Since writing Donald Trump’s National Defense Strategy in 2018, Elbridge Colby has become one of the most influential conservative defence thinkers in America. If a Republican wins the presidency in 2024 — whether Trump or DeSantis — he is likely …
Everyone loses in Biden’s border war
Set across the Rio Grande from El Paso, the sprawling Mexican conurbation of Ciudad Juárez has become the busiest city for migrants and asylum seekers hoping to cross into the United States — and a flashpoint for the tensions and …
The trouble with arresting Trump
On 22 January 1905, the Orthodox priest Georgy Gapon led a large procession of hungry and dissatisfied workers towards St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace, an event that would culminate in the tragedy known as Bloody Sunday, as imperial soldiers opened fire …
Is America turning into Pakistan?
Let’s start with a game of “Guess the Country”. In this nation, a former head of state announces his attempted return to power, so his opponents set out to block him. In doing so, they revive past sex scandals and …
Tucker Carlson’s fake populism
I shudder whenever I see Tucker Carlson trending in the news. Not because I think he’s a fascist or white supremacist, but because I once held him up as the harbinger of a new kind of politics. It wasn’t too …
Did Trudeau ignore China’s meddling?
Justin Trudeau has had his share of scandals. However, the latest one to hit Canada’s leader has all the makings of a career-killer. Leaks from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) allege that Trudeau ignored its warnings of foreign interference …
Does the Right need techno-Trumpism?
One of my informal metrics for political cut-through in our synapse-frazzled age is “could you play this sentence over a bass drop and have the crowd go wild?”.
The last time a British politician managed this was early in 2020, …
Are we prepared for ‘eternal war’ in Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin’s armies launched their fateful attack on Ukraine a year ago today. Tanks and troops poured across the frontier in what most Western governments feared would be a lightning thrust of fratricidal violence that would throttle Ukrainian independence. Then …
‘Absolute victory over Russia isn’t possible’
Few people better understand the West’s fraught relationship with Russia than Fiona Hill. Born in Bishop Auckland, she went on to study History and Russian at St Andrews before a scholarship at Harvard took her to America. From there, Hill …
Will a Trumpian party destroy the GOP?
Former president Donald Trump has again raised the spectre of a schism in the Republican Party. Last Thursday, he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he wouldn’t commit to backing the party’s nominee. This will strike many observers as …
How the Online Right gave up on reality
The millennial generation is beginning to show its age. This overeducated and underemployed generation, raised on social media, once sought solace from its diminished life opportunities behind video game controllers, computer screens, and smartphones. Even for those with good prospects, …
Vietnam still haunts America
In the course of his troubled presidency, Richard Nixon spoke 14 times to the American people about the war in Vietnam. It was in one of those speeches that he coined the phrase “the silent majority”, while others provoked horror …
Joe Biden’s false optimism
Thanks to a spate of legislation passed at the end of the last Congress, combined with better-than-expected election results, the Democrats are feeling optimistic. That optimism very much extends to Biden himself. As he put it, when asked after the …
All the populist’s men
All The King’s Men is the 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about an enormously vulgar, crudely powerful and grossly corrupt Southern politician loosely inspired by Louisiana Democrat Huey P. Long. It is an epic portrait of a demagogue who is, by …
The American experiment has just begun
“The anti-American obsession: it’s all in me, I confess. America is terrifying. Its internal unbalances appear extreme (economic, cultural, racial), an unimaginable fragility. It concerns us closely as a mirror of the future — our future, if we still have …