Russia
Our Spanish Civil War?
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness From 1936 to 1939, the civil war in Spain became a European laboratory of new tactics, strategies, logistics, wartime morality, and weapons. Right-wing nationalists under General Francisco Franco finally defeated loyal supporters of an evolutionary socialist republic—but only after much of the Western world had variously weighed in. The cost …
Federal Rats Are Fleeing the Sinking Collusion Ship
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness The entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative was always implausible. One, the Washington swamp of fixers such as Paul Manafort and John and Tony Podesta was mostly bipartisan and predated Trump. Two, the Trump administration’s Russia policies were far tougher on Vladimir Putin than were those of Barack Obama. Trump confronted …
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Our Russia Experts
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online – The Corner One of the more depressing things in watching Vladimir Putin is the manner in which Russian “experts” at home have for years now all but cheered him on. In the latest Nation magazine, Stephen Cohen has written one of the most embarrassing apologies of Putin’s imperialistic …
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, …
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 …
Obama’s Enlightened Foolery
He views Putin, the 21st century, and himself as in a fun-house mirror. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online President Obama talks about Vladimir Putin as if he were a Pennsylvania “clinger” who operates on outdated principles, who is driven by fear, and whom unfortunately the post-Enlightenment mind of even Barack Obama cannot always …
Loud + Weak = War
China and Russia are no more impressed with empty bluster today than Japan was in 1941. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The Roosevelt administration once talked loudly of pivoting to Asia to thwart a rising Japan. As a token of its seriousness, in May 1940 it moved the home port of the Seventh …
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 Incoherence of Western Foreign Policy
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The crisis in Ukraine is just the latest in a long series of foreign policy failures brought about by the incoherence in our thinking about foreign relations. On the one hand, we have championed ethnic-national self-determination as the highest international good, while on the other we have assumed that …