President Obama delivered a brief press statement today in which he stated that rumors about Russian military activity in Crimea were "deeply disturbing" to the United States. He then drew dangerous red lines that threaten a serious international military conflict. What is the backdrop to the president's warning?Post-coup Kiev is not Ukraine -- even the media has noted that Ukraine is deeply divided -- and therefore it should have been expected that regions of Ukraine with a vast majority of...

Last week Ukraine saw its worst violence since the break-up of the Soviet Union over 20 years ago. Protesters occupying the main square in the capitol city, Kiev, clashed with police leaving many protesters and police dead and many more wounded. It is an ongoing tragedy and it looks like there is no end in sight. The current conflict stems from a divide between western Ukraine, which seeks a closer association with the European Union, and the eastern part of the country, which has closer...

The EU's so-called "crisis plan" for Ukraine is itself a recipe for catastrophe. It is a brokered plan by the wrong people, under extreme (western) outside pressure, and on behalf of a small group of backward looking and dangerous ideologues. The plan essentially leaves Ukraine ungovernable and inadvertently promotes a secessionist agenda.The EU's really bad planThe idea to return to the constitutional order of 2004 is pointless and truly bizarre. One of the key issues during the Orange...

“The pretext of propagating liberty can make no difference. Every nation has a right to carve out its own happiness in its own way, and it is the height of presumption in another to attempt to fashion its political creed.” -Alex. Hamilton to George Washington, 2 May 1793. It always seems to start with the BBC. Months ago when the Ukrainian president patiently explained that his country’s economic and energy realities — which Vladimir Putin underscored — required that it stay close to Russia...

(click to enlarge)Failure of the US policy of regime change in Syria is leding once again to the contemplation of "options." One of those that is much discussed is that of a no-fly zone covering all of Syria. Let's be clear as to what would be involved in that option: All Syrian ground based air defense would have to be suppressed and kept suppressed. All Syrian airfields would have to be wrecked with runways cratered, maintenance facilities destroyed, etc. All Syrian Air Force aircraft would...

To discuss the Ukrainian crisis in terms of a choice between Europe and Russia is misleading for several reasons. First, the European issue has been ruthlessly exploited by the Ukrainian opposition and its Western backers as an excuse for overthrowing the government illegally and by force. Opposition leaders have never distanced themselves from the most radical elements on the streets of Kiev, even though these include neo-Nazis. On the contrary, they have done everything to use their violence...

Many empires have risen and fallen over the course of recorded history. All were created by force. Yet all have tried to legitimize that force, by passing laws and seeking to establish some sort of order that would outlive their military supremacy. Some have been more successful at this than others. The Atlantic Empire, on the other hand, is the only example in history of an imperial enterprise destroying its own laws, undermining its own legitimacy in pursuit of power.Atlantist politicians...

US-led Western regime change in Syria might be described as a process of creative destruction. Like Schumpeter’s economic concept of cyclical creative destruction, so too Washington’s political machinations in Syria seem to be playing out likewise. We begin with the premise that the humanitarian crisis in Syria over the past nearly three years is largely as a result of a Western covert proxy war inflicted on that country. The objective is to destabilize, terrorize and eventuate regime change...

“Totalitarian paranoia runs deep in American society, and it now inhabits the highest levels of government… Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America has succumbed to a form of historical amnesia fed by a culture of fear, militarization and precarity. Relegated to the dustbin of organized forgetting were the long-standing abuses carried out by America’s intelligence agencies and the public’s long-standing distrust of the FBI, government wiretaps and police actions that threatened privacy...

Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen testified before Congress for the first time since replacing Ben Bernanke at the beginning of the month. Her testimony confirmed what many of us suspected, that interventionist Keynesian policies at the Federal Reserve are well-entrenched and far from over. Mrs. Yellen practically bent over backwards to reassure Wall Street that the Fed would continue its accommodative monetary policy well into any new economic recovery. The same monetary policy...

The New York Times is reporting that most Americans, including a majority in Florida, favor normalizing relations with Cuba, which would mean a lifting of cruel and brutal economic embargo that the U.S. government has been enforcing against the Cuban people for more than 50 years. It’s about time. Maybe Americans are finally figuring out that the embargo is an infringement on the rights and freedoms of the American people, including freedom of travel, freedom of association, and economic...

The philosophical and legal foundation of the US government (and some other governments) is that government officials are the agents of the citizens—in the familiar phrase, those who govern have the “consent of the governed.” An agent, of course, is someone I authorize to act on my behalf. For a host of reasons, this doctrine has always been more or less absurd, but its absurdity has been placed in stark relief recently by the government’s mass spying, which violates the Constitution, various...

An unfortunate legacy of the Cold War is the negative attitude some American conservatives yet harbor toward Russia. Conditioned for decades to see Russia and the Soviet Union as synonymous, they still view post-communist Russia as a threat. They forget that Tsarist Russia was the most conservative great power, a bastion of Christian monarchy loathed by revolutionaries, Jacobins, and democrats. Joseph de Maistre was not alone among 19th-century conservatives in finding refuge and hope in...