring Hitler. Editor’s Note: The following is the fourth and final installment in a series of excerpts adapted from Victor Davis Hanson’s new book The
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Hitler went to war without an accurate conception of the Allies’ strength. The Allies did the same without an accurate conception of Hitler’s ambition. Unprecedented bloodshed ensued. Editor’s Note: The following is the third in a series of excerpts adapted from Victor Davis Hanson’s new book The Second
The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Recently there have been a number of quite different critiques from all political sides of Trump’s generals (Kelly/McMaster/Mattis), and also from a variety of angles (too narrow experience, an unhealthy overdose of military thinking, a “sellout” for working for the likes of
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Hitler and his Axis cohorts couldn’t match their enemies’ resources to begin with. That they learned all the wrong lessons from military history while the Allies learned all the right ones doomed them. Editor’s Note: The following is the second in a series of excerpts adapted from
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review History shows that a lack of deterrence, not loose rhetoric, spurs aggression. As tensions mount with North Korea, fears arise that President Trump’s tit-for-tat bellicose rhetoric with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un might lead to miscalculations — and thus an accidental war that could have been prevented.
by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas America’s great advantage when it entered world affairs after the Civil War was that its distance from Europe and Asia ensured that it was virtually immune from large sea-borne invasions. The Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans proved far better barriers than even the forests and mountain ranges of
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review Most Americans recoil from the statue-smashers and name-changers. ‘The Bard,” William Shakespeare, had a healthy distrust of the sort of mob hysteria typified by our current epidemics of statue-busting and name-changing. In Shakespeare’s tragedy Julius Caesar — a story adopted from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives — a frenzied Roman mob,
The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Kim Jong-un has accomplished something that neither his grandfather nor father pulled off during the last 70 years: bringing an existential threat to the shores of the United States. North Korea’s handful of missiles that are soon to be pointed our way
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review Fiery and unpredictable rhetoric can be a powerful strategic tool, but only if it’s not habitual. Occasionally insanity, real or feigned, has its political advantages —largely because of its ancillary traits of unpredictability and an aura of immunity from appeals to reason, sobriety, and moderation. Rogues often try to