As North Korea demonstrates America’s vulnerability to ballistic missiles, and as President Trump pledges “many billions of dollars” for “the anti-missile,” establishment Republicans are poised to use missile defense talk today in the same way they did in the wake of Ronald Reagan’s commitment to it: profit politically from rhetoric, funnel money to
Defense Secretary James Mattis's words last month to U.S troops in the Middle East came from his patriotic heart: “And you just hold the line, my fine young soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines. You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it, of being
Today, the bipartisan ruling class, which the electorate was trying to shed by supporting anti-establishment candidates of both parties in 2016, feels as if it has dodged the proverbial bullet. The Trump administration has not managed to staff itself—certainly not with anti-establishment people—and may never do so. Because the prospect of that happening
Editor's Note: This essay was originally published in the Fall 2001 edition of the Claremont Review of Books. The editors are grateful for permission from the Claremont Institute to republish the article here. Read Angelo Codevilla's response to President Trump's August 21 speech on Afghanistan. "It is not that they love peace less,
Strategy is neither more nor less than a map for getting from here to there—a reasonable plan for using what you have to accomplish what you want. President Trump’s August 21 speech, touted as “a new strategy” for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is not a strategy, because it did not even try to
Two months after the USS Fitzgerald’s June 18 collision with a freighter in the Sea Of Japan, the Navy announced that the ship’s commanding officer, executive officer, and senior enlisted man were being relieved of their positions. It cited “loss of confidence” in them, and released a lengthy report on what happened aboard
The question arises because of widespread allegations that President Donald Trump should be constrained, somehow, to bend his foreign and defense policy to the advice of Generals Mattis, McMaster, and Kelly, with whom he has surrounded himself. The answer transcends current controversies. In 1862-64, the press had styled General George McClellan, “the young
The Republican congressional leadership’s failure to repeal Obamacare has led to suggestions that, perhaps, they should have approached their task through “regular order.” Since Congress has not operated under “regular order” at all since 2006, and with decreasing frequency in the decades before that, younger readers, especially, may be excused for not knowing
As the words and images by which we live our public and private lives coarsen and become more violent, as we identify in ways antagonistic to one another, it is surprising only that instances of violence among us are not more frequent. A civil conflict in some ways more destructive of social peace
Editor’s note: This is the third of a three-part series. Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution echoes forward to our time by highlighting the continuity between France’s ancien regime and the ones that grew in France and throughout Europe after the Revolution. The book’s point is that before, and especially after the
