The RPI Challenge

In the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, those warning of the possible dangers of U.S. involvement were assured that such concerns were baseless. The prevailing line insisted that nobody in Washington is even considering let alone advocating that the U.S. become militarily involved in a conflict with Russia. That the concern was based not on the belief that the U.S. would actively seek such a war, but rather on the oft-unintended consequences of being swamped with war...

When the Bush Administration announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be eligible for NATO membership, I knew it was a terrible idea. Nearly two decades after the end of both the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War, expanding NATO made no sense. NATO itself made no sense. Explaining my “no” vote on a bill to endorse the expansion, I said at the time: NATO is an organization whose purpose ended with the end of its Warsaw Pact adversary… This current round of NATO expansion is a political...

(This is a version of an RPI update to subscribers sent yesterday. Subscribe here.)The media and the war machine (or do I repeat myself?) want us to take sides in the Russo/Ukraine war. To those of us with long histories in military conflicts in which the US foreign policy establishment, media, and military have an interest, the terms are always framed as white hats and black hats - and you had better choose a side!  "Are you on the side of FREEDOM or are you a puppet of [insert Hitler proxy...

As of this writing, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is hunkered down in his bunker somewhere in Kiev, as the sound of the encroaching war gets closer and closer. A grim scene, to be sure.All the US and EU kisses and roses leading up to this end have turned to dust and barbed wire, as a no-doubt deeply bitter Zelensky has nothing left but to cry out in anger: Zelensky earlier: "Who is ready to fight with us? I do not see anyone. Who is ready to give Ukraine a guarantee of NATO...

Last year, Philip Dormitzer, the chief scientific officer at Pfizer, described Israel as “a sort of laboratory” to “see the effect” of his company’s vaccines. Well, it took over a year into the vaccine drive that injected most Israelis with three shots and some with four to finally publish information on adverse events. What Israel published earlier this month based on a health ministry survey of 2,049 people who got booster shots is not only damning, but unmistakably revealing that there is...

"Bad" Vlad Putin only "took over" part of Ukraine because of President Biden's weakness. So says many in the US right wing. A "real man" president would have imposed costs so prohibitive that Putin would never have dreamed of recognizing what has been de facto reality since 2014: that the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine wants no part of the US-installed government in Kiev.So goes the thinking of the armchair right-wingers. And I don't even mean neocons: plenty of those now scoring body blows...

The US used to produce experts on Soviet and Russian affairs like Jack Matlock. Today we get the likes of Michael McFaul. The decline of popular interest in Russian-area studies, combined with intellectual laziness on the part of the average US citizen, is to blame. On February 21, Russia’s President Vladmir Putin gave what will most likely go down in history as one of the most important speeches in modern history. It was a brutally honest example of how current events are shaped by the forces...

Foreign policy hawks in the United States habitually equate a noncommunist Russia with the totalitarian Soviet Union. An especially graphic example is a recent article in 19FortyFive by Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. The title, "Russia Was a Rogue State Long before Ukraine and Georgia," accurately conveys the extent of Rubin’s Russophobia. Predictably, he blames Moscow entirely for the 2008 Georgia war, even though a European Union...

One can frequently disagree with government policies without necessarily regarding them with disgust, but the Joe Biden Administration has turned that corner, first with its senseless promotion of a new Cold War that could turn hot with Russia and, more recently, with its actions undertaken to undermine and punish Afghanistan. The fact that the White House wraps itself in the sanctimonious, self-righteous twaddle that is so much the hallmark of the political left is bad enough, but when the...

According to numbers released by the US government, consumer prices have increased by 7.5 percent in the past year, the steepest increase since 1982. The actual price increases are even worse than the government numbers suggest, given that the “official” statistics are manipulated to understate the real rate of price increases. According to John Williams of ShadowStats, prices have actually increased by around 15 percent over the past year.The fact that prices remain at historically high...

On President’s Day weekend, let us commemorate the record of the best president in US history: John Tyler. A random poll of Americans would draw mostly puzzled looks at the name, but according to Independent Institute Senior Fellow Ivan Eland, in his 2009 ranking of the presidents, Recarving Rushmore, this 10th US president has the strongest record upholding Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty. On the prosperity front, Tyler vetoed both the attempt to revive the national bank, and a bill to raise...

Well you'll be shocked to learn that, while the Ukraine invasion we've been told for weeks was happening any day now still has not occurred, the US and UK have declared that Russia attacked Ukraine in an invisible and unverifiable way for which the evidence is secret. "The White House blamed Russia on Friday for this week’s cyberattacks targeting Ukraine’s defense ministry and major banks and warned of the potential for more significant disruptions in the days ahead," AP reports. "Anne...