Is Obama Wrong on Ukraine?

"What Would America Fight For?" That question shouts from the cover of this week's Economist. It is, asserts the magazine, "the question haunting its allies." While most agree that America would fight to defend her treaty allies and to protect vital interests if...

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The Philanthropic Superpower

If a single word could sum up the goal of Barack Obama's Asia tour, it would be "reassurance." Obama went to Tokyo to reassure Japan that, should China attempt to seize its Senkaku Islands, America will fight at her side. He reassured Seoul of our commitment to defend...

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On Treating Putin as Pariah

"Mr. Obama is focused on isolating President Vladimir V. Putin's Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world ... and effectively making it a pariah state." So wrote Peter Baker in Sunday's New York Times. Yet if history is any guide,...

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Nationalism, Not NATO, Is Our Great Ally

With Vladimir Putin having bloodlessly annexed Crimea and hinting that his army might cross the border to protect the Russians of East Ukraine, Washington is abuzz with talk of dispatching U.S. troops to Eastern Europe. But unless we have lost our minds, we are not...

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NED’s Chickens Come Home to Roost

When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Empire an "evil empire," the phrase reflected his conviction that while the East-West struggle was indeed a global geostrategic conflict, it had a deep moral dimension. If Americans did not see the Cold War as he did, a battle...

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The End of Ideology?

On our TV talk shows and op-ed pages, and in our think tanks here, there is rising alarm over events abroad. And President Obama is widely blamed for the perceived decline in worldwide respect for the United States. Yet, still, one hears no clamor from Middle America...

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War Party Oligarch

Is the Republican Party's Middle East policy up for bid? For four days ending Sunday, a quartet of presidential hopefuls trooped to Las Vegas to attend the annual gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Impresario: Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas-Macau casino mogul...

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Behind the Russian Rage

As the old saying goes, you cannot truly understand a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes. Perhaps Americans, a fortunate tribe, should try to see the world from the vantage point of the Russian people and Vladimir Putin, and, as the poet Robert Burns said,...

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Marching as to War

Sweeping through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania this week, Joe Biden reassured all three that the United States' commitment to Article Five of the NATO treaty remains "solemn" and "iron clad." Article Five commits us to war if the territory of any of these tiny Baltic...

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Is Putin the Irrational One?

Vladimir Putin seems to have lost touch with reality, Angela Merkel reportedly told Barack Obama after speaking with the Russian president. He is "in another world." "I agree with what Angela Merkel said ... that he is in another world," said Madeleine Albright, "It...

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