Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute

Ukraine at the Crossroads

by Ted Snider | Sep 19, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

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

by Ted Snider | Sep 13, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

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...

Stand Up to Zelensky: A Plea for Sanity

by Ted Snider | Sep 5, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

It is understandable that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is asking the West for all the help they can deliver. It is the primary responsibility of a nation’s leader to protect the citizens of his nation. But by the same accounting, it is the primary responsibility of U.S. President Joe Biden to protect the citizens of his country. It is partly for that reason that the Biden administration has, from the beginning, formulated its goal in Ukraine as protecting its territory and sovereignty while avoiding direct conflict with Russia that could lead to a larger Russia-NATO war. But, from...

The U.S. is Being Accused of Three Coups

by Ted Snider | Aug 28, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The United States has a long legacy of coups. During the Cold War, Washington participated in no less than sixty-four covert coups. They did not end with the Cold War. Since then, the U.S. has carried out or facilitated several coups, including in Haiti, Venezuela, Brazil, Honduras, Paraguay, Bolivia, Egypt, and Ukraine. Recently, the United States has been accused of participation in three more coups. The degree of evidence and clarity varies, and, unlike in the above cases, these cases are not yet closed. Haiti has a horrible history of American interference and coups. The latest chapter...

The Cost of Kursk

by Ted Snider | Aug 21, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The bold and surprising incursion across the border into the Kursk region of Russia has won Ukraine the temporary possession of several Russian villages and a few hundred square miles of Russian territory. But the strategically cheap Russian land may have been bought at a very costly price. The Ukrainian armed forces managed a lightning advance through largely undefended territory. But that territory is defended now, and the advance seems already to have been slowed. And though it seems to have lost momentum well short of its goals, Ukraine may still have to pay the full price. Ukraine’s...

China’s Rising Diplomatic Power

by Ted Snider | Aug 14, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The United States is working hard to create a global narrative of itself as the leader of a generational struggle to advance democracy, peace, and international law and push back the forces of autocracy, aggression, and erosion of the rule of law. The facts look strangely different than the fiction. While the U.S. is energetically working to inhibit diplomacy and exploit conflict to advance its own economic and hegemonic interests, China, one of the arch villains of the American narrative, is pushing diplomacy. The U.S. is blocking diplomacy in Ukraine, declining to push diplomacy in Gaza,...

Look Who’s Talking: America, Russia, Ukraine, China, and Palestine

by Ted Snider | Aug 6, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In recent weeks, a flurry of unexpected talks and signals of willingness for talks have taken place that provide hope in a number of war zones. The U.S. is talking to Russia, there are openings for Russia to talk to Ukraine, Ukraine is talking to China, and China is talking to Palestine. At the beginning of August, the United States and Russia completed a prisoner exchange. The Western media obsessed over two details. One being the fact that it was the biggest prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia since the end of the Cold War. And second, that there was a gaping moral inequivalence...

The U.S. Continues to Undermine Its Own Interests in Iran

by Ted Snider | Jul 17, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The American-led isolation of Iran is springing leaks all over. It seems that wherever Iran knocks, everyone answers. Except the United States. Instead, the U.S. continues to close the door, following a long pattern with Iran of undermining its own interests. In 2016, Bahrain followed Saudi Arabia in cutting ties with Iran. But in 2024, it began to explore following Saudi Arabia in restoring ties with Iran. On March 10, 2023, Iran and Saudi Arabia stunned the world by announcing that China had brokered an agreement “to resume diplomatic relations between them and re-open their embassies and...