As soon as I heard that a man had stabbed three women to death and wounded seven others in the Bavarian town of Würzburg on June 25, I was near-certain of three key facts of the case: that the attacker was a Muslim, that the powers-that-be would claim to be mystified as to his motives,...
(This article is a translation of an original interview by Branimir Stanić and Ivan Tašev) Earlier this month Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—long maligned by the Brussels machine as an authoritarian reactionary inside the ever-so-progressive European Union—gave an interview to the Croatian Catholic weekly Glas Koncila (The Voice of the Council, 20 June 2021). Orbán made several...
Hitler’s Germany attacked Stalin’s Soviet Union 80 years ago today, thus unleashing the greatest, bloodiest, and most meaningless clash of titans in history. Thanks to the German Führer’s obsession with Lebensraum (“Living Space”) in the East, and his equally self-defeating, criminal race theory, Operation Barbarossa resulted in the mutual near-destruction of the two nations. Flawed from the outset,...
Presidents Joseph Biden and Vladimir Putin met in Geneva on Wednesday, June 16. Both separately noted that the talks went well. “There’s been no hostility,” Putin said. “On the contrary, our meeting took place in a constructive spirit.” Biden meanwhile declared “the tone of the entire meeting… was good. Positive.” The spirit may have been constructive and the tone...
On Wednesday, June 16, presidents Joseph Biden and Vladimir Putin will hold their first summit meeting in Geneva. Taking place amidst heightened tensions between the United States and Russia, relations between Washington and Moscow are arguably at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. Serbia’s top-rated Happy TV network asked me, from my...
Foreign ministers of nations both great and small make statements all the time, most of them silly or just forgettable. Some of them are utterly sinister, like Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s promise to promote homosexual “rights.” This has led to the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, among others, to display the rainbow flag of politicized...
All recorded history can be viewed as a long record of the use of force, or threats of force, in relations between human communities. This applies to all epochs, civilizations, and geographic spaces. Violence is immanent to man. Its constant presence is indicative of the immutability of his nature, regardless of the cultural context or...
An Intellectual Takeout reader posted a comment about my recent article, “Debunking the Myths About WWII,” asking why I didn’t “write about the biggest myth of all the myths, the systematic killing of Jew’s [sic!] while fighting a war on four fronts?” While this reader’s syntax is convoluted, his question seems to imply that Germany was too busy fighting...
“The U.S. Can Neither Ignore nor Solve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” was the headline of Martin Indyk’s May 14 article in Foreign Affairs. Washington may not be able to end that conflict, he wrote, but must actively manage it. Indyk, a former U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace under President Barack Obama, and who served two separate...
Victory in Europe Day is observed each year on May 8, remembering the key contributions of the United States and Britain to Germany’s defeat. The following day, May 9, commemorates the Day of Victory, which focuses on the crucial contribution of the Red Army to the collapse of the Third Reich. As it happens, May 9...
Update: Paragraph 12 has been added to provide more background information on the economic differences between India and China. In the last seven days India has seen more COVID cases than any other country in the world. The official death toll is over 200,000, although the country’s flawed mortality statistics lead experts to believe that the true...
In a message commenting on my article on NATO’s strategic purpose in the post-cold war era and its current use as a tool of United States hegemony in Europe, Chronicles Editor Paul Gottfried raised an intriguing question: “Is it really possible to divorce the striving for continued American hegemony in Europe from the founding of NATO as a ‘defensive pact’?...
Lord Hastings Ismay, Winston Churchill’s trusted military advisor and NATO’s first secretary-general (1952-1957), famously quipped in the early days of his tenure that the purpose of the Alliance was to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” In the early 1950s Ismay’s adage made sense. Stalin’s armored divisions, encamped in...
The most significant diplomatic event in the month of March was a rapid, seemingly irreversible deterioration of relations between the United States and China. Its signs were on display at the first high-level meeting between the two sides since President Joseph Biden took office on Jan. 20. Held in Anchorage, Alaska on March 18, it ended very...
After three weeks’ absence I am back with a piece untypical of my standard work: an attempt to reconstruct my battle with The Virus and the resulting double pneumonia. I took the first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine upon returning to Belgrade following a three month absence. Booking it online at 48 hours’ notice was easy, and I chose the...
It didn’t take long. Barely five weeks after assuming control, the new foreign policy team in Washington confirmed its interventionist credentials by bombing “Iran-backed militias” in Syria. The “defensive precision strike” on Feb. 26, according to the Pentagon statement, was supposed to send “an unambiguous message” that, acting to protect American and Coalition personnel, “we have acted in...
The Biden regime’s frantic moves in recent weeks to escalate tensions with Russia—at a time of China’s continued economic and military rise—are irrational, inexplicable by any standard method of foreign policy analysis, and perilous to this country’s security interests. Mr. Biden’s decision less than two weeks after his inauguration to move B-1 bombers to Norway “to...
Germany’s defeat in World War II was accelerated by Hitler’s unwillingness to accept reports at odds with his increasingly fantastical view of reality. His self-deceptions were believed with such firmness that, by mid-1944, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel concluded that the Führer was living in a Wolkenkuckucksheim (“cloud cuckoo land”). The same diagnosis applies to the establishment Right, both in...
Leonid Ilych Brezhnev presided over the irreversible decline of the USSR during his 18 years in power, initially as Secretary-General of the Soviet Communist Party and later also as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. He was two years younger than Joseph Biden is today when he died in 1982, but – just...
In the first week of September 1792 the French Revolution entered its openly terroristic phase with the massacre of some 1,600 prisoners in Paris. It was an outrage euphemistically called les Journées du Septembre (or the September Days). It was justified by the claim that the country was in danger from foreign enemies and domestic...
Sputnik News carried a live interview on Jan. 25 with Srdja Trifkovic on the social and political climate in the United States in the aftermath of President Joseph Biden’s inauguration. We bring you Dr. Trifkovic’s translation of some key segments of that interview. Q: [At 7 min. 55 sec.] How seriously should we take the warnings that America...
During the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump spoke and acted like every coastal globalist’s nightmare. Criticizing the European Union as America’s devious competitor, Trump called both the World Trade Organization and NAFTA “disasters.” NATO was obsolete, he said, Crimea was none of our business, and better relations were needed between Washington and Moscow. Advising Obama to stay out of Syria,...
Five years ago candidate Donald Trump burst onto the political stage like a breath of fresh air. The first aspirant to America’s highest office since the end of the Cold War to recognize that this country’s political, military, economic, and moral resources were not deployed in a balanced manner, he sought to protect and enhance...
“Boko Haram kill villagers in Christmas Eve attack,” the BBC reported on Dec. 25: at least 11 Christians were murdered in the village of Pemi, in northeastern Nigeria. As villagers fled into the bush, jihadists looted their homes and burned the local church and clinic. The site of the attack was only about 12 miles...
As we enter the century’s third decade, an openly interventionist team will imminently take back control of America’s foreign policy. Geopolitical instability may become acute, and a dispute over maritime rights is the most likely form of escalation. Asia-Pacific is the most likely theater. And the most important underlying factor leading to military conflict is a...
Propagating gender reassignment among children should be a criminal offence, Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the chairman of External Church Relations Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, recently declared on “Russia 24” TV network. His comment was made in response to Joe Biden’s recent statement of support for the supposed right of children to choose their gender. “The...
I know the propaganda game as well as anyone who lived and worked through the tail-end of the Cold War. I worked for the amply-funded propaganda arms of the two most propaganda-minded governments in the world, first as a broadcaster and newsroom subeditor with the BBC World Service in Bush House, London (1980-1986), and more...
On Dec. 15 the Hungarian Parliament passed a constitutional amendment banning adoption of children by same-sex couples. The government-sponsored Ninth Amendment declares, succinctly and clearly, that a child’s parents are “the mother, a woman, and the father, a man.” It defines family as “based on marriage and the parent-child relation” and forbids homosexual propaganda directed at minors. The gender of a...
The man whose books redefined the spy novel genre, David John Moore Cornwell, died of pneumonia on December 12 at the age of 89. Author of such intricately woven yarns as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People, Cornwell was better known by his nom de plume John le Carré, and often dealt with the timeless issues of...
(This story was originally published by Chronicles on December 7, 2010.) Over 2,400 American sailors, soldiers and airmen were killed in Pearl Harbor 69 years ago today. Had we had an equivalent of WikiLeaks back in 1941, however, the course of history could have been very different. FDR would have found it much more difficult...
The five-week offensive by Azerbaijan against the Armenian-inhabited enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh—the Azeris’ internationally recognized territory—has ended in a clear victory for the attacker. Tens of thousands of Armenians have fled their homes in the land they call Artsakh, which they had inhabited continuously for over two millennia. This is yet another defeat of embattled Christendom...
If America’s contested election ends in Joe Biden’s inauguration, the world will be less safe. Biden is an instinctive interventionist who has supported bad policies for decades. He was an outspoken advocate of Bill Clinton’s military interventions in the Balkans in the 1990s, and in the early 2000s he supported both the War in Afghanistan and...
Islam is a religion and not a political movement, according to a new “charter of republican values” released on Nov. 18 by French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron unveiled plans to require Muslim leaders to sign the charter as part of a broader clampdown on radical Islam, authorizing the French Council of the Muslim Faith to monitor...
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently published an article in Foreign Affairs which encapsulated the agenda of the globalist elite for the incoming Biden administration, should the former vice president be sworn in on Jan. 20. “When he first enters the Oval Office,” Haass writes, “President-elect Joe Biden will be greeted by an inbox...
In the eyes of much of the world the United States is now reduced to the status of a banana republic. The sordid spectacle of the past week—with the Democratic Party machine, the mainstream media, and social media barons forming a joint criminal enterprise to steal the presidential election—is reminiscent of similar ploys in the...
President Vladimir Putin has been facing several crises that could undermine Russia’s strategic interests. His inability to respond quickly and effectively reflects lingering complacency within areas of Moscow’s sphere of influence. Azerbaijan’s offensive against the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, encouraged and abetted by Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is testing Moscow’s ability to remain neutral in...
I recently took a trip to the German city of Constance, site of an important medieval Latin Church council that established the right to remove incorrigible popes. Some reflection on the city and its council may be of interest, given the news today that Pope Francis has apparently decided to endorse same-sex civil unions. Crossing...
On Monday, Oct. 5, our occasional contributor James G. Jatras gave a lecture at the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade entitled “Does America Have a Future? Options Before a Declining Hegemon.” He presented a complex and rather bleak picture of America’s condition to an audience of some 30 scholars and analysts from Serbia’s leading research...
People are policy and Joe Biden has 2,000 of them. That is, according to reporting in Foreign Policy magazine that his team of foreign policy and national security advisors has swelled to more than that number. A contingent of that size could be expected to produce a torrent of interesting ideas and fresh proposals, from the fundamentals of...
Chronicles Foreign Affairs Editor Srdja Trifkovic was interviewed by Serbian morning news program, Dobro jutro (Good Morning) on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. We bring you an abbreviated and edited transcript of his remarks in English. ST: The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh does not have the same potential to trigger...
For the majority of Egypt’s Christians, the Sisi government is far from ideal, but preferable to any likely alternative. The Copts (“Copt” being derived from the Greek Αἰγύπτιος, “Egyptian”) still suffer from various forms of discrimination, but at least Christians are not formally reduced to the status of dhimmis, second-class citizens under Sharia, which was...
I’m back in Egypt six months after my brief foray into Sinai in February and a year and a half since my last grand tour of this remarkable country. This is a good time to visit. There are no crowds at the sights. Red Sea resorts are half-empty and ridiculously cheap. It is still rather...
A major border clash took place between Indian and Chinese troops mid-June in the Western Himalayan region of Ladakh, on the disputed “Line of Actual Control” dividing the two Asian giants. Twenty Indian soldiers died, including a senior officer, and there were 43 reported casualties on the Chinese side. This was the bloodiest in a series...
Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden has vowed to end President Trump’s “Muslim travel ban” on his first day in office and to fight “Islamicphobia”. The supposed “Muslim travel ban,” which was signed by Trump in January 2017, blocked most immigrants and travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Of the five majority-Muslim...
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” recently, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn likened President Donald Trump to Benito Mussolini. The South Carolina lawmaker opined that Trump “plans to install himself in some kind of emergency way to continue to hold on to office.” “The American people had better wake up,” Clyburn declared. “I know a...
Japan feared the Soviets, not the bomb For a generation after the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on Sept. 2, 1945, the standard narrative remained fairly straightforward. By deciding to use nuclear weapons—against Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and on Nagasaki three days later—President Harry Truman enabled the realists in Tokyo, also called the peace faction,...
Metternich: Strategist and Visionary by Wolfram Siemann; Translated by Daniel Steuer; Belknap Press, Harvard University; 928 pp., $39.95 All states need a strategy, however rudimentary, in order to survive. Great powers need much more: a viable grand strategy for war and peace is called for to endure in the never-ending struggle for power, land, and resources. As A.J.P. Taylor...
A Chronicles website reader self-identified as “bigfish92672” took exception to my statement (“Back to the Mosque,” July 22) that “[i]n the awful annals of the 20th century, two instances of genocide stand out,” the Nazi mass murder of European Jews and the Ottoman mass murder of Armenians. “No Holodomor, comrade?” commented he (or she) with...
(This is part three of Prof. Trifkovic’s three-part series, “Reflections on the Tragedy of the Hagia Sophia.” Read part two here.) In a speech at Blackheath in 1876, Britain’s former Prime Minister William Gladstone told the Ottomans, “You shall retain your titular sovereignty, your empire shall not be invaded, but never again, as the years...
(This is part two of Prof. Trifkovic’s three-part series, “Reflections on the Tragedy of the Hagia Sophia.” Read part one here.) The Ottoman zenith was reached in the 16th century, when the Turks controlled Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, held Persia at bay, and pushed into central Europe after defeating the Hungarians at Mohács. The decline...