Tag: Russia

The Credibility Problem: Russia & Susan Rice

  

I try to stay away from definitive statements on current issues until most or all of the facts are known. That’s why I’ve written so little on the whole controversy about Russia’s influence over the presidential election. Of this I am certain: Trump is not now president because Russia somehow sabotaged voting machines. Trump is president primarily because he ran against Hillary Clinton, arguably the worst major-party presidential candidate in the last . . . oh . . . well,… Read more »

Russia & the Decline of American Influence

  

Syria? Who cares about Syria? Iraq? Old story. Never should have gone there in the first place. Leave it alone. Let everyone in that whole region just fight it out amongst themselves since there’s no one to support anyway. That last paragraph summarizes what a lot of people think. That’s pretty much what Donald Trump said as well. Some of the sentiment I can understand. Trying to build nations is a complicated mess when there is no practice of self-government… Read more »

U.S. Influence: The Great Vanishing Act

  

When writing on domestic policy and the Obama administration, I continually point out the overreach: Obamacare, IRS, ruling by executive fiat. If one were to concentrate wholly on the domestic side, it would seem as if everything Obama does lends itself to an incipient tyranny. Shifting to foreign policy, however, sheds a different light—not an admirable one, mind you, but different. Benghazi was/is an exercise in utter incompetence and cluelessness (coupled with a determined coverup, of course). Responses to nations… Read more »

Russian Belligerence/American Weakness

  

The Russian Bear is sharpening its claws again. Vladimir Putin is doing his best to resurrect the old Soviet empire. His strategy of “protecting” Russian-speaking peoples has just landed him the Crimean Peninsula that legally belongs to Ukraine. Will he be satisfied with Crimea only? Why not the rest of Ukraine? After all, it used to be in the Soviet orbit. Rumors are now circulating that there are others who need “protection,” such as Russians living in the Baltic countries… Read more »

The Russian-Ukrainian Crisis

  

I’ve refrained until now from commenting on the situation in Ukraine. I know this is a tough situation with few easy answers. The history of tension between Ukraine and Russia goes back a long ways. One of the worst episodes in twentieth-century history occurred in Ukraine in the winter of 1932-1933 when Josef Stalin was the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union. During that winter, Stalin, in an attempt to strangle Ukrainian resistance to his destruction of independent farmers, removed… Read more »

Our Foreign Foreign Policy

  

For most of the Obama tenure, the focus of critics has been on his domestic policies primarily, although The Great American Apology Tour was noted and decried from the start. From his abysmal attempts to jumpstart the economy to the imposition of the bureaucratic nightmare of Obamacare, this president has demonstrated his ideological blindness and his incomparable incompetence. Both of those features have now come to the forefront in his foreign policies as well. Which is worse? They appear to… Read more »

Snowden & the NSA: My Perspective

  

The War on Terror is not over. The decision to close U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East and North Africa, while controversial, points to the fact that documented threats exist. They always will. Just look at the number of countries where the embassies will be closed for the entire week: There is bipartisan support for this move, as both Democrats and Republicans have gone on record in favor of taking this precaution. On the conservative side, there are mixed reviews…. Read more »