Ted Kennedy and Russia 1983 and Soviet Spies in President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration
Charles R. Kesler is the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and editor of the Claremont Review of Books. He earned his bachelor’s degree in social studies and his A.M. and Ph.D. in government from Harvard University. A senior fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy and a recipient of the 2018 Bradley Prize, he is the editor of several books, including Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought(with William F. Buckley Jr.), and the author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Future of Liberalism.
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on September 27, 2018, during a two-week teaching residency as a Eugene C. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Journalism.
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE : Until the 1960s, most liberals believed it was inevitable that their living Constitution would replace the conservative Constitution through a kind of slow-motion evolution. But during the sixties, the so-called New Left abandoned evolution for revolution, and partly in reaction to that, defenders of the old Constitution began not merely to fight back, but to call for a return to America’s first principles. By seeking to revolve back to the starting point, conservatives proved to be Newtonians after all—and also, in a way, revolutionaries, since the original meaning of revolution is to return to where you began, as a celestial body revolves in the heavens.
The conservative campaign against the inevitable victory of the living Constitution gained steam as a campaign against the gradual or sudden disappearance of limited government and of republican virtue in our political life. And when it became clear, by the late 1970s and 1980s, that the conservatives weren’t going away, the cold civil war was on.
Trevor Loudon speaks of the Far Left in our government and how they work with the Marxists and the Islamists. He names influential members of congress and those running for congressional seats in last weeks election. Absolutely frightening. Please share with your email lists. Nancy
The trade dispute between the U.S. and China threatens to destabilize arguably the world’s most important bilateral relationship. A better understanding of the countries’ shared history may encourage wiser negotiations.
There is a great deal of pride in China for the country’s remarkable success. Compared with our population of roughly 300 million, China has a population of 1.4 billion. It should be no surprise that China is now the world’s second-largest economy. Since its economic opening in the 1970s, many Chinese citizens have been educated in the U.S. and then returned to China to become leaders in government and industry. The China of today is fully capable of competing with foreigners in its domestic markets on a level playing field, as its firms have proven overseas.
The contributions the U.S. has made to China are worth noting. Starting in 1900, the Open Door policy, advanced by the U.S., spared China from European colonization. Prior to World War II, the U.S. imposed an embargo on Japan and deployed military assets to the Pacific in defense of that policy. Before the U.S. entered the war, the Flying Tigers, an American volunteer group, were recruited from the U.S. military and mobilized to assist China’s defense against Japan. The U.S. provided extensive additional support throughout the war to the Chinese and ultimately spilled considerable blood on their behalf. At war’s end, the U.S. ensured that China was included as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
After the Chinese Revolution in 1949, Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic, sending the Chinese into international isolation for two decades. Then in 1972, President Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger re-established bilateral ties by signing the Shanghai Communiqué during the president’s historic visit to China. It was in the national interest of both countries to foster a more constructive relationship. Both viewed the Soviet Union as a strategic threat.
China was populous and rich in natural resources, but its economy was minuscule and in shambles from a decade of internal conflict. After Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping sought stronger ties with the U.S. He understood that China’s future political stability would hinge on its economic success.
When bilateral trade resumed, the U.S. extended favorable trade terms to foster China’s economic growth. Tariffs on Chinese imports into the U.S. were low—on average a third of those on U.S. exports to China. Bilateral trade grew from zero to several billion dollars within a few years. In 1979 President Carter re-established formal diplomatic relations, and China was given most favored nation trading status. In 1981 the Reagan administration created a separate trade category for China to exempt it from restrictions on trade with every other communist country.
Moscow’s Presidential Jackasses and Bootlickers
By Paul Kengor July 18, 2018Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20thCentury and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.
Memo to Senator McCain.
Senator John McCain described the Trump-Putin press conference in Helsinki as “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.” “No prior president,” insisted McCain, “has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.”
Easy there, senator. Your knowledge of meetings between American presidents and Moscow tyrants is apparently quite limited. Plenty of examples would suffice, but let’s start with the very first: FDR and Stalin.
In fact, where to begin with that case example? My colleague Daniel Flynn yesterday raised the specter of FDR at Yalta — a perfect illustration, but we can go earlier. I could expend thousands of words laying out FDR’s jaw-droppingly awful assessments of Stalin across multiple meetings, conferences, and correspondence. Some of these were spouted directly by FDR to the man he fondly called “Uncle Joe,” whereas others were shared by FDR advisers who begged the president not to trust Stalin.
One such adviser was William Bullitt, FDR’s first ambassador to the USSR, who once had been gushingly pro-Bolshevik — until he spent a few years in the Soviet Union, where he was awakened by the death stench that was Stalinism. As he did with so many advisers, FDR rejected Bullitt’s warnings: “Bill, I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of man…. I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.”
(CNN)Here is a look at North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and the history of its weapons program.
THE WEEKLY STANDARDTrump’s Nuclear Tweets
What are the facts?Robert Joseph was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security from 2005-2007; Eric Edelman was undersecretary of defense for policy, 2005-2009.Of President-elect Trump’s tweets since winning the election, the one drawing the greatest criticism may well be his comment last week that the United States “must strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” The next day, his critics went downright ballistic when the president-elect reportedly made the off-camera statement: “Let it be an arms race. . . . We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” The partisans at the Ploughshares Fund and their paid-for “echo-chamber” colleagues across the disarmament community were seething that Trump’s comments could touch off an arms race and undercut strategic stability, lowering the threshold for nuclear use, possibly leading to a global holocaust. But beyond the obvious hyperbole, what are the relevant facts?
Fact one: The nuclear arms race has been going on for more than a decade, but it has been primarily a one-nation race, by Russia—unless you count China, which has been aggressively modernizing its nuclear arsenal as well. Moscow has strengthened and expanded its nuclear capability across the board. It has maintained a broad array of warfighting systems, from nuclear-armed torpedoes to short- and medium-range missiles, including the development of new capabilities that violate the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. At the strategic level, Russia has modernized all three legs of its triad. It has deployed, or soon will, new mobile and heavy ICBMs as well as a new class of strategic ballistic missile submarines. It has begun testing a rail-mobile ICBM, raising the prospect that it will bring back an operational concept most thought had been abandoned with the end of the Cold War. It is modernizing the air-breathing force with new cruise missiles (already tested over Syria multiple times) and an advanced heavy bomber. Moreover, Russia is developing, and may have tested, an unprecedented new nuclear weapon—a nuclear-powered torpedo with an enormously large warhead, perhaps as large as 100 megatons, whose sole purpose would be to inflict massive civilian casualties and long-term ecological damage.
