Articles

Israel Mulls Its Iran Options: With considerable trepidation, the Middle East, and indeed the wider world, is awaiting Israel’s response to Iran’s massive October 1st missile barrage on the Jewish state. The White House, fearful of a wider regional war, is exerting massive (albeit mostly quiet) pressure for Jerusalem to limit its retaliation to something “proportionate” that doesn’t target either Iran’s nuclear program or its energy sites.

As the war in Ukraine heads toward its third anniversary, the question on the minds of many Americans is, why do the Ukrainians keep fighting? The conventional wisdom argues that after nearly three years of killing, the war must end — something possible only through the surrender of Ukrainian land occupied by Russian forces. Yet polls consistently find that nearly 70% of Ukrainians oppose ceding land for peace. Why? Because giving up land means surrendering to life under Russian occupation. Ukrainians know from history what that means; to prevent it, they are willing to endure the deaths of thousands more of their soldiers and the destruction of many of their cities and towns.

During the vice presidential debate between Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), viewers in the People’s Republic of China experienced a broadcast interruption. When the CBS moderators asked Gov. Walz about discrepancies regarding his story of being in China during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, the video feed throughout China cut to an error screen. This “error” was, of course, the latest instance of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censors silencing speech about sensitive topics within China.

It is now – even amid a bitter presidential campaign – that U.S. leaders should stand four-square behind Israel, giving it the leeway to protect itself as it sees fit rather than adding to the morally confused carping from abroad.

Whoever ends up winning the White House next month will need to reframe the way America thinks about Great Power Competition in order to adequately respond to the collective threat now posed by Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran. Doing so will begin by answering a fateful question—Is the United States still prepared to serve as the "arsenal of democracy"?