Free Republic

House conservatives have stymied proposed supplemental funding packages for Ukraine since the fall. But their justifications for further delays in delivering military aid to Kyiv got little oxygen during an April 17 defense budget hearing before a key appropriations panel. “With Mr. Putin saying very openly and repeatedly that he wants to restore the old Soviet Union, all of the nation states, in Eastern Europe especially, are looking to us,” House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said, referring to the Russian leader’s demands seeking no further NATO expansion, no missiles on Russia’s borders, and a return of...

The next summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is set for July of this year in Washington, D.C., following the 75th anniversary of the alliance’s founding on April 4. The organization’s leading lights will discuss “important issues” and “provide strategic direction” for NATO. The NATO website also explains to curious readers that the organization is devoted to an “understanding” and “awareness” of the “security environment.” Those of us who have grown skeptical of NATO and its intentions can only imagine what this press release verbiage might mean, as an organization established to counter the Soviet threat during...

Note: I apologize in advance for the potentially rambling nature of this piece, which is something of a stream of consciousness geostrategic meditation. It’s possible that this is too abstract to be interesting. If so, please berate me in the comments. I am a great lover of chess. While no more than a middling player myself, I am endlessly entertained by the seemingly countless variations and strategic contrivances that the world’s great players can create from that same, familiar beginning. Despite being an old game (the rules that we know today emerged in 15th Century Europe), it has resisted the...

Russia on Tuesday denounced the suspension of humanitarian funds by several Western countries to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), describing it as a “collective punishment” for the Gaza population. At least 16 Western countries, including the United States, suspended funding to the UN agency last week, after Israel accused some of its staff members of involvement in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli territory. During a press conference in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticized the Western countries’ “wrong decision” as a “collective punishment” against the Gaza residents, which is “prohibited” by international humanitarian law.

Russia said that reports of proposals to flood the tunnels were shocking and warned that "if done, this will be a war crime." "Such flooding could be considered analogous to 'do not spare them' order, but it is not only about that and not only about civilians who may be in those tunnels," the statement read. "Of course, there most likely will be civilians, for where else would they go from the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza." Over the last two months, Russia has repeatedly condemned Israel's actions in Gaza, with Vladimir Putin initially blaming the Hamas attacks in Israel as...

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday praised his country’s relations with Iran at a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi, as the two discussed the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Since launching its assault on Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has sought to deepen its economic and political ties with Tehran, both of which have been sanctioned by the West. “Our relations are developing very well. Please convey my best wishes to leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei,” Putin told Raisi, referring to Iran’s head of state. “Thanks to his support, we have gained good momentum over the...

RIGA, Latvia — When a Hamas delegation visited Moscow in late October, Russian diplomats handed them a list of eight Russian-Israeli citizens being held hostage in Gaza — captives Russia wanted the Palestinian militant group to set free. Hamas immediately signaled that the list would get special attention, state-run media reported. SNIP The special treatment for the abducted Russians is a new manifestation of the growing alignment between the Kremlin and Hamas, a relationship in which President Vladimir Putin is seeking to present himself as a leader and champion of a new “multipolar world order” and the Palestinian militant group...

Russia and Iran on Monday denounced recent Israeli airstrikes on Syria’s Damascus International Airport, warning that such actions could further aggravate tensions in the Middle East. “We regard the ongoing attacks on the territory of the Syrian Republic as a gross violation of the sovereignty of this state and the basic norms of international law. We strongly condemn Israel’s latest provocative attack on an important Syrian civilian infrastructure facility,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a statement. -snip- Separately, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Nasser Kanaani accused Israel of deliberately escalating tensions in the West Asia region through attacks...

Israel will hardly be able to ensure its security even by “drowning the Gaza Strip in blood,” Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov said on Monday. “Even by decapitating Hamas and even by drowning the Gaza Strip in blood it will hardly be possible to ensure Israel's security. After some time, the tide of hatred and terrorism may rise again with renewed force. This cannot be ruled out,” Ushakov said as cited by state news agency TASS. “The Palestinian problem is unrivalled in terms of its ability to spread to the global level,” he added. “Israel's military measures fail to narrow...

Hamas thanked Vladimir Putin for his support for the “Palestinian cause” as the terror group released a Russian hostage from the Gaza Strip on Sunday afternoon. It said its release of a Russian citizen from the war-ravaged territory was made in appreciation of the position taken by Moscow’s position on the conflict with Israel. “In response to the efforts of Russian president Putin and in appreciation of the Russian position in support of the Palestinian cause, we released a detainee who holds Russian citizenship,” Hamas said.

US unilateralism has wrecked the chances of peace in the Middle East, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, told a crisis Brics meeting on Gaza as he attempted to woo leaders of the global south. The virtual meeting of 11 nations, convened by South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, came as Arab foreign ministers toured capitals to drum up support for a fresh UN security council resolution mandating Israel to introduce a full ceasefire and end what they say are breaches of international humanitarian law. ...Putin told the Brics meeting that the US was undermining the chances of peace by trying to...

[Uncompromising condemnation of the Hamas attack at the beginning of the war - Narendra Modi] Since 1948, India has not supported Israel's wars even once. In the past, it supported its enemies, and even sent Arab countries aid. A few hours since the images of the massacre taking place in the south of Israel began to flow on the morning of October 7, a series of condemnations from world leaders began to accumulate. One condemnation was particularly historic: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the world's largest democracy and one of its most popular leaders, tweeted his uncompromising...

Some audience members came up to me after a speech I gave in downtown Tokyo in late April. They were hopping mad at Rahm Emanuel, the man whom Washington sent a little over a year ago to do its business in Japan. And what does that business entail? If Emanuel’s April tweets are any indication, it entails interfering in internal Japanese political matters. (snip) In my April speech in Tokyo, I referred to the American Embassy down the street as the “sotokufu,” the “governor-general” of Japan. The audience broke into thundering applause. I said that it was time to throw...

Historians will mark the low point of Pax Americana in the Middle East by several rather brutal humiliations that American prestige has undergone under President Joe Biden’s presidency. Examples would include having phone call requests by the US president declined by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in March last year and mass media pictures of the impersonal fist-bump between Joe Biden and de facto ruler and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed Bin Salman (or “MBS” as he is familiarly called) in July. The US president had come to Riyadh with a begging bowl but failed to convince...

We recently learned a lesson which was more than three decades in the making. The lesson partially stems from two seemingly unrelated events. The world noted the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine at the end of February. And after an air incursion by a spy balloon, saber-rattling over Taiwan and TikTok dance videos blowing up everyone’s phone, the U.S. Congress suddenly grew more serious about China. This culminated in a prime-time House hearing over the winter studying the threat posed by Beijing by a special House committee designed just to study problems between the U.S. and China. The...

Part 2 of the discussion of current events in the middle east and how it fits with long-term goals of various countries, ethnic groups and religious factions. Too many topics covered to easily summarize. The video is 1 hour long and went by very quickly when I watched it last night.

Great interview by an excellent military historian.

FARMINGTON – Services were Monday in Albuquerque for international energy industry expert and Farmington Daily Times columnist Dr. Daniel Fine, 88, who died Sept. 26 in a Miami hospital following complications due to a surgical procedure, his son, William Fine, said. Fine, widely acknowledged as an expert in world energy markets and geopolitics, was held in high esteem by many state and regional business leaders. He had been set to give a lecture alongside local businessman T. Greg Merrion in Farmington last month. “He was pretty great at getting a read at what was coming down the pike,” said Merrion,...

Will 2022 turn out be a hinge year, as a moment when long-standing trends in geopolitics suddenly shifted in a different direction? This week, two important writers, one a long-established and prolific historian, the other a provocative presence on the internet, have argued persuasively that the answer is yes. But there's one other interesting point in common: Neither sees the United States as having played a decisive role in the sudden shift. Over the years, Niall Ferguson has written admiringly about the 19th-century Rothschilds and the 20th century’s Henry Kissinger and has highlighted the positive achievements of Britain’s empire and...

The invisible government of the Deep State has long worked with the Nazis to accomplish its nefarious objectives, going back to the rise of Hitler. =============================================================== Witness Osh, Kyrgyzstan, a modest outpost in Central Asia. Boiling clouds enliven the sky as a breeze lazily strums the tall grass. Meanwhile a farmer tends his yaks, as clouds of gnats move across a meadow in a body like a mournful specter. Life here has gone on in a relatively unbroken pattern for thousands of years. But peasants have noticed something unusual appearing in the soil of late: train tracks. The construction is...