Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute

America’s Ugly History with the International Criminal Court

by Ted Snider | May 30, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

On May 20, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri. Officials in Washington lashed out against the court and began preparations to pressure the ICC to back off on pursuing the arrests. Netanyahu and Gallant, the United States insisted, should be left alone or left to Israel’s courts. The Hamas officials should be held accountable, according to the State...

Did the U.S. Give the Go-Ahead to Strike Russia with Long Range Missiles?

by Ted Snider | May 22, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

There are a number of questions that could be asked about U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken singing “Rockin’ in the Free World” in a bar in Kiev. The first is regarding the appropriateness of singing a song while hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers are being wounded or killed every day in a new Russian push. The second is regarding why Blinken was relaxing in a bar instead of attending all night meetings when the war that the United States encouraged Ukraine to fight instead of exploring a diplomatic settlement has gone so wrong. But the most important question may be whether Blinken got the...

Biden Said Putin Killed Navalny; He Didn’t

by Ted Snider | May 8, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

There are plenty of very real things to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin for, not least of which is invading Ukraine. But lying (in this instance) may not be one of them. Putin lied when he said Russia was not going to invade Ukraine. But, wrong though the invasion may have been, it is not unprecedented for a leader not to telegraph an invasion. Putin may also have been hoping to avoid an invasionup to the last moment, had the United States agreed to negotiate NATO expansion, or if Ukraine had agreed to negotiate the Minsk Accord to protect ethnic Russians in their country. Putin,...

Troops on the Ground: Biden’s Plan for Ukraine

by Ted Snider | May 1, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Despite billions of dollars of military aid, equipment maintenance, training, intelligence, and planning from the United States and its partners in the political West, the war in Ukraine is going very badly. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi, says “the situation at the front has escalated.” He says that Russia has “concentrated major efforts in several sectors, creating a significant advantage in forces and means. They attack actively along the entire front line. In some sectors,” he admits, “they achieved tactical gains.” The Russian Armed Forces are...

What Killed the Peace Talks in Ukraine?

by Ted Snider | Apr 25, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The accepted Western narrative is that, in February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with the intent of conquering the entire country. But there is a competing narrative that is compelling enough to be worthy of consideration. Following the United States' rebuff of their December 2021 proposal on mutual security guarantees, which included a written guarantee that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO, Russia launched a limited invasion of Ukraine that included only 120,000-190,000 troops, a force far smaller than Russia knew would be necessary to conquer the whole...

Last Weekend, Iran Changed Everything

by Ted Snider | Apr 18, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

On April 13, Iran responded to Israel’s attack on its embassy compound in Damascus that killed seven Iranian officers, including a very senior military official, General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, by launching over 300 drones and missiles at Israel from Iranian soil. U.S. officials, according to some reporting, say that four or five ballistic missiles hit the Nevatim air force base, while, according to other reporting, four other ballistic missiles hit a second air base. All reporting agrees that the bases were “lightly hit” and that there was “no significant damage.” Though the damage caused by...

How Big a Factor is Iran in the War on Gaza?

by Ted Snider | Apr 10, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In both Ukraine and Gaza, the Joe Biden administration has adopted the dangerous doctrine of war management in which, while not stopping a war diplomatically, it attempts to contain it and prevent it from becoming a wider war into which the United States might get drawn. This difficult to calibrate policy is being threatened in both theaters. In the Middle East, two Israeli actions have escalated the calibrated strikes between Israel and Iran, up to the threshold that Iran could absorb without feeling the necessity to respond. One was an airstrike in southern Lebanon that killed Ali Ahmad...

The Growing Fissures in NATO Unity

by Ted Snider | Apr 4, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Despite the damage done in Ukraine and NATO’s now apparent inability to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia strongly enough, one item in the western win column is the claim that NATO is more unified following the damage done by Donald Trump. Even aside from NATO preparing for the possible consequences of a second Trump term, that win may not be so unequivocal. Vladimir Putin “thought NATO would fracture and divide. Instead, NATO is more united and more unified than ever—than ever before," President Joe Biden said on February 21, 2023 and again in Europe on July 13. "I would argue NATO...