The RPI Challenge

Do you, like 56 percent of the US population, believe that the US should "not get too involved" in the Ukraine situation? Do you think that the US administration putting us on a war footing with Russia is a bad idea? Are you concerned that the new, US-backed leaders of Ukraine -- not being elected -- might lack democratic legitimacy? Are you tempted to speak out against US policy in Ukraine; are you tempted to criticize the new Ukrainian regime?Be careful what you say. Be careful what you...

Washington, enabled by its compliant but stupid NATO puppets, is pushing the Ukrainian situation closer to war. German Chancellor Merkel has failed her country, Europe, and world peace. Germany is the strength of the EU and NATO. Had Merkel said “No” to sanctions on Russia, that would have been the end of the crisis that Washington is brewing, a crisis unlikely to be ended short of war. But Merkel has signed away the sovereignty of the German nation and assigned the fate of Germany to a...

One wonders how deep a hole the United States and the EU are going to dig for themselves in Ukraine. It was, of course, U.S. and EU leaders — and their media acolytes — who caused the problem we face today by intervening on behalf of self-styled “democrats” in Kiev who without foreign intervention could not have overthrown the Ukrainian president. It is getting to be that any half-baked gaggle of protestors at any location on the planet need only to chant the word “democracy” and the West will...

We see in the United States government’s “targeted killings” program carried out by drones and other means a perversion of the law so extreme that it brings to mind the introductory paragraph of Frederic Bastiat’s classic book The Law: The law perverted! The law — and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation — the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its...

“I thought I had freedom of speech here,” the man said to the police officer. “You don’t. You just lost it,” the officer replied. Once again, the U.S. government is attempting to police the world when it should be policing its own law enforcement agencies. We’ve got a warship cruising the Black Sea, fighter jets patrolling the Baltic skies, and a guided-missile destroyer searching the South China Sea for the downed Malaysia Airlines flight. All the while, back home in the U.S., our...

Notwithstanding its recent decision to lift its debt ceiling once again to enable it to add to its ever-growing mountain of debt, the US government has now issued a new pledge, this one being as a guarantor of a $1 billion loan to the new government of Ukraine. Unfortunately, that’s not all that US officials have pledged in that part of the world. I wonder how many Americans realize that the US government has also pledged the lives and limbs of America’s young people in the defense of nations...

General Martin Dempsey, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a lengthy interview to Judy Woodruff on Friday night's PBS News Hour and delivered a carefully balanced picture of how the U.S. military is managing the unfolding Ukraine crisis, both reassuring European NATO allies that treaty obligations will be honored, while maintaining constant communications with Russian counterparts, to assure there are no miscalculations leading to conflict. Gen. Dempsey, clearly aware of the...

Soviet leader Josef Stalin used to shrug off critics by his favorite Central Asian saying: “The dogs bark; the caravan moves on.” Russia’s hard-eyed president, Vladimir Putin, is following the same strategy over Ukraine and Crimea. Putin swiftly moved his knight into the empty chess square of Crimea, thereby regaining full control of one of Russia’s four strategic port regions: Sevastopol, Murmansk, St Petersburg and Vladivostok. Sevastopol, now firmly in Moscow’s hands, is Russia’s sole...

All the assumptions on which… this policy [was] based turned out to be wrong…. British domestic opinion would prove hard to persuade that seeking the return… of a fortress on the Black Sea merited the risk of a war with Russia. -UK Foreign Secretary William Hague on the Anglo-Russian Crisis (1791) [1] The current imbroglio over Crimea may be America’s first crisis with Russia in the Black Sea, but it is not Britain’s. Even the Crimean War (1854-56) was not Britain’s first face-off with Russia....

At the end of the Cold War, the American people had a grand opportunity, one that entailed the dismantling of the national-security state apparatus that had been grafted onto our governmental system after the end of World War II. It would have made sense, given that the justification for making the national-security state apparatus a permanent feature of American life was the Cold War itself. No more Cold War should have meant no more national-security state. Unfortunately, however, that was...

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a Washington D.C-based quasi-governmental organization funded by the U.S. which boasts that it is "supporting freedom around the world."[1] Alan Weinstein, one of the founders of the NED, explained in 1991: A lot of what we [NED] do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA [2] Most of the NED, and its affiliated organizations, deals with influencing political processes abroad. The means employed range from influencing civil society, media,...

Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz appeared on Fox News's "Your World with Neil Cavuto" last week and was asked about the rising security situation. He answered with a long pause: “Ronald Reagan ...” he said, and it just hung there, for a provocative moment before he started up again. It seemed just briefly that Shultz’s worshipful intoning of The Gipper’s name alone would be an "enough said" answer. But many in the mainstream media first turned to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) Time...

US officials and the mainstream press are aflame with outrage and indignation over Russia’s invasion of Crimea. If only they would feel the same degree of outrage and indignation over what the US national security state, which was grafted onto our governmental system without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment, has done to our American republic. Isn’t it fascinating how US officials and the mainstream media are able to quickly arrive at a moral judgment condemning foreign...