Clifford D. May

Biden’s National Security Strategy still unavailable

Dear President Biden, you're a busy guy, so I'll get straight to the point. You've now been in office for over a year, and you still don't have a National Security Strategy? Published April 26, 2022

Diplomatic end to Putin’s Ukraine war unlikely

Let's acknowledge that we're treading on dangerous ground. Russia is ruled by a thug who has launched a war intended to extinguish Ukraine as an independent nation. Published April 19, 2022

Russia is not the only nation threatening its neighbors

With oceans to our east and west, and weak neighbors to our north and south, we Americans sometimes have a hard time understanding the plight of nations threatened by big, bad neighbors. Published April 12, 2022

Cold War II and Biden’s new ‘new world order’

These are confusing times, and President Biden is not helping to bring clarity. Last week, for example, he told the Business Roundtable that "there's going to be a new world order." What could he possibly have meant? Published March 29, 2022

The death of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)

Central to America's Cold War strategy was the principle of MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. Published March 22, 2022

Fall of the Golden Arches Theory: Enriching tyrants doesn’t prevent wars after all

McDonald's is closing its restaurants in Russia, which means no more Happy Meals in Gorky Park. But there's also a McNugget of geostrategic significance in this development. Published March 15, 2022

Putin’s troops ravage Ukraine while his envoy steers Team Biden’s talks with Iran

We all have our patterns of behavior. Published March 8, 2022

Russia, Ukraine and the West’s grand delusion of freedom

Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging a war of imperial conquest. That's despicable but, from a historical perspective, hardly novel. Published March 1, 2022

Putin’s winter war

In my column on Feb. 1, I offered a prediction that Russian President Vladimir Putin would "not start a war during the Olympics, which take place in the People's Republic of China. Published February 22, 2022

Coalition of the unwilling: Western elites prefer not to fight authoritarianism

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan addressed the British Parliament, expressing optimism about the "global campaign for democracy now gathering force." Published February 15, 2022

Amnesty International spreads the virus of antisemitism

Antisemitism is an easily transmissible virus. Mutations are not necessarily less lethal. Published February 8, 2022

If Putin wins, it’s not only Ukraine that loses

Unless your name is Vladimir Putin, you don't know whether Russian troops are going to invade Ukraine. Published February 1, 2022

To the fashionably woke, Uyghur lives don’t matter

Chamath Palihapitiya is a household name - at least in the kind of houses featured in the Wall Street Journal's weekly "Mansion" section. Published January 25, 2022

All the president’s enemies

As he begins his second year in office this week, President Biden looks toward the horizon and sees multiple challenges and threats. Published January 18, 2022

The U.N.’s final solution to the Israel question

Historians usually date the start of the Holocaust to June 1941 when German troops invaded the Soviet Union, identified Jewish civilians, lined them up and shot them by the thousands. Published January 11, 2022

U.S. adversaries are becoming South American conquistadores

In November 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry, addressing the Organization of American States, made news by announcing: "The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over." Published January 4, 2022

American Revolution was not about tyranny (or slavery)

Science is never settled. Among those who established that: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein. History is never settled either. No one has done more to establish that than Andrew Roberts, the great British historian. Published December 29, 2021