Ukrainians, and many Europeans and Americans, are defining an envisioned Ukrainian victory as the complete expulsion of all Russians from its 2013 borders. Or, as a Ukrainian national security chief put it, the war ends with Ukrainian tanks in Red Square. But mysteries remain about such ambitious agendas. What would that goal entail? Giving Ukraine…

It's been two decades since, on March 19, 2003, United States forces invaded Iraq. President George W. Bush ordered the invasion to neutralize what he said was the threat of weapons of mass destruction posed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Except it turned out Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction. U.S. forces searched and searched and…

It's not exactly a sign of a healthy democratic discourse that it's virtually impossible to ask a critical question about the United States' role in the Ukraine-Russia conflict without being smeared as a Putin apologist or an "isolationist." We've been bombarded with bromides about a civilizational struggle that pits the forces of autocracy…

As the war in Ukraine begins its second year, a new Fox News poll shows Americans divided nearly down the middle over how much and how long the United States should support Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders.  The poll asked: "Do you think there should be a limited time frame for U.S. support of Ukraine in its fight against Russia…

The Ukraine mess is daily looking more like the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, a meat grinder that took 500,000 lives. That three-year conflict became a savage proxy war and prelude for the belligerents of World War II. The Ukraine battlefield is proving to be a similar laboratory of death. New lethal weaponry and tactics are introduced, modified…

Russia started the war with Ukraine in late February with a shock-and-awe effort to grab Kyiv. It failed both to decapitate the government and absorb half the country in one fell swoop. Soon the conflict descended into a war of attrition in Eastern Ukraine over the occupied majority Russian-speaking borderlands. That deadlock was eventually going…

Last week, a man stormed the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and stabbed British author Salman Rushdie in the neck as he was being introduced. The topic under discussion was "the United States as asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression." Chances are exceptionally high that this was…

Five months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the war is now reduced to one of attrition. The current dirty, grinding slog is fought mostly with artillery and rockets. Everything from Ukraine's shopping centers to apartment buildings – and the civilians in them – are Russian targets. Most outsiders have already forgotten…

Joe Biden’s shopworn habit of scapegoating Vladimir Putin for consumer inflation and higher gas prices has by now reached the point of farce.   Americans rightly reject Biden’s tiresome alibi, since inflation ascended from 1.4% in January 2021 to 7.9% during the 13 months of his presidency before Russia invaded Ukraine in February…

In the days after Russia attacked Ukraine, there was a lot of talk among Republicans that Vladimir Putin would not have invaded had Donald Trump still been president. Trump was so difficult to predict, so impulsive, so impetuous, the thinking went, that Putin would not have risked a massive U.S. response under Trump.  "The sheer unpredictability…

Even a truncated Russian Federation has four times the pre-war population of Ukraine. It enjoys well over 10 times the Ukrainian gross domestic product. Russia covers almost 30 times Ukraine's area. And how does Ukraine expel Russian troops from its borders when its Western allies must put particular restrictions on their life-giving military and…

There are several historical referents we should keep in mind about the Ukraine war. First, no-fly zones. Lots of Westerners are calling for NATO aircraft to establish a no-fly zone above Ukraine to stop Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities. That is a terrible idea. Russian planes can still launch missiles from the nearby airspace of Russia and Belarus…

President Joe Biden set off international alarms over the weekend when he committed the United States to the goal of regime change in Russia. "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden said of Russian leader Vladimir Putin during a speech in Poland. The last time the United States set itself to removing a foreign leader, in…

One – Reassuring an enemy what one will not do ensures that the enemy will do just that and more. Unpredictability and occasional enigmatic silence bolster deterrence. But President Joe Biden's predictable reassurance to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will show restraint means Putin likely will not. Two – …

The public needs straight talk about what's happening in Eastern Europe. President Joe Biden and the United Kingdom's Prime Minister Boris Johnson need to level with their own countrymen about the rising risk of war against Russia. The public's getting double talk – praise for the Ukrainians' courage but also empty promises that what…

After the end of the Cold War, foreign policy experts across the spectrum assured us that things had changed. Wars of pure border conquest were over. Wars over oil would soon be a thing of the past. Instead, the increasingly intertwined world would move toward peace. Thomas Friedman suggested in his massive 1999 bestseller "The Lexus and the Olive…

"One small thing to be thankful for is that DJT is not in the White House as the Ukraine crisis unfolds. He'd side with Russia," tweeted Francis Fukuyama, author of "The End of History and the Last Man." The headline on Eugene Robinson's Washington Post column reads, "With Biden standing firm, Putin must wonder: Where's Trump…

While the Biden administration's chaotic and inept withdrawal from Afghanistan was unfolding in August 2021, a suicide bomber murdered 13 American service members, and at least 170 Afghans, at the Abbey Gate outside Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport. It was one of the deadliest attacks on our troops in our 20 years in that nation. "Know…

One way of understanding the 2009-2014 Obama Administration policy of "reset" with Vladimir Putin's Russia is to recall two iconic incidents. The first was the 2009 "reset." Newly appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that she would pursue a "reset" detente with Russia. America would relax the prior…

Americans want an autonomous Ukraine to survive. They hope the West can stop Russian President Vladimir Putin's strangulation of both Ukraine and NATO. Yet Americans do not want their troops to venture across the world to Europe's backyard to fight nuclear Russia to ensure that Ukraine stays independent. Most Americans oppose the notion that Russia…

At 9:05 Monday night, State Department spokesman Ned Price issued a plaintive message to the new rulers of Afghanistan. "The Taliban needs to meet its commitments and obligations in Afghanistan," Price tweeted. Those commitments and obligations include respecting freedom of travel, safeguarding the "basic rights of the people,"…

The unfolding disaster in Afghanistan is a bipartisan, transadministrational failure. It is a humiliation. The fact is that after 20 years, after thousands of lives were lost and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on the military, police, training, infrastructure and education, the country fell in days.  Whatever your position is on the…

The Biden administration says it does not know how many U.S. citizens are in Afghanistan hoping to leave in the face of the American withdrawal and Taliban takeover. For days, Pentagon officials said they had no ability to venture outside the Kabul airport to find those Americans and bring them to safety. Now the military says it is doing just that…

The American-nurtured Afghan military of the last 20 years that had suffered thousands of prior casualties evaporated in a few hours in the encirclement of Kabul. Enlistees apparently calculated that their own meager chances with the premodern Taliban were still better than fighting as a dependency of the postmodern United States – …

For months, President Joe Biden has opened the borders to Hispanic illegals, but he has turned a deaf ear to our Afghan allies desperate to get to America.  Some 20,000 pro-American Afghanis and their families are in danger of being killed by the Taliban because Biden refused to speed up the bureaucratic, 14-step visa application process and…

President Joe Biden heads to Europe Wednesday to meet with European leaders. He says the goal is to work together to "deliver real results" on critical issues, like climate change and cybersecurity. Biden is ducking the most important issue – the cause of the pandemic. He should be marshaling allies to act in unison by squeezing…

Only a few months ago, the Biden administration argued that Nord Stream 2, a proposed natural-gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany, was "a bad deal" that "exposes Ukraine and Central Europe." White House press secretary Jen Psaki had noted at the time that any new pipeline carrying the fossil fuel on the continent "goes…

I’m just old enough to remember Ronald Reagan’s election, and the earliest days of his administration.   Among those early memories, which returned to the fore this week amid renewed conflict between Israel and Hamas, is Israel’s daring June 7, 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor using American-made F-…

With more than 3,000 rockets having been fired into Israel by Hamas recently, the Democratic Party seems paralyzed over how to respond to the latest Middle East war. It is not just that they fear that "The Squad," Black Lives Matter, the shock troops of antifa, and woke institutions such as academia and the media are now unapologetically…

Wars often arise from uncertainty. When strong countries appear weak, truly weaker ones take risks they otherwise would not. Sloppy braggadocio and serial promises of restraint can trigger wars, too. Empty tough talk can needlessly egg on aggressors. But mouthing utopian bromides convinces bullies that their targets are too sophisticated to counter…