Arguably the most successful act of revolutionary terror was the June 1914 assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Believing his mission to murder the heir to the Austrian throne had failed, Gavrilo Princip suddenly found himself standing a few...
The morning after Barack Obama's election, the congratulatory message from Moscow was in the chilliest tradition of the Cold War. "I hope for constructive dialogue with you," said Russia's president, "based on trust and considering each other's interests." Dmitry...
"Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers." So Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon advised Herbert Hoover in the Great Crash of '29. Hoover did. And the nation liquidated him – and the Republicans. In the Crash of 2008, 40 percent of stock value has...
On Sept. 30, 1938, 70 years ago, Neville Chamberlain visited Adolf Hitler's apartment in Munich, got his signature on a three-sentence declaration, and flew home to Heston Aerodrome. "I've got it," he shouted to Lord Halifax. "Here is a paper which bears his name." At...
Who is Randy Scheunemann? He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser to the president of the United States. But Randy Scheunemann has another...
The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO. Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the...
Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships. Nasser's blunder...
"We have to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in," says Barack Obama of the U.S. war in Iraq. Wise counsel. But is Barack taking his own advice? For he pledges to shift two U.S. combat brigades, 10,000 troops, out of Iraq and into...
As any military historian will testify, among the most difficult of maneuvers is the strategic retreat. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, Lee's retreat to Appomattox and MacArthur's retreat from the Yalu come to mind. The British Empire abandoned India in 1947...
Last week, the front pages of the world press blossomed with photos of four Iranian rockets, fired in salvo, heading skyward. The image was powerful, and the message reinforced by the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Should Israel attack Iran, said Ali Shira,...
