Author: victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Transatlantic Relationship

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Strategika

by Erik Jones
Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Image credit: Poster Collection, INT 280, Hoover Institution Archives.

As candidate, Donald Trump made a number of comments about the utility of the North Atlantic Alliance and about the virtues of European integration that left many in the establishment scratching their heads. When he was elected President of the United States, Trump did very little to soften his tone. On the contrary, the Trump White House floated the names of potential ambassadorial appointments who talked about the transatlantic relationship and the European Union in even more disparaging tones. Of course, this could all be marked down as campaign bluster and the hiccups that come with any transition into office. Other more seasoned politicians and diplomats have challenged Europe to do more for NATO, and many have expressed exasperation with the transatlantic partnership. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland are two obvious examples, but the list is a long one. Nevertheless, the positions taken by Trump with respect to Europe both as candidate and as President are unusual enough to warrant putting them into context.

Most scholars who look at the transatlantic relationship from the U.S. perspective start with two commitments:

  • The transatlantic partnership benefits the United States; and,
  • A united Europe offers greater advantages for the United States than a divided or fractious Europe does.

The arguments to support the benefits of transatlantic partnership touch on economics, diplomacy, and security.

  • The European Economic Area is the world’s largest marketplace; U.S. multinationals have a huge and very profitable presence in that market; and European multinationals invest heavily in the United States (and so create significant U.S. employment).
  • In diplomatic terms, European societies are at roughly the same level of development as the United States; Europeans and Americans hold similar values and priorities; and European diplomats are available to support a wide range of U.S. initiatives or even to take the lead where a high-profile U.S. diplomatic presence would be counter-productive.
  • Finally, European countries have significant potential to contribute to joint interventions and peace-keeping operations; they have infrastructure and airspace close to areas where the U.S. has vital security interests; and they are actively involved in areas of the world where the U.S. would not want to play the leading role in security provision and where it would be against U.S. interests for the security environment to deteriorate.

To read more: http://www.hoover.org/research/us-foreign-policy-and-transatlantic-relationship

The Architecture of Regime Change

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by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review

The ‘Resistance’ is using any and all means — lies, leaks, lawbreaking, and violence — to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

The problem with the election of President Donald J. Trump was not just that he presented a roadblock to an ongoing progressive revolution. Instead, unlike recent Republican presidential nominees, he was indifferent to the cultural and political restraints on conservative pushback — ironic given how checkered Trump’s own prior conservative credentials are. Trump brawled in a way McCain or Romney did not. He certainly did not prefer losing nobly to winning ugly. Continue reading “The Architecture of Regime Change” →

Can a Divided America Survive?

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By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review 

History has not been very kind to countries that enter a state of multicultural chaos.

The United States is currently the world’s oldest democracy.

But America is no more immune from collapse than were some of history’s most stable and impressive consensual governments. Fifth-century Athens, Republican Rome, Renaissance Florence and Venice, and many of the elected governments of early 20th-century Western European states eventually destroyed themselves, went bankrupt, or were overrun by invaders. Continue reading “Can a Divided America Survive?” →

The Endless Ironies of Donald J. Trump

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By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review

Pandemonium can be a revivifying purgative.

Here are the ironies of Donald Trump as president.

1) For the Left (both Political and Media)

The Left was mostly untroubled for eight years about the often unconstitutional abuses of Barack Obama — given that they saw their shared noble aims as justifying almost any means necessary to achieve them. Continue reading “The Endless Ironies of Donald J. Trump” →

Mr. Nunes Went to Washington

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By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review

Devin Nunes is subpoenaing former Obama administration officials who may have played a role in inappropriate monitoring of the Trump transition team.

Representative Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), the now-controversial chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is a bit different from what Washington expects in its politicians.

He grew up in the agricultural cornucopia of the Central Valley of California — fruits, vegetables, beef, dairy products, and fibers — the concrete expression of a myriad of hard-working ethnic groups. Their diverse ancestors fled poverty and occasional horrors in Armenia, Basque Country, Greece, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, the Punjab, Southeast Asia, and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.

Continue reading “Mr. Nunes Went to Washington” →

Remembering D-Day

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By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review’s “The Corner”

D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion in history since King Xerxes’ 480 BC combined sea and land descent into Greece. The Americans, especially General George Marshall, had wanted to invade France as early as spring 1943, still confident from their World War I experience that they could land easily in France and within a year push back the German army to end the war. The British and their Dominions, mindful of disasters from the Somme to Dunkirk and Dieppe, were reluctant to land in France even in 1944. A good compromise was June 1944, when air and naval supremacy over and off the coast of France was achieved, sufficient landing craft were available, the Allies had learned a great deal about amphibious operations from North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and the Pacific, British and American strategic bombing was at last starting to pay off, and the huge Red Army had destroyed about 100 German divisions in the East.

Continue reading “Remembering D-Day” →

It’s the Hypocrisy, Stupid

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by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review

Progressives go the full Jimmy Swaggart.

Some concerned Democrats are worried that their party may have lost the key blue-wall states because of its elitism, manifested as disdain for Americans between the coasts.

Perhaps emblematic of their worry is the strange metamorphosis of Hillary Clinton’s two presidential campaigns. In 2008, as Bill Clinton 2.0, she drank boilermakers, bragged about bowling and shooting, boasted about her resonance with the “white” working class, and clobbered Obama on his Pennsylvania clingers speech.

Continue reading “It’s the Hypocrisy, Stupid” →

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06/06/17

From an Angry Reader:

Dear Mr Hanson

I am an independent who voted for John McCain as a write in

 Your op ed entitled Regime Change by Any Other Name is disappointing.

 POTUS has been involved in more demonstrable falsehoods than any President since Nixon

 He undermines the warnings that President Regan gave us on Russia

 How dare you compare him to Reagan and his foreign policy, Trump is a clueless neophyte.

Continue reading →

victorhanson

06/05/17

From an Angry Reader:

From: Goofomatic

 Dear Sir,

 You may be a “classicist” and historian but you are clearly not a logician. Your reductive, simplistic polarizing nonsense may appeal to those disaffected and disenchanted by change but to others, like me, it reeks of divisive, defeatist drivel. Globalization is merely the hobgoblin you need in order to justify your rambling lament for “the good old days”. I have read numerous op-ed pieces written by you and they are consistent in their litany on complaints and completely devoid of proposed solutions, or even ideas for improving whatever you’re complaining about. Continue reading →

Trump… Our Claudius

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By Victor Davis Hanson
Defining Ideas

The Roman Emperor Claudius, who reigned from 41 to 54 AD, was never supposed to be emperor. He came to office at age 50, an old man in Roman times. Claudius succeeded the charismatic, youthful heartthrob Caligula—son of the beloved Germanicus and the “little boot” who turned out to be a narcissist monster before being assassinated in office.

Claudius was an unusual emperor, the first to be born outside Italy, in Roman Gaul. Under the Augustan Principate, new Caesars—who claimed direct lineage from the “divine” Augustus—were usually rubber-stamped by the toadyish Senate. However, the outsider Claudius (who had no political training and was prevented by his uncle Tiberius from entering the cursus honorum), was brought into power by the Roman Praetorian Guard, who wanted a change from the status quo apparat of the Augustan dynasty. Continue reading “Trump… Our Claudius” →