ArcaMax

When a Wall Street Journal editorial warned this week against any precipitous U.S. withdrawal that might imperil our gains in Afghanistan, an exasperated President Trump shot back:

"Could someone please explain to them that we have been there for 19 years. ... and except at the beginning, we never really fought to win."

Is that true? Did we "...Read more

On March 24, President Donald Trump said he wanted the country and the economy "opened up and just raring to go by Easter."

Easter came and went. And Trump was mocked for being aspirational and unrealistic. Yet, with Ascension Thursday at hand, 40 days after Easter, the president seems to have been ahead of his time.

The country, as a whole, ...Read more

"We have met the moment and we have prevailed," said President Donald Trump Monday, as he supported the opening of the U.S. economy before the shutdown plunges us into a deep and lasting depression.

Tuesday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases, made clear to a Senate committee his contradictory views.

"If ...Read more

Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump, his campaign and his party are moving to lay blame for the 80,000 U.S. dead at the feet of the Communist Party of China and, by extension, its longtime General Secretary, President Xi Jinping.

"There is a significant amount of evidence" that the virus originated ...Read more

After Pearl Harbor, FDR declared that his role of "Dr. New Deal" had been superseded, replaced by his new role, "Dr. Win the War."

Tuesday, President Donald Trump signaled that, in the war on the coronavirus pandemic, he, too, is executing a strategic pivot.

Where the medical crisis had been the central front, pulling the U.S. economy out of ...Read more

Where Barack Obama achieved notoriety for "leading from behind," Joe Biden, these last two months, has been leading from the basement.

And, one must add, doing so quite successfully.

Since his rout of Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday, Biden has led President Donald Trump in every national poll and, lately, opened up a lead in Michigan, ...Read more

As of April 30, the coronavirus pandemic has killed 61,500 Americans in two months and induced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.

And if history is our guide, the economic crisis, which has produced 30 million unemployed Americans in six weeks, may prove more enduring, ruinous and historic than the still-rising and tragic ...Read more

Is America, in lockdown, with 26 million unemployed and entering a new depression, up for a confrontation and Cold War with China?

For that appears to be where the GOP wishes to lead us.

According to Politico, a 57-page memo from Mitch McConnell's senatorial committee instructs GOP candidates to blame the coronavirus pandemic on China, commit ...Read more

"War is the health of the state," wrote the progressive Randolph Bourne during the First World War, after which he succumbed to the Spanish flu.

America's war on the coronavirus pandemic promises to be no exception to the axiom. However long this war requires, the gargantuan state will almost surely emerge triumphant.

Currently, the major ...Read more

After the Great Pandemic has passed and we emerge from Great Depression II, what will be America's mission in the world?

What will be America's cause?

We have been at such a turning point before.

After World War II, Americans wanted to come home. But we put aside our nation-building to face the challenge of a malevolent Stalinist empire ...Read more

For declaring in March that the U.S. economy might be reopened by Easter, President Donald Trump was roundly mocked.

Yet, it appears his political instincts were correct. He was more in tune with his country than were his critics.

By early Easter week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the governors of six states in the New York-New Jersey region had ...Read more

The same day the number of U.S. dead from the coronavirus disease hit the 15,000 mark, we also crossed the 15 million mark on the number of Americans we threw out of work to slow its spread and "bend the curve."

For each American lost to the pandemic, 1,000 Americans have lost their jobs because of conscious and deliberate decisions of the ...Read more

Trump's Presidency Hangs on One Decision

Easter may not bring America the victory in the war against the coronavirus pandemic that President Donald Trump anticipated. But in this Holy Week, we may be reaching our Saratoga moment, our turning point.

While New York state reported a record number of deaths from the virus on Tuesday, over 1,800, ...Read more

Among the works that first brought Henry Kissinger to academic acclaim was "A World Restored," his 1950s book about how the greatest diplomats of Europe met at the Congress of Vienna to restore order to a continent shattered by the Napoleonic Wars.

The balance-of-power peace these men achieved lasted -- with the significant exception of the ...Read more

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully," said Samuel Johnson.

And as it is with men, so it is with nations.

Monday, Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, projected some 100,000 to 200,000 U.S. deaths from the pandemic, "if we do things almost ...Read more

"This is the question that is going to dominate the election: How did you perform in the great crisis?"

So says GOP Congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma in today's New York Times.

GOP National Committeeman Henry Barbour of Mississippi calls the crisis "a defining moment... The more (Trump) reassures Americans, gives them the facts and delivers ...Read more

To fight the coronavirus at home, France is removing all military forces from Iraq.

When NATO scaled back its war games in Europe because of the pandemic, Russia reciprocated. Moscow announced it would cancel its war games along NATO's border.

Nations seem to be recognizing and responding to the grim new geostrategic reality of March 2020: The...Read more

"We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself," tweeted the president on Sunday night, adding that, after the current 15-day shutdown, "we will make a decision as to which way we want to go."

President Trump is said to be privately expressing a deepening concern at the damage the coronavirus shutdown is doing to the U.S. economy and ...Read more

"It's a war," says President Donald Trump of his efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic, and likening his role to that of "wartime president."

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo welcomed the president's claim to his commander in chief role in the crisis and his resolve: "The president and I agreed yesterday... we're fighting the same war -- ...Read more

"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time," said Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey to a friend on the eve of Britain's entry into the First World War.

Observing from afar as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the Old Continent, Grey's words return to mind. And as the Great War changed Europe ...Read more