Caracas’s Crime Hub
Rep. Michael Baumgartner, National Review
What threat does Venezuela pose to the United States? Congressman Michael Baumgartner shares his experiences:
Long before I became a member of Congress, I frequently traveled to and advised international mining companies in Venezuela. I saw the country’s potential: blessed with the world’s largest oil reserves, talent, and the rule-of-law foundations to turn natural wealth into broad prosperity. I saw how socialist thugs Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro brutalized its people and impoverished a nation that once led Latin America in living standards. Their predatory policies now export disorder beyond Venezuela’s border.
Not Lost in Translation
Barry Strauss, Washington Free Beacon
Guest Barry Strauss reviews a new translation of Thucydides’s history of the Peloponnesian War:
After more than 2,400 years, The Peloponnesian War remains a monument. The book is read not just by students of the classics or of ancient history but also by political scientists and strategists. It appears on the syllabi of college courses in international relations as well as in history, and it is required reading at the U.S. Naval War College, a school that offers advanced studies to American naval and military officers as well as to government officials and to officers of international navies. The great naval theorist and historian Alfred Thayer Mahan served as the college’s president, so what better place could there be for Thucydides, a onetime admiral himself?
Defender of the West: A Response to Attacks on Churchill’s Life and Legacy
Andrew Roberts and Zachary Marsh, Policy Exchange
Guest Andrew Roberts defends the legacy and career of one of Britain’s greatest wartime leaders:
Many of these attacks on Churchill fail to stand up to basic scrutiny and assessments of historical accuracy. Accusations that Churchill was the force behind the war guarantee to Poland in March 1939 ignore the fact that Churchill was only a backbencher outside government at the time and remained so for another six months. Suggestions that it was Britain, as opposed to Germany, that initiated civilian bombing ignore its use by the Nazis from the outset of the war at Wieluń and Rotterdam and Hitler’s promise to erase British cities. Criticisms that Churchill lost the British Empire ignore the fact that no British colony ever achieved independence under either of his premierships and that Churchill’s devotion to the imperial project arguably sustained the Empire for several years beyond which his peers would have allowed it to continue.
The New Right’s Affinity for Authoritarianism
Michael Sobolik, Wall Street Journal
Guest Michael Sobolik’s warning to the American Right:
Mr. Carlson’s choices aren’t new. During a broadcast in 2020, he praised China’s national unity as something we “could actually learn from,” and in 2021 he lauded the Communist Party for doing “something virtuous,” namely restricting housing speculation, curbing celebrity idolization and limiting access to video games. Never mind the authoritarianism that underlies each. Americans shouldn’t pine for the intimidation, surveillance and violence that the Chinese people endure daily. Beijing is rooting for the groypers. Conservatives should give them no space in their movement.