1. We Must Not Cede Afghanistan and Central Asia to Russia
July 9, 2020
From 1917 onward, Moscow’s aim has been to offer the nations of the world an alternative to Western-style liberal democracy. Political and economic power are the main currency on the international stage. Moscow has always had a weak economy, so it’s been forced to pursue that aim militarily. Under Vladimir Putin, aggressive expansionism has been central to Russian foreign policy.
Afghanistan is an instructive example. For Moscow, the Central Asian republics are of vital strategic importance. Initially, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was not received with much enthusiasm by Central Asian elites, who owed their political status to the Soviet system. Suddenly faced with the possibility of their own obsolescence, these elites adopted nationalist rhetoric to stay in power. Because the Central Asian republics remained under the control of Moscow’s former clients, their relationship with Russia continued after the fall of the U.S.S.R., but the Kremlin had still taken a big hit: It no longer had claim over the republics’ vast reserves of important natural resources. One big aim of Russian foreign policy ever since has been to conserve a monopoly on the export and transportation of hydrocarbons within the post-Soviet sphere.
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It is in this light that we must view the recent revelation that Russia’s GRU allegedly offered to pay the Taliban for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan. One of the explanations offered for Russia’s apparent actions is that the Kremlin views the Taliban as a comparatively palatable bulwark against ISIS and al-Qaeda. This doesn’t make much sense, insofar as the line between the former and the latter is, to say the least, blurry. But another motivation seems obvious: Moscow wants to build leverage over the current Afghan government, leverage it would be free to use in the event President Trump achieves his goal of withdrawing American forces from the country. By supporting the Taliban, Moscow has the potential to play a role in designing Afghanistan’s future and could also dominate the transportation of hydrocarbons in the region.
Moscow wishes to expel American influence from Central Asia, thereby regaining control of its sphere of influence and continuing to dominate the Central Asian republics, which for the most part have welcomed the strengthening of relations with the United States. While our presence in Afghanistan has been far from a success, we must also recognize that ceding the country to the Taliban and the Russians would come with its own serious costs. The United States needs to keep a limited military presence in the country and in the region as a check on Russian ambitions.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/russia-afghanistan-us-must-not-cede-central-asia-to-moscow/
2. U.S. School Kids Targeted with CCP Propaganda letters from Xi Jinping
July 2,2020
Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping implored U.S. schoolchildren to become “young ambassadors for Sino-American friendship” as part of a Confucius Institute led program operating in hundreds of K-12 Schools [VIDEO]
Purporting to be language learning initiatives, Confucius Institutes are CCP propaganda fronts that have embedded themselves in U.S. elementary schools – public and private.
Teachers are pushed to use textbooks written by the CCP’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, part of an agency tasked with “mobilizing advocates for the interests of the CCP,” and intellectual property theft abounds.
One such example of this extensive network is Cascade Elementary School in Orem, Utah.
The Confucius Institute operating at the taxpayer-funded K-5 school has also led to CCP military parades airing in classrooms and teacher Zheng Yamin vowing to instill “Chinese morality and cultures” onto her fourth-grade class.
Another Confucius Institute led initiative, requiring Cascade fourth-graders to become “pen pals” with Xi Jinping, was brandished across various Chinese state media outlets to tout U.S. interest in Chinese culture. In addition to exploiting American students as pawns in China’s global disinformation campaign, China Gl0bal Television Network (CGTN), a registered foreign agent in the U.S, was invited to the school to produce a segment on the exchange:
https://thenationalpulse.com/politics/ccp-schools-utah/
3. James Burnham and the Asia-Pacific: 1941-1978
July 5.2020
He described communism as a “managerial ideology” designed to enable a tiny vanguard or elite to rule over the masses and control them. Communism (and fascism) created a ruling class that monopolized privilege and power—a nomenklatura. This description perfectly describes the current leadership of China’s Communist Party.
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“In a 1957 column, Burnham wrote about Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s visit to Poland and Hungary. Zhou’s visit was an Asian leader “actively intervening in the public affairs of Europe.” Many Asians believe, Burnham wrote, that the twentieth century was witnessing a great “reawakening of Asia” that will replace the West as global organizer. “Asians,” he explained, “ordinarily think in longer time cycles than are natural to Western minds.” The Chinese communists envision a “coming Asian world order.” Burnham could have been describing current Chinese leader Xi Jinping who many believe is working today toward a Chinese-led world order.”
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“Always the geopolitical realist, Burnham in two of his last columns in 1978 urged the United States to “correlate its policy with the global strategic pattern.” “[I]t would be turning strategy upside down,” he wrote, “to let … sentiment … determine policy … toward Taiwan and China.” “The national interest,” he continued, “is the most reliable coach in the Game of Nations.… Taiwan’s relative political, economic, and strategic importance is rapidly declining.” He hoped that the Taiwan problem would “fade” and that Taiwan would become a “new and greater Hong Kong.”
https://kirkcenter.org/essays/james-burnham-and-the-asia-pacific-1941-1978/
4.Brexit and the Necessity of Democracy
by Michael Brenden Dougherty
June 23, 2020
Brexit is proof that a democratic mandate can overthrow the “inevitable”
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And what happens when the universities, the established Church, the government, the media, the leading figures of the opposition, and the bureaucracy of Brussels want something? They get it. It might take a second referendum in Ireland, or an end run around France. But you’ll vote until you turn in the Establishment’s preferred result, and then the question will be deemed answered for at least a generation. Maybe forever.
But democratic peoples can find a way.
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But Brexit is proof that a democratic mandate can overturn the “inevitable.” It’s a proof that democratic peoples still have free will. And it’s a sober proof that the Establishment is almost always projecting and lying. They accuse their opponents of their own misdeeds. Brexit did not sink the United Kingdom into Depression. In fact, the United Kingdom was growing faster than Germany until recently. Membership in the European Union is no prophylactic against disaster. The end of Western political civilization is still possible, and we’ll know it has come when democratic events like Brexit really are made impossible.
