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European nations have already shown little stomach for a tough line on Russian bullying of Ukraine and Georgia. ~Ida Garibaldi Whenever I read lines like this, I wonder what the author could possibly mean. European nations have little stomach for backing irrational policies for which they alone will have to pay the price? Yes, this [...]
Filed under: Europe, foreign policy, politics
There is some commentary today telling everyone to invest the outcome of the NY-20 special election with very little significance. That’s reasonable up to a point, as all special elections are quirky, not necessarily representative of broader trends and often turn on the qualities of the candidates, but then the same can be said for [...]
Filed under: politics
It [the Iran-Iraq war] didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness. It wasn’t Britain after World War I, lapsing into pacifism because of the great tragedy of a loss of a generation. You see nothing of the kind. ~Benjamin Netanyahu Via Alex Massie As Massie says, this makes no sense. First of all, [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
We have covered this question before during the strikes on Gaza, the war in Lebanon, and the war against Yugoslavia, but somehow it never seems to sink in with some people. As Massie correctly argues, the failure to understand that other nations do not respond well to bombing and terror is a failure of imagination [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Ross mentions this profile of Russian President Medvedev as an interesting source of background, and I agree that it is a useful primer on Medvedev if you are not familiar with his career prior to his elevation by Putin and election, but I am instinctively wary of efforts to interpret the actions of foreign governments [...]
Filed under: Russia, foreign policy, politics
Not that I want to encourage a lot of television-watching (it is Lent, after all), but I have to say a few words about the new NBC series Kings. As a longtime Ian McShane fan from his days as the roguish antiques dealer Lovejoy, I was very pleased to see him in the lead of [...]
Let me preface this by saying that I am a great admirer of T.S. Eliot, who has to be considered one of the best, if not the best, poet writing in the English language in the 20th century. His writings on culture and Christianity have been important in my thinking about these matters, his inclusion [...]
Filed under: ideology, literature, politics
John points to Alex Massie’s post on growing dissatisfaction with European economic policy on some parts of the American left: The President has told everyone what to do, so why won’t our friends do as they’re told? Once upon a time – and not so long ago neither – Democrats thought it was important fro [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
No one chanting “Yes we can” was pushing for a change that would stick America’s middle-class taxpayers with additional trillions of new debt in order to fill up the coffers of some of the biggest and richest swindlers on Wall Street. Where’s the change, in short, between Bush’s TARP-1 and Obama’s TARP-2? ~Ralph Reiland Obviously, [...]
Filed under: politics
The Bush-Obama approach to the crisis in the financial sector is to monetize existing debt and accumulate massive new debt that will likely also require monetization. The monetization threatens inflation, high interest rates, and depreciation of the U.S. dollar and loss of its reserve currency role. The accumulation of new public debt implies larger annual [...]