Free Republic

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Russia's unprovoked war with Ukraine is "meant to put an end" to US-led global domination and the expansion of NATO, according to a report. "Our special military operation is meant to put an end to the unabashed expansion [of NATO] and the unabashed drive towards full domination by the US and its Western subjects on the world stage," Lavrov told the state-owned television news channel Rossiya 24, according to a translation from Russian state-run media outlet RT.

Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that former President Donald Trump leading the Republican Party to an isolationist stance was both wrong and dangerous.

Because of Donald Trump, Vice President Joe Biden thundered during the campaign, the U.S. "is more isolated in the world than we've ever been ... America First has made America alone." Biden promised to repair relations with America's allies. And he appears to have gone some distance to do so in the congratulatory phone call he received from Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan. According to Suga, during the brief call, Biden said Article V of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty of 1960 covers the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, islands Japan controls but China claims as its...

After the Great Pandemic has passed and we emerge from Great Depression II, what will be America's mission in the world? What will be America's cause? We have been at such a turning point before. After World War II, Americans wanted to come home. But we put aside our nation-building to face the challenge of a malevolent Stalinist empire dominant from the Elbe river to the Barents Sea. And after persevering for four decades, we prevailed. What, then, did we do with our epochal victory? We alienated Russia by moving our NATO military alliance into the Baltic and Black Seas....

Former President George W. Bush, who led the United States into war across the Middle East, attacked President Trump on Wednesday night, saying U.S. intervention is necessary “for the sake of peace” around the globe. During a panel alongside former President Bill Clinton at the Nir School of the Heart, Bush laid into Trump for his recent decision to withdraw up to 1,000 American troops from northeast Syria — fulfilling his longheld campaign promise to bring troops home after more than a decade of war.

For someone who preaches the importance of diplomacy and outreach, even to longtime enemies, President Obama can be awfully tough on his friends. In recent months, he has offended most of the United States’ Persian Gulf allies. “All I need in the Middle East is a few smart autocrats,” he joked privately, according to a recent profile in the Atlantic magazine. Publicly, he has said he “weeps” for Saudi and Kuwaiti children. The United States’ European allies, he complains, have grown too dependent on American firepower to keep them safe. Even the United Kingdom, a U.S. “special” partner, has received...

The rapid deterioration of our economy is attributable to the wholesale liquidation of our best companies to foreign interests. The U.S. has sold more than 16,000 of our best companies in the last 30 years to these foreign interests. This trend erodes our ability to generate earnings, and tax revenues to sustain our current standard of living – resulting in our reliance on imports thus creating uncontrolled and escalating foreign debt. Holding our debt our jobs and the production of our goods, foreign countries have ultimate leverage over our policies and our future. If we allow this to continue, it...

In Donald Trump’s Worldview, America Comes First, and Everybody Else Pays By DAVID E. SANGER and MAGGIE HABERMANMARCH 26, 2016 Mr. Trump’s views, as he explained them, fit nowhere into the recent history of the Republican Party: He is not in the internationalist camp of President George Bush, nor does he favor President George W. Bush’s call to make it the United States’ mission to spread democracy around the world. He agreed with a suggestion that his ideas might be summed up as “America First.” “Not isolationist, but I am America First,” he said. “I like the expression.” He said...

Donald Trump outlined an unabashedly noninterventionist approach to world affairs Monday, telling The Washington Post's editorial board that he questions the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has formed the backbone of Western security policies since the Cold War. The meeting at The Post covered a range of issues, including media libel laws, violence at his rallies, climate change, NATO and the U.S. presence in Asia. Speaking ahead of a major address on foreign policy later Monday in front of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Trump said he advocates a light footprint in the world. In spite...

<p>World War II broke out when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. A once preventable war had become inevitable -- and would soon become global -- due to three fatal decisions.</p> <p>Most infamously, the Western European democracies had appeased Hitler during the late 1930s in hopes that he would quit gobbling up his neighbors. Unfortunately, the Nazis considered Western appeasement as weakness to be manipulated rather than magnanimity to be reciprocated.</p>

That’s odd. What could Democrats possibly see in a lifelong true conservative like Donald Trump? There’s something for everyone in Nate Cohn’s new post. If you’re a Trump fan, here’s the smoking gun that he really is a new Reagan, the guy who’s going to broaden the tent and sweep to victory in November by bringing centrist Democrats into the GOP. If you’re a Trump critic, here’s further proof that he’s the RINO of RINOs, a man who’s blended nationalism, center-left economics, and Jacksonian foreign policy into something that tastes better to members of the other party than it does...

People expected to debate the isolationist tendencies of a Republican Senator running for the party’s presidential nomination. Who would have guessed that debate would center on Ted Cruz? During the debate on Tuesday night that focused mainly on foreign policy, Wolf Blitzer asked Cruz about the US efforts on regime change over the last twenty years, decisions criticized by Cruz. In his answer, Cruz characterized his approach by using a phrase historically associated with a much different philosophy than the one he espoused (transcript from CNN, emphasis mine): BLITZER: Senator Cruz, you have said the world would be safer...

Back in April, I wrote a column predicting that the most interesting foreign policy fight of the 2016 campaign was likely to be one between Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. So, while I've enjoyed watching their disagreements over America's role in the world take center stage, it's been unfortunate to observe the attempt to smear Cruz as an "isolationist." Though the Rubio vs. Cruz clash has been building for some time, it boiled over Tuesday night as Cruz explained why sometimes allowing dictators to stay in power was more aligned with America's national security interest than promoting democracy. Over...

Rand Paul had his best debate moment Tuesday when he challenged Marco Rubio on his plans to increase defense spending by $1 trillion. "You cannot be a conservative if you're going to keep promoting new programs you're not going to pay for," said Paul. Marco's retort triggered the loudest cheers of the night: "There are radical jihadists in the Middle East beheading people and crucifying Christians. The Chinese are taking over the South China Sea. ... the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest military power in the world." Having called for the U.S. Navy...

Adm. James Richardson strongly disagreed about permanently docking navy ships in Pearl Harbor, believing that the Japanese would feel threatened by the proximity of America's Pacific fleet and organize a preemptory attack. With their exposed and isolated location, the ships would be vulnerable to any such aggression. He also recognized that the navy did not have the manpower to fight a war in the Pacific in 1940. He relayed these concerns to all who would listen and protested the decision to politicians in Washington. In response, Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt relieved Richardson of his command. This biography covers Richardson's life...

And while my predisposition is to less intervention, I do support intervention when our vital interests are threatened. If I had been in President Obama’s shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS. I would have called Congress back into session—even during recess. This is what President Obama should have done. He should have been prepared with a strategic vision, a plan for victory and extricating ourselves. He should have asked for authorization for military action and would have, no doubt, received it. Once we have decided that we have an enemy that requires destruction, we must...

Various folks expressed surprise when the Associated Press wrote “Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky pounced Friday on President Barack Obama’s ‘we don’t have a strategy yet’ comments.” Rick Perry, sure, but Rand Paul? Isn’t he supposed to be an “isolationist” as the AP claims in a later paragraph? The broader debate pits those who favor the GOP's traditional muscular foreign policy — a group that includes Perry and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio — and those, like Paul and Cruz, who prefer a smaller international footprint. The so-called isolationist approach plays well with grassroots activists...

We have been at war with Iraq for 24 years, starting with Operations Desert Shield and Storm in 1990. Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that year, the propaganda machine began agitating for a US attack on Iraq. We all remember the appearance before Congress of a young Kuwaiti woman claiming that the Iraqis were ripping Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The woman turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and the story was false, but it was enough to turn US opposition in favor of an attack. This month, yet another US president...

Remember back in April, 2007, when then-CIA director George Tenet appeared on 60 Minutes, angrily telling the program host, "we don't torture people"? Remember a few months later, in October, President George W. Bush saying, "this government does not torture people"? We knew then it was not true because we had already seen the photos of Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib prison four years earlier. Still the US administration denied that torture was torture, preferring to call it "enhanced interrogation" and claiming that it had disrupted so many terrorist plots. Of course, we later found out that the CIA...

We need a leader to speak out and make clear our intentions. With Israel again under attack, the situation in North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe unsettled and bloody, it’s time for the grown ups to keep our rendezvous with destiny-- which has always been necessitated by the very best of reasons: America’s best interest. For the last 80 years America has managed to keep the peace world wide—mostly-- and at a historically small cost. But there are some on both the right and the left today who are tired of this American greatness, tired of protecting...