The RPI Challenge

The problem with the war in Ukraine is that it has been all smoke and mirrors. The Russian objectives of “demilitarisation” and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine wore a surreal look. The western narrative that the war is between Russia and Ukraine, where central issue is the Westphalian principle of national sovereignty, wore thin progressively leaving a void. There is a realisation today that the war is actually between Russia and NATO and that Ukraine had ceased to be a sovereign country since...

Starting with his campaign for the presidency and continuing until this week, President Joe Biden has maintained one clear and consistent position on his son’s influence peddling schemes. As a virtual mantra, Biden — and the White House staff — have categorically maintained that he had no knowledge of any foreign dealings of his son. That has been proven to be a lie, but Biden continued to maintain the position. Yet, on the eve of the testimony of a key Biden associate, the White House has...

A main question for Ukraine since it became an independent state was who or what could potentially guarantee its security. In the first years after 1991 the Ukrainian government thought that it could secure itself. It had inherited some Soviet nuclear weapons and it tried to bring those to use. But it failed to circumvent the security locks the Russian engineers had integrated into the nuclear warheads. There was also pressure from the US to get rid of those devices as the Ukraine at that time...

One of the popular mantras for some conservatives and some libertarians when it comes to foreign interventionism is the following: “We should never intervene abroad except when it is in ‘our national interest.’” There is one great big problem, however, with that qualifier: It serves as no limitation whatsoever with respect to foreign interventionism. Why is that?  Because the people who are ultimately deciding that particular issue are the Pentagon, the CIA and the president, all of whom...

To be blunt, both the US and Europe have stalked brazenly into traps of their own making. Caught in the lies and deceit woven around a claimed inheritance of superior cultural DNA, (vouchsafing, it is said, almost certain victory), the West is awakening to a fast-approaching disaster to which there are no easy solutions. Cultural exceptionalism, together with the prospect of a clear ‘win’ over Russia, are draining rapidly away – but exiting delusion is both slow and humiliating. The coming...

The US government has long tolerated and excused Ukraine’s authoritarian behavior even as Washington and its NATO partners have lavished financial and military aid on Kyiv. Evidence has now emerged, though, that the US national security apparatus has actively assisted Volodymr Zelensky’s regime to undermine the Constitutional rights of Americans. CNN notes damning revelations in a new report from the House Judiciary Committee. "The committee says SBU [Ukraine’s top security agency] sent the...

In a new article titled “Ukraine’s Lack of Weaponry and Training Risks Stalemate in Fight With Russia,” The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Michaels reports that western officials knew Ukrainian forces didn’t have the weapons and training necessary to succeed in their highly touted counteroffensive which was launched last month. Michaels writes: “When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons — from shells...

“Woke” culture has become so prominent in the American education system that it would not be surprising to learn that schools were replacing the once popular rhyme “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” with “sticks and stones may break my bones but opinions I disagree with can make me feel unsafe so they must be silenced.”Take the case of 12-year-old Liam Morrison, a student at Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts. This March, Liam was told to...

The NATO Summit in Vilnius (July 11-12) signalled that there is absolutely no possibility of talks to settle the Ukraine war in a foreseeable future. The war will only intensify, as the US and its allies still hope to inflict a military defeat on Russia although that is clearly beyond their capability.  On July 14, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of US joint chiefs of staff said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “far from a failure” but the fight ahead will be “long” and “bloody”. Milley has a...

Led by Representative Paul Gosar, a handful of Republican members of Congress launched a protest against 41 nominal “national emergency” declarations, many of which are decades old.  Rep. Gosar has argued the National Emergencies Act is “tyrannical,” granting 148 separate powers to the executive branch.  This July 18, the House voted down five resolutions to terminate national emergency powers which date back as far as 2003. The countries affected by the five resolutions include Congo, Yemen,...

Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes: mental health round-ups and involuntary detentions. Under the guise of public health and safety, the government could use mental health care as a pretext for targeting and locking up dissidents, activists and anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a government watch list. If we don’t nip this in the bud, and soon, this will become yet another pretext by which government officials can violate the First and Fourth...

To answer the question in my title you need only look at two numbers — 1) Ukraine’s rank in terms of natural resources and 2) the size of Ukraine’s Army in February 2022. Since the end of World War II the West has viewed Ukraine as a critical piece on the global chess board for attacking and defeating Russia. The joint CIA/MI-6 effort to destabilize the Soviet Union, which started in 1947 with the provision of funds, weapons and training to Stefan Bandera’s organization, was crushed by the...

Below is my column in the New York Post on one of the most damaging moments in yesterday’s hearing on the IRS whistleblowers alleging special treatment for Hunter Biden in their criminal investigation. What was most remarkable was not just the content but the cause of the incriminating statement. Rep. Dan Goldman’s friendly fire incident produced Dresden-level damage for the Biden defense. Here is the column: One of the most basic lessons that we teach law students is that you should “never...

Quite some time ago, I wrote about the major winter/spring offensive which the Russians appeared to be preparing, according to satellite imagery and other indicators, with a massive build-up of forces in the north and south. But nothing much materialized from that. Even after mobilization and training, most of those troops have not yet been put into front-line action. I've been wondering what is really going on with this ''stalemate'' in Ukraine with the Russian and Ukrainian militaries. It's...

Hubris consists in believing that a contrived narrative can, in and of itself, bring victory. It is a fantasy that has swept through the West – most emphatically since the 17th century. Recently, the Daily Telegraph published a ridiculous nine minute video purporting to show that ‘narratives win wars’, and that set-backs in the battlespace are incidentals: What matters is to have a thread of unitary narrative articulated, both vertically and horizontally, throughout the spectrum – from the...

I've been waiting for the hubbub to die down since the NATO conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 11-12 July 2023, waiting for someone — anyone — to point out the obvious reason for why the Ukraine's cocaine-sniffing mascot-president Zelensky, having been lionized only a year ago, has suddenly fallen into disfavor with this organization. Yes, the Ukraine might still some day be invited to start the long and arduous process of joining NATO, but only after some undefined number of NATO members...