Ted Snider

American foreign policy seems only to have two gears: ensuring everything pours in through military aid or ensuring nothing gets in through sanctions. Neither works, and sanctions have no more weakened Russia than military aid has helped Ukraine. On April 20, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the long-delayed $61 billion aid package for Ukraine. … Continue reading “The US Cannot Help Ukraine Win the War”

Despite billions of dollars of military aid, equipment maintenance, training, intelligence, and planning from the United States and its partners in the political West, the war in Ukraine is going very badly. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi, says “the situation at the front has escalated.” He says that Russia has … Continue reading “Troops on the Ground: Biden’s Plan for Ukraine”

The United States continues to be the world’s banker for war. Last week, the U.S. invested $95 billion more in war. $61 billion of that is headed to Ukraine. While Congress waved Ukrainian flags, the American mainstream media abandoned its responsibility as investigative journalists and dutifully and enthusiastically acted as cheerleaders, celebrated the continuation of … Continue reading “Despite Media Cheerleading, $61 Billion Won’t Beat Russia”

The accepted Western narrative is that, in February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with the intent of conquering the entire country. But there is a competing narrative that is compelling enough to be worthy of consideration. Following the United States’ rebuff of their December 2021 proposal on mutual security guarantees, which included a … Continue reading “What Killed the Peace Talks in Ukraine?”

In the early hours of April 19, Israel carried out its anticipated response to Iran’s April 13 aerial attack on Israel. Though the details are not known at the time of this writing, Israel appears, like Iran, to have done what it felt it needed to do to send the message it needed to send … Continue reading “Palestine and Iran: American Hegemony as Self-Interest”

On April 13, Iran responded to Israel’s attack on its embassy compound in Damascus that killed seven Iranian officers, including a very senior military official, General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, by launching over 300 drones and missiles at Israel from Iranian soil. U.S. officials, according to some reporting, say that four or five ballistic missiles hit … Continue reading “This Past Weekend, Iran Changed Everything”

The Biden administration seems to be consistently adopting a policy of attempting to satisfy its foreign policy objectives by nurturing wars being fought by others while attempting to prevent harm to its own interests by containing those wars. The doctrine of war management has three stages. The first is erecting and maintaining roadblocks to diplomatic … Continue reading “Biden’s Irresponsible War Doctrine Led to Iran’s Attack on Israel”

In both Ukraine and Gaza, the Biden administration has adopted the dangerous doctrine of war management in which, while not stopping a war diplomatically, it attempts to contain it and prevent it from becoming a wider war into which the U.S. might get drawn. The difficult to calibrate policy is being threatened in both theatres. … Continue reading “How Big a Factor Is Iran in the War on Gaza?”

NATO is less a defensive alliance than it is a provocative alliance. A quarter of a century ago, the Soviet Union dismantled itself by its own will. With that titanic change, NATO’s sole purpose dissolved. Created to defend its members from a Soviet threat, NATO now self-perpetuated its extinct purpose by provoking the very threat … Continue reading “Ukraine in NATO: What Blinken Says Versus What Blinken Means”

Despite the damage done in Ukraine and NATO’s now apparent inability to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia strongly enough, one item in the western win column is the claim that NATO is more unified following the damage done by Donald Trump. Even aside from NATO preparing for the possible consequences of a second Trump term, … Continue reading “The Growing Fissures in NATO’s Unity”