Sacrificing the Military to Entitlements

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine 

Vladimir Putin, playing geopolitical chess while our president plays tiddlywinks, has effectively taken over Crimea. Armed men, looking suspiciously like Russian military personnel, have seized both airports and established border checkpoints decorated with Kalashnikovs and Russian flags. This comes after other armed men seized two government buildings and raised Russian flags, as the legislature appointed a pro-Russian regional

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, center, is escorted by U.S. Air Force Gen. Jack Weinstein after arriving at the missile alert facility and launch control center at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo., Jan. 9, 2014. Hagel was on a two-day trip to visit commands in the western United States.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, center, is escorted by U.S. Air Force Gen. Jack Weinstein 

leader. Meanwhile Russian military forces are gathering on the border, with Russia’s parliament unanimously voting to approve deploying troops in Ukraine.

This is just Putin’s latest revanchist expansion of Russian power throughout the region. He’s been at this for a while. Remember that during the Bush administration he stole chunks of Moldova and Georgia, using the same argument of ethnic self-determination that served Hitler so well in 1938, when he made the Sudeten Germans the pretext for gobbling up Czechoslovakia. Remember when in 2005 Putin said that after the collapse of the Soviet Union––the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, as he put it–– “tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory”? And just as England and France did nothing except talk about Hitler’s aggression, so too the West has blustered Continue reading “Sacrificing the Military to Entitlements”

Defense Spending Is a ‘Shovel Ready’ Investment

by Victor Davis Hanson

Tribune Media Services

President Obama has just ordered massive cutbacks in defense spending, eventually to total some $500 billion. There is plenty of fat in a Pentagon budget that grew after 9/11, but such slashing goes way too far. Continue reading “Defense Spending Is a ‘Shovel Ready’ Investment”

Cutting the Military Is a Bad Idea

by Victor Davis Hanson

Ricochet.com

After World War II, Harry Truman and Louis Johnson wanted to cut the Marine Corps; by winter 1950 what was left of it almost single-handedly saved the reputation of the collapsing US military in Korea. Continue reading “Cutting the Military Is a Bad Idea”

Diplomacy Carterizes

by Victor Davis Hanson

NRO’s The Corner

Reset/Outreach R.I.P

It is not surprising how little foreign policy comes up in the debates, given the sorry state of the economy. Continue reading “Diplomacy Carterizes”

Rumsfeld’s Rebuttal

by Victor Davis Hanson

City Journal

A review of Known and Unknown: A Memoir by Donald Rumsfeld (Sentinel, 832 pp.) Continue reading “Rumsfeld’s Rebuttal”