Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, needs a way to lose the war with Russia. American voters may have just given it to him. In his victory speech early in the morning of November 6, President-elect Donald Trump said, “I will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises.” He promised fixing our borders. He promised the greatest economic comeback. But there is only one thing he promised to do even before he took office and that is end the war in Ukraine. That will be the first test of his governing motto. Trump has been vague about how exactly...
The Nukes or NATO: The Hidden Threat Behind Zelensky’s Victory Plan
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been on a tour of the capitals of Europe promoting his Ukrainian Victory Plan. It is apt that he has billed it a victory plan and not a peace plan because there is nothing of peace in it. The plan aims to strengthen Ukraine militarily so that Russia is forced with the decision of “going into diplomacy or going to lose its war machine.” But, more dangerously than feeding the war and the illusion of a Ukrainian victory, each of the key military points of the plan promotes, not only war, but an expanded war between Russia and NATO. “The first and very...
Three Paths to a Wider War in the Middle East
“We’re going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out,” U.S. President Joe Biden promised when war erupted in Gaza. But that foreign policy legacy is in tatters. War has spread from Gaza to Lebanon and has arrived at the doorstep of Iran. There is a real danger that the war could continue to spread. On October 1, Iran demonstrated its capability to evade Israel’s air defense systems and deliver ballistic missiles to their targets in Israel. Since then, Hezbollah has demonstrated the ability to evade Israel’s air defense systems with slower moving drones. Israel has...
Kamala Harris Isn’t Listening to U.S. Intelligence on Iran
Who is “America’s greatest adversary?” That is the question 60 Minutes asked Vice President Kamala Harris. “I think there’s an obvious one in mind, which is Iran,” was her answer. She gave two reasons for her verdict: "Iran has American blood on their hands" and "what we need to do to ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power, that is one of my highest priorities." All three claims are strange. That Iran is America’s greatest adversary comes as a surprise after the United States has spent the past two and a half years comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to...
Orwell’s War: When War is the Path to Peace
The freshly elected President Barack Obama probably never imagined that he would be delivering his Nobel Peace Prize lecture by defending war. But there he was, in December 2009, doing just that. “I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated,” he said. “[P]erhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.” Obama told his audience that he is mindful of what “Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony...
Do Not Risk Calling Putin’s Bluff
As Russia continues its advance west toward the key logistical city of Pokrovsk, whose fall would threaten Ukraine’s ability to supply its troops in the Donbas and expose fields to the west of the city over which Russian troops can pour into the rest of Donbas, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demands daily that the West grant permission for Ukraine to use its long-range missiles to fire deeper into Russian territory. On September 14, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House to discuss granting Ukraine permission to use American and British...
Ukraine at the Crossroads
The West is being increasingly confronted with the cold realization that Ukraine cannot win this war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has set as a threshold for victory, not only the recapture of territory up to his country's prewar borders, but the reclamation of all of its territory to the 2014 border, including the Donbas and Crimea. There are few among Ukraine’s Western backers who subscribe any longer to that illusion. But Western governments and the Western media delude their public into believing that the war is a stalemate that Russia also cannot win. This assessment is based...
Double Standards Reveal the True Western Strategy
Two recent events in Europe have the potential to send shock waves well beyond the continent. They are significant both in themselves and in how their double standards chisel away at the West’s heroic narrative and reveal its true cynical strategy. The first is France’s compromising of democracy in the appointment of a new prime minister; the second is Turkey’s application for membership in BRICS. In August, President Nicolás Maduro declared that he had won re-election in Venezuela by a vote of 51.95% to 43.18%. The United States was quick to ride in as the champion of democracy. White House...