Free Republic

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin has given orders to increase the alert level of Russia’s nuclear forces and has made veiled nuclear threats. The blatant aggression against Ukraine has shocked Europe and the world. The war is a tragedy for Ukraine. It also exposes the limits of the West’s reliance on nuclear deterrence. Deterrence refers to the idea that possessing nuclear weapons protects a nation from attack, through the threat of overwhelming retaliation. This concept is widely credited for helping prevent war between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War....

U.S. defense leaders have allowed China’s military might to grow unchecked while they prattle on about critical race theory and climate change. That increases the risk of war over Taiwan.The Chinese Communist Party is open about its imperial ambitions. Chinese leader Xi Jinping calls explicitly for “the transformation of the global governance system”—which means China in charge of the Asian Pacific and, ultimately, the world. America must act now to stop it. Our economic prosperity, no less than our national security, depends on it. A China that bestrides the Pacific would make today’s supply chain woes look pleasant. A China...

The Taliban’s seizure of Afghanistan — emboldened by President Joe Biden’s senseless decision to rush U.S troops out of the country without a plan — blindsided the Afghan government, the Afghan military, and America’s allies. This reckless decision has led to bipartisan criticism in the United States and from our global allies, and ridicule by America’s adversaries. Biden’s attempts to blame everyone but himself for this fiasco, his refusal to take press questions for nearly a week (except from sycophantic George Stephanopoulos), and his decision to hide at Camp David while these events unfolded have only intensified criticism.As commander-in-chief, Biden...

Police Body Cam of Brad Parscale arrest.

Seventy-five years ago today, on a rainy morning in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico, the United States ushered in the nuclear age with the detonation of the world’s first nuclear explosive device—an event code-named “Trinity.”  This remarkable feat of engineering and scientific ingenuity was the culmination of the Manhattan Project, which helped end World War II and launch an unprecedented era of global stability, scientific innovation, and economic prosperity.After Trinity, nuclear testing conducted by the United States laid the groundwork to maintain our stockpile and further our ability to understand and prevent nuclear threats around the...

Deterrence is the best protection against a future war with Iran. Peace through strength is founded on deterrence. America’s strength has allowed the United States to remain relatively peaceful over the past few decades. Our military is undisputedly the world’s most powerful force. That power prevents our enemies from attacking the homeland. There are several facets to deterrence. One is the power aspect that comes with having the most powerful military and the wide range of war fighting ability that most other nations do not possess. The second is the actual initiation of conflict with nations like the former Taliban...

The length, scope, and operational duration of the attack suggests it is a targeted towards regime stability and an internal audience. Whether it leads to further escalation is a political call. Last night, around the time Iranian missiles were dropping on U.S. bases, a friend from the Pentagon texted me saying, “Oh, well, it appears they will do something dumb, and we may go to war.” Any crisis leads to paranoia, hysteria, and essentially all other basest instincts in a human being. What differentiates a realist or a strategist from an ideologue or a cultist is how one thinks in...

Christ came to me emblazoned on the upper arm of my beloved cousin Marc. The blue-black ink danced between the bullet scars and stretch marks that graced my cousin’s upper body. Atop this crown-of-thorns depiction was a tattooed banner with the phrase “Only God Can Judge Me.” Marc—like several men in my family—had been caught in the webbed threads of poverty, geography and lack of opportunity during the fever pitch of 1990s mass incarceration. Baggy-pant boys like him fit the descriptions of “super-predators” and “thugs” that dominated our national discourse at the time. Marc served his time, and has been...

Introduction: On Deterrence Carl von Clausewitz writes that the nature of war has enduring continuities, but its characteristics change with different circumstances.[1] Similarly, the fundamental nature of deterrence has endured for millennia: a threatened response to an adversary’s prospective provocation causes that adversary to decide against the provocation i.e., the adversary is deterred from attack because it decides that the prospective costs outweigh the gains. The character of deterrence, however, must adapt to different circumstances. In one case, the necessary deterrent threat may be to punish the adversary; in another, to deny the adversary its objectives; in yet another, a...

The sky over the turbulent Pacific was pitch-black earlier this month when a Minuteman III missile blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a column of fire that illuminated the California coastline for miles. The unarmed missile thundered past the outer reaches of the atmosphere, tracing a fiery arc around the globe before plunging into a lagoon at Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific, 4,200 miles away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAhCIiNmjv0&list=PLvGO_dWo8VfdUS_shFCmhSTNOcEdroPJ5&index=7 A great Youtube video detailing credible Korean scenarios.

NEW DELHI: India will finally ink the deal for direct acquisition of 36 Rafale fighter jets from France on Friday, in what will be an urgently-needed booster dose for the country's dwindling air combat power. IAF, after all, is down to just 33 fighter squadrons when at least 42 are required for dissuasive deterrence against China and Pakistan. The first omni-role Rafale, also capable of delivering nuclear weapons, will touch down in India within three years. India can buy two to three Russian heavy-weight Sukhoi-30MKIs or five to six indigenous Tejas light combat aircraft for every Rafale. But it's also...

Russia is about to test-launch a volley of intercontinental ballistic missiles from nuclear-powered submarines, during an exercise to test the combat readiness of its nuclear deterrence forces, according to a report in the newspaper Izvestia. The missiles will include the new Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile, which is intended as the future cornerstone of Russia's nuclear capability and is the country's most expensive weapons project.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held an emergency security meeting at his office in Jerusalem on Tuesday night, after the wave of terror attacks in Jerusalem over the Rosh Hashanah holiday including massive riots on the Temple Mount and a lethal rock attack. "We will fight through all means necessary against rock throwers, firebomb and pipe bomb throwers, and those who shoot fireworks to harm citizens and police officers," said Netanyahu. "On the eve of the holiday it was again proven that rock throwing can kill," he added. "These activities will meet a very strong response of punishment and prevention. We...

Most aggressors take stupid risks only when they feel they won't be stopped. The world seems to be falling apart. Only lunatics from North Korea or Iran once mumbled about using nuclear weapons against their supposed enemies. Now Vladimir Putin, after gobbling up the Crimea, points to his nuclear arsenal and warns the West not to “mess” with Russia. The Middle East terrorist group the Islamic State keeps beheading its captives and threatening the West. Meanwhile Obama admits to the world that we “don’t have a strategy yet” for dealing with such barbaric terrorists. Not long ago he compared them...

About seventeen years after the murder of John F. Kennedy, I was given the opportunity to watch an archived film of the President's last public remarks, a short speech to the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, Friday morning, November 22, 1963.Having been impressed, I still remembered a line or two, and I briefly searched for what I hoped would be unedited footage. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find what was to be found had been heavily edited.There may be better copies of his full remakrs out there, but I did finally stumble on one unedited whole tape with...

WASHINGTON -- The death of Fred Ikle last week inspires me to prophesy. Thus far, only the redoubtable Wall Street Journal has remarked on Fred's passing. That he was a formidable mind during the Cold War and important to the peaceful settlement of that decades-long struggle is remembered thanks to the Journal. Yet, to the rest of the media, he is a minor figure -- perhaps a menacing figure. We shall see what they say, but I am not holding my breath. This is the way liberalism creates the Kultursmog, which is to say, the politicized culture that surrounds us....

Two months after Camden, NJ, laid off 160 police officers, city prosecutors have released a sobering report showing a dramatic rise in violent crime in the drug-and-crime-ridden city of 80,000 residents. Aggravated assaults with firearms jumped 259 percent in January and February compared to last year, and violent crime over all is up 19 percent, the Camden County Prosecutor's Office told the Philadelphia Inquirer. Murders and robberies, however, were down for the period.

NATO needs to develop an anti-missile defence system as a deterrence, the alliance chief said Friday, while seeking to assure Moscow that the organisation posed no threat to Russia. "We must develop an effective missile defence," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told an international conference in the Polish capital. "In the coming years we will probably face many more countries and possibly even some non-state actors armed with long-range missiles and nuclear capabilities," he said. Rasmussen also insisted later during a press conference that "a nuclear capability will remain an essential part of a credible deterrence in the future."...

(3rd LD) U.S. vows unlimited deterrence against N. Korea By Sam Kim SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. pledged Thursday to mobilize its warfighting assets to their maximum capacity if needed to defend South Korea against North Korea, which continues to develop its nuclear and missile capabilities. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates "reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to provide extended deterrence for the ROK, using the full range of military capabilities, to include the U.S. nuclear umbrella, conventional strike, and missile capabilities," according to a joint statement with South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young.