Geopolitics
Russia: Weaker than What?
VDH commentary on the ‘CAN OR SHOULD THE WEST TRY TO STOP VLADIMIR PUTIN’S ATTEMPTS TO REABSORB PORTIONS OF THE OLD SOVIET UNION?’ issue 13 of Strategika by Victor Davis Hanson // Strategika Our elites often diagnose Vladimir Putin as acting from “weakness” in his many aggressions. A list of Russia’s symptoms of feebleness follows: demographic crises, …
Tweets Won’t Stop Modern Barbarians
Boko Haram and the Sultan of Brunei couldn’t care less about Western outrage. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Nigeria’s homegrown, al-Qaeda linked militant group, Boko Haram, brags openly that it recently kidnapped about 300 young Nigerian girls. It boasts that it will sell them into sexual slavery. Those terrorists have a long and …
Lessons Learned from the ‘Brave German Woman’
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com // CBN News Context: On November 10, 2013, a Muslim imam was invited to give the Islamic call to prayer inside the Memorial Church of the Reformation in the city of Speyer, Germany—a church dedicated to honoring Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.Several are the important lessons learned from last year’s “Brave …
Neglected Prophet: J.B. Kelly
by Bruce S. Thornton // Front Page Magazine The received wisdom and unexamined assumptions underlying the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts to forge peace between Israel and her enemies are as predictable as the ignominious collapse of this latest attempt. We are now well into the seventh decade of this false knowledge and the spurious narrative dominating …
What Drives Vladimir Putin?
Aggressors often attack weaker neighbors to restore a sense of pride. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a disaster of a declining population, corruption, authoritarianism, a warped economy, and a high rate of alcoholism. Why, then, would Putin want to ruin additional territory in Crimea and Ukraine the way …
America’s New Anti-Strategy
Our allies and our enemies have seriously recalculated where the U.S. stands. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online It was not difficult to define American geopolitical strategy over the seven decades following World War II — at least until 2009. It was largely bipartisan advocacy, most ambitiously, for nations to have the freedom of …
Of Pre- and Postmodern Poseurs
Obama’s postmodernism has met its match in premodern Putin. by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Vladimir Putin thinks he has a winning formula to restore the global clout of the old Soviet Union. Contemporary Russia is a chaotic, shrinking, and petrodollar-fed kleptocracy. It certainly lacks the population, the vast resources, and territory of its former …
The Hitler Model
Why do weak nations like Russia provoke stronger ones like the United States? by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas An ascendant Vladimir Putin is dismantling the Ukraine and absorbing its eastern territory in the Crimea. President Obama is fighting back against critics that his administration serially projected weakness, and thereby lost the ability to deter …
Western Arrogance and Decline
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine For three centuries the West built up enormous economic, cultural, and military capital that dwarfs and dominates that of the rest of the world. Other countries may hate and resent Europe and the United States, but they still have to imitate, adapt, or steal the technology, financial systems, and …