Category Archives: Foreign Affairs

One From Column A, One From Column B

Ask anyone who doesn’t work at the White House, and they’ll tell you America is screwed, and that China will soon be running things. Well, not so fast: it’s not as easy as all that to grow a crowded, backward nation into a global economic colossus, and they may still have a few kinks to [...]

Brer Fox, He Lay Low

The United States recently announced a “thaw” in relations with Pakistan, with the US agreeing to burn $500 million to provide the needed warmth. Meanwhile, most observers have for some time now seen quite plainly that Pakistan has been playing a double game, with the all-powerful ISI taking US assistance with one hand and stroking [...]

Golden Dragon Shows Its Claws

While the USA backs away from further production of the F-22 Raptor, deciding instead to rely on the inferior F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Russia, as we noted here, is aggressively looking forward, deploying the impressive Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA. So what about China? They aren’t sitting still either. The balance is changing. Learn more here. Related [...]

Too Harsh?

Living as we do in a world of chaos, crime and corruption, we should all thank Heaven for that citadel of Justice, that beacon of moral clarity, the United Nations — and for the courage and forthrightness with which it deals swift and righteous judgment to the world’s vilest blackguards, reprobates, and scoundrels. Just today, [...]

Class Warfare

As the Obama administration revs up its lawsuit against Arizona, we learn that meanwhile, across the porous border, schools are now teaching children to dodge bullets. Story here.

Good Lord!

Australia has a new Prime Minister. Her name is Julia Gillard, and in a gesture that would be utterly unthinkable here in America, she has announced that she doesn’t believe in God. Being an atheist myself, it is difficult for me not to be delighted. But recently I’ve come to wonder, as a purely practical [...]

Blurb For Derb

John Derbyshire (who, by the way, if he ever finds himself at loose ends in midtown Manhattan at the end of the workday, should get in touch with me because I will buy him a good glass of whisky), aired a particularly snappy episode of his “Radio Derb” podcast last week. Have a listen here. [...]

Top Predator

For those of you who pay attention to these things, a long era of American technological superiority in air-combat systems appears to be at an end with the deployment of the Russian Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA. This aircraft’s raison d’etre is to match or exceed the capabilities of our own F-22 Raptor, and early assessment seems [...]

Class Act

Following on our previous post about violent ethnic disaggregation in Krgyzstan, here’s an item from yesterday’s paper that I found interesting. It begins (emphasis mine): MOSCOW — The violence that has claimed scores of lives in Kyrgyzstan is frequently ascribed to ethnic tensions, but regional experts say the causes are more complex. “I don’t believe [...]

Not So Fast

We’ve been hearing breathless reports today about how new geological findings have shown, to the astonishment of all, that Afghanistan is sitting atop a dragon’s hoard of mineral resources, an immense and “game-changing” cache of hidden treasure. As usual, there’s more to the story. Here. Related content from Sphere

On Open Borders

On the front page of today’s Times we read about Kyrgyzstan, which is busy providing intelligent observers, at sanguinary cost, with yet another data-point about the incomparable blessings of Diversity. Meanwhile, Dennis Mangan brings to our attention an outstanding paper on said blessings, by Australian academic Frank Salter (original here, but visit Dennis’s place for [...]

Blows Against The Empire

Good news from Holland: I’m gratified to see that Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party made substantial gains in yesterday’s elections. Read all about it in this catty little article.

Steyn Talks Turkey

Pessimistic, black-hearted, hate-filled bigots like me occasionally feel the need to point out that Islam — not “extremist” Islam, or “radical” Islam, mind you, but Islam — presents rather a problem for the rest of us, and in particular is fundamentally incompatible with Western norms. Morally enlightened Western folks who want us all to feel [...]

Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t

Jonah Goldberg also weighs in on the IHH flotilla debacle: Question: If Israel is always hell-bent on murder, massacres, and genocide, why is it so bad at it? If its battle plan called for a slaughter, why kill “only” nine people? Why not sink all of the boats? … North Korea recently sank a South [...]

Legal And Rational

Charles Krauthammer has published today a fine piece on the Israeli blockade of Gaza. An excerpt: [A]s Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel — a declaration backed up by more [...]

Homework

Here’s the Obama administration’s new National Security Strategy. Let’s all have a look.

Lessons Learned, And Not

National Review has just reposted a fine, and scathing, editorial published on May 6, 1961, in the aftermath of the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion — which failure NR editors Buckley et al. ascribed to a “failure of will”, and a reluctance to offend “World Opinion”: Have we learned? There is always reason to hope. [...]

Us And Them

An article in Monday’s Times describes the current state of affairs in Rwanda. It has been a full sixteen years since the challenges of multiculturalism got out of hand there, but for some reason the blessings and benefits of Diversity — despite the vigorous application of exactly the sort of enlightened government measures that always [...]

Fair And Balanced

As a counterpoise to the impression I might have given in a recent post, here is what all that Russian “directness” leads to at home.

Strong Horse

One of the reasons America is declining in the world is that we (and the rest of the effeminized West) are perceived by our foes and rivals, rightly, as having lost our virile resolve. We are generally more concerned with “being better” than our enemies than actually defeating them, and so we court-martial Navy Seals [...]

Now That’s Diversity!

David Brooks had a daring item in the Times today, in which he came awfully close (though stepping back from the brink) to saying some awfully unsayable things. But I’m not in the mood for more of this stuff tonight (if I were I’d likely be rounding on Mayor Bloomberg, too, for his flurry of [...]

Stay Tuned

Tomorrow, February 11th, is the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. According to this item at Iran’s Press TV website, the Dear Leader — no, wait a minute, I mean the Supreme Leader; I always get these totalitarian Axis Of Evil types muddled up — has an anniversary present to give us. Should be [...]

Wilders Trial On Hold

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Kafkaesque trial of Geert Wilders has been postponed while the schedule is worked out for the testimony of the few witnesses he will be allowed to call. It appears the trial will not resume until July at the earliest. A discussion of all this is underway at [...]

A Fair Trial? Prospects Dhimming

Yesterday the judge in the free-speech trial of Geert Wilders ruled that only three of the eighteen witnesses Mr. Wilders had hoped to call to testify about the true nature of Islam will be permitted to appear, and must do so behind closed doors. There may now be a long delay while these appearances — [...]

Let’s Be Clear

There was an article in yesterday’s Times about friction between European Muslims and their host culture. In it we find the following: Youcef Mammeri, a writer on Islam in France and member of the Joint Council of Muslims of Marseille, says that the debates over minarets, burqas and national identity have angered many French-born Muslims [...]

Conflict Of Interest

It is no easy thing for an American president to wage an unpopular war. To make war effectively requires both secrecy and resolve, and neither can be relied upon under the American system. The transparency of government and freedom of the press that stand as bulwarks against tyranny and corruption make secrecy difficult and undependable [...]

Half A League Onward

I watched the President’s speech last night. It was not encouraging. It had something for everyone: escalation for the hawks; an exit date for the doves; the usual rot about “distorting and defiling a great religion”, to keep the Muslims off the streets; some bean-counting for the frugal; some American exceptionalism for the true believers; [...]

Marriage Of Convenience

A recent item in the Long War Journal informs us that it appears that al-Qaeda is consolidating a Waziristan-style presence in Eastern Syria. Nothing happens in Syria without the consent of the Ba’ath Party, and the story does indeed tell us that there appears to be a working partnership in place between al-Qaeda and former [...]

The Great Game, Cont’d

For those of you who were puzzled by the sudden withdrawal of challenger Abdullah Abdullah from the runoff election in Afghanistan the other day, the Asia Times has the answer: he did so under U.S. pressure, as part of a complex deal brokered by our Secretary of State during her recent visit to Pakistan. Mr. [...]

Looking Good!

On the front page of today’s Times is a story I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about before. It seems that the Iraqi security forces are using a bomb-detection gizmo that seems, quite obviously, to be nothing more than an expensive, tarted-up divining rod. The gadget in question is called the ADE 651, and the Iraqis [...]

Know When To Fold ‘Em

On the front page of today’s Times there’s a photo from Pakistan: Hillary Clinton — the West’s most powerful diplomat, an inspiration to women everywhere, and an essential symbol and embodiment of Western liberty, strength, and confidence — in a Muslim headscarf. Again. Oh well, at least it will be a few years before she [...]

“He’s Becoming Ordinary”

Over at Der Spiegel Online is an interview with Charles Krauthammer, in which he assesses Barack Obama’s stewardship, to date, of our nation’s affairs. I have to say I find precious little to disagree with. Here are some excerpts. Related content from Sphere

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone

Here, with a hat tip to Dymphna at Gates of Vienna, are some video clips that should be of interest to all: Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant testifying before the Canadian Parliament’s Justice and Human Rights Committee, as part of an inquiry into the inquisitorial powers of the Canadian Human Rights Commission regarding censorship of [...]

Tar Baby

President Obama is grappling with a momentous and extremely difficult choice in Afghanistan. It is a grim situation, and there are really no good options; there is also no consensus amongst his advisers, or the punditry at large, about what we ought to do. Reader JK, who always has his ear to the ground, has [...]

The Army of Sisyphus

The situation in Afghanistan is very bad. If we leave, the consequences will be dire, not least for the many hopeful and trusting Afghans who have taken our side against the monstrous Taliban; those who have cooperated with us will surely be slaughtered. And if we give up the fight, it is not hard to [...]

Under New Management

The U.S. has decided to abrogate its agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic to deploy advanced missile-defense systems in those Eastern European nations. This sort of inconstancy is a well-known issue with democracies such as ours, where the internal balance of power shifts every few years, but the Poles and Czechs — who, having [...]

What Could It Be?

In today’s New York Times, Tom Friedman comments on the U.N. Development Program’s Arab Human Development Report, which first came out in 2002, and which has just been updated. Apparently the news is not good; it seems that, for some reason, the Arab world is rather a depressed and backward place. Related content from Sphere

Ladies’ Man

Bill Clinton, who has always had a gift for picking up women, has done it again, even if this time he had to travel a bit farther afield. I’m certainly glad that the two hostages, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, have been released, and I suppose it would be churlish of me not to give [...]

Young ‘Un

Tonight we have an item from a few days ago that offers, perhaps, a little insight into Kim Jong-il’s heir apparent, the youngest of his three sons. Apparently the boy may have been educated, under an assumed name, at a Swiss school a few years back. It seems he really likes basketball. Story here. Related [...]

Michael Yon: Notes From The Philippines

When you have a lot of links on your blogroll, it’s hard to keep up with them all. One of the links on our sidebar is the website of military correspondent Michael Yon, who provides excellent independent coverage from the world’s strife-torn regions, some of them extremely dangerous and remote. Reader JK reminded us to [...]

The Burnt Fool’s Bandaged Finger

We see in today’s news that Pakistan has announced that it is in contact with the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, and would like to arrange negotiations between Omar and the US. Have we learned nothing? What possible value could such negotiations offer? What conceivable compromise could there be between the Taliban and a [...]

I Only Have Eyes For You

French president Nicolas Sarkozy announced yesterday that the burqa — the head-to-toe garment worn by some Muslim women — is “not welcome” in France, and the French National Assembly is now preparing an inquiry into whether the enshrouding of women to shield them from the view of men other than their owners is so fundamentally [...]

Everybody’s Got One

We’re talking about opinions, of course. Here are two takes on the situation in Iran: from Fouad Ajami, and from Pat Buchanan. And if you have a little more time, and would like to be better informed about elections in Iran generally, and about that nation’s political structure, read this. Related content from Sphere

Lies, Damned Lies, And Statistics

As the situation in Iran devolves further into violence, we note that two Ph.D. candidates at Columbia have done some clever statistical work on the official election results, and have concluded that they are almost certainly fake. Story here. Related content from Sphere

What Now?

With a hat tip, once again, to reader JK, here’s a thoughful item by Leslie Gelb on how the situation in Iran may evolve.

There Is A Tide

It is heartening to see the momentum changing, for the moment at least, in the Muslim world. The excesses of the Taliban have provoked a vigorous response, it seems, in northwestern Pakistan, and there are reports that an al-Qaeda exodus to Yemen and Somalia may be beginning – which may in many way be more [...]

A Dangerous Game

North Korea, which is by some accounts facing catastrophic internal crises as Kim Jong-Il attempts to engineer the transfer of absolute power to his youngest son, has pressed its policy of brinkmanship even further by sentencing two US reporters to 12 years in a labor camp for an alleged border violation. Everyone is, as might [...]

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

I’ve finally had a chance to read President Obama’s speech to the Ummah. Mr. Obama is a remarkable orator, who knows very well that these early days of his presidency are a historically unique opportunity — and although there was much that I might quibble about, I will say that he rose to the occasion [...]

The Twain Have Yet To Meet

As has been the case for over thirteen centuries, East and West are still glowering darkly at one another across a deep cultural divide. One hopes always for harmony and rapprochement — themes that Mr. Obama will, I am sure, focus on in his upcoming speech from Cairo — and perhaps, in this small and [...]

Reasons To be Fearful, Part 3

The link in the previous post was taken from a comment thread in a blog-post called to our attention by reader JK. The post, from the Federation of American Scientists’ Strategic Security Blog, is an attempt to assess the import of North Korea’s recent nuclear test (if that is indeed what it was). Related content [...]