The RPI Challenge

The Paris talks on Ukraine have enabled Putin and Zelensky to meet for the first time. But they have agreed only to kick the can down the road, to agree to disagree, while seeking progress on issues other than the war in Donbass. It would be difficult to exaggerate the weakness of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s position. He is a political novice facing perhaps the most experienced and formidable statesman in the world. Although an intelligent man, the former TV comedian says he likes...

One might postulate that the United States is regularly supporting so-called allies whose very nature will eventually generate blowback that will do terrible damage to actual American interests. The recent example of the mass shooting at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida by Saudi Second Lieutenant Mohammed Alshamrani is illustrative. Alshamrani killed three American sailors while three other Saudi students filmed what was taking place, presumably for posting on social media. Though...

While Inspector General Michael Horowitz did a pretty fair job of documenting the crimes of the FBI in getting the green light from a Federal Judge to spy on Carter Page as an ostensible agent of the Russians, he utterly failed to investigate the cornerstone (aka the "predicate") for launching this whole sordid affair. That predicate? George Papadopoulos, an obscure foreign policy advisor to the Trump Campaign, reportedly told Australia's High Commissioner to the UK (and Clinton crony),...

The Democratic leadership announced today that it has decided that President Donald Trump will be accused of just two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. I commend the Committee in dropping the previous claims of bribery, extortion, campaign finance and obstruction of justice. While my fellow witnesses made good-faith arguments for those articles, my testimony primarily focused on the legal and constitutional flaws in claiming those criminal acts. I also...

The Julian Assange drama drags on. Though he continues to sit in a top security British prison awaiting developments in his expected extradition to the United States, the Spanish High Court has been given permission to interview him. Assange is claiming that the Spanish company contracted with by the Ecuadorean government to do embassy security in London spied on him using both audio and video devices. The recordings apparently included conversations with Assange’s lawyers outlining his...

It is clear that mainstream US media correspondents are no fans of the Venezuelan government. But rarely do you hear them speak so openly about their biases. One Caracas-based correspondent now working for the New York Times told me on the record that he employs “sexy tricks” to “hook” readers on dubious articles demonizing the socialist government of Venezuela. Anatoly Kurmanaev made this revealing comment and many more to during an interview I conducted with him for my PhD and book on the...

Imagine that President Trump spent his phone call with the Ukrainian president threatening to withhold military aid unless the Ukrainian government agreed to use the money to purchase weapons from a US manufacturer. Does anyone seriously think that foreign service professionals and deep state operatives would be so shocked and offended by Trump’s request that they would launch efforts to impeach him? Would Congress view this as “high crimes and misdemeanors” or applaud Trump for carrying out...

“Old Age,” the great French President Charles De Gaulle famously said, “is a shipwreck.” We should certainly feel that way about the 70th birthday celebrations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – the most venerable security alliance and organization in the world. The London Summit made it clear to the whole world: NATO at 70 has become a global joke. NATO does not strengthen the defensive capabilities of its members against real threats such as illegal immigration, pandemic diseases,...

By 1989, it had become apparent to all — everyone except the CIA, of course — that the Soviet economy, and thus the Soviet state was in very deep trouble. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down in the face of Soviet impotence. And, with the Cold-War corpse not even cold yet, president George Bush used the newly apparent Soviet weakness as an opportunity to expand US foreign interventionism beyond the limits that had been imposed on it by a competing Soviet Union. Over the next decade,...

In June of this year we examined why the United States will not attack Iran subsequent to raised tensions in the region. Six months later on the cusp of 2020, the United States has not attacked Iran militarily ... yet. However, Defense Secretary Esper just threatened to deploy 14K more US mercenary* troops to the Middle East. So, let’s examine current US / Israeli intent regarding Iran again by looking at individual tactical elements which may contribute to an overall strategic picture. One...

I suppose that by now everyone has heard of Trump’s offer to send the American military to “wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth,” which he asserts can be done “quickly and effectively. “ Trump phrased this as an offer to help, not a threat to invade, which is reassuring. AMLO, Mexico’s president, wisely declined the offer. While the President seems to have made the offer in good faith, he has little idea of Mexico, the military, or the cartels. The American...

Following up on his previous call for caution in the effort in the United States House of Representatives to impeach President Donald Trump, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley on Wednesday presented to the House Judiciary Committee oral testimony and an extensive written statement regarding the case as it now stands for impeaching the president. Unlike other witnesses at the hearing, Turley did not give the deed his blessing.There was quite a backlash against Turley for...

It is supremely ironic that Pentagon officials take an oath to support and defend the Constitution because they intentionally destroyed the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution when they set up their “judicial” system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In fact, the very reason the Pentagon established its system in Cuba, rather than the United States, was to circumvent and avoid the provisions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, whenever someone was charged...

When I retired as a Detective from the NYPD I moved to Florida and decided to join a local sheriff’s office to work as a Deputy. I needed to make some money and it was the only job for which I was qualified. I was accepted and took the job. From the start I wanted to be the ultimate Libertarian cop. I was not going to arrest anyone for drugs or victimless crimes and I was going to try my best to make as many quality arrests as possible. For a good part of those 3 years I was able to do my...

Seventy is normally considered a ripe old age at which people should be enjoying retirement. The NATO alliance, which meets to celebrate its anniversary in London, should have been pensioned off long ago. The French president, who told the Economist in early November that NATO was “brain dead”, seems determined to jolt the alliance and its members out of their collective coma. In a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Paris on November 28, Macron tried to...