• Judging U.S Alliances  By Richard C. Young
• Clinton’s Foreign Policy Judgment “Reliably Bad”  By Richard C. Young
• China’s “Permanent Conflict” Strategy  By Richard C. Young
• Americanism Replaces Globalism  By Richard C. Young
• Panic at JFK Highlights the Need for Situational Awareness  By E.J. Smith
• Hillary’s Hot Air and Empty Promises  By Debbie Young
• Can You Guess the Least Free State in America?  By E.J. Smith
• The Cosmic Center of the Rio Games  By Debbie Young
• Neocons for Clinton  By Justin Logan

The National Interest explains how U.S. alliances should be judged:

The United States stands at the center of a far flung global alliance system, which commits it to defend the security of countries rich and poor, great and small, liberal and illiberal. The principal U.S. formal alliances are the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the Republic of Korea Treaty, and the Australia-New Zealand (ANZUS) treaty. The United States has less formal relationships with Israel and several Arab states, and many others around the world. The foreign-policy establishment insists that all of these alliances are central to our security. …

The value of U.S. alliances should be judged on their contribution to U.S. security—the ability to defend the safety, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the United States. …

Supporters of the present alliance system routinely minimize its military costs. The Department of Defense’s accounting systems make the calculation of such costs difficult. …

These alliance commitments create a special kind of “moral hazard.” The extravagant insurance that we offer these countries encourages them to engage in risky behavior. For the Europeans and Japanese, this consists of buying too little military insurance for themselves. Their defense budgets are too small even to sustain their present force structures.

Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy

Daniel Larison, writing at The American Conservative explains to readers that Hillary Clinton projects to be a “very hawkish president.”

Presidents with less hawkish records than Clinton have ended up launching new wars and intervening in foreign conflicts far more often than their campaign rhetoric would have suggested.

Bush campaigned on conducting a “humble” foreign policy to distinguish himself from the frequent interventions of the Clinton administration, but as president presided over the most hubristic and reckless foreign policy in decades.

Obama was never as dovish as some of his fans and detractors wanted to believe, but he was supposed to be the less hawkish candidate in the primaries and the general election.

Despite that, Obama has been a war president for every day he has been in office, and that includes two wars that he initiated illegally on his own authority.

As a senator, Obama argued against starting wars without Congressional approval, but as president has done the very thing that he previously denounced.

I assume Clinton will launch Kosovo- or Libya-style air wars when the opportunities present themselves, and she will be quicker to take sides in foreign conflicts than her predecessor and will back the side she takes more aggressively. She probably won’t commit the U.S. to a major ground war, but then her judgment on foreign policy is reliably bad so there are no guarantees that she won’t.

The Libya Gamble: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Push for War & the Making of a Failed State

J. Michael, writing at The National Interest:

The Chinese leadership is well aware that waging war on two fronts can be disastrous for even the most battle-hardened militaries. But war isn’t what it has in mind, and it will likely go to great lengths to avoid such an outcome: permanent conflict, is instead the current strategy.

With two (or four) different fronts that can be activated almost at will, Beijing has therefore ensured it can satisfy the demands of an increasingly nationalistic public by proving that it is standing up for China’s interests and not backing down despite all the external forces that are conspiring against it.

China’s Response to the South China Sea Arbitration Ruling

Pat Buchanan tells Americans at The American Conservative that Donald Trump is the candidate who would replace the globalism of the transnational elites, send illegals back, and reject the TPP.

Donald Trump’s success, despite the near-universal hostility of the media, even much of the conservative media, was due in large part to the public’s response to the issues he raised.

He called for sending illegal immigrants back home, for securing America’s borders, for no amnesty. He called for an America First foreign policy to keep us out of wars that have done little but bleed and bankrupt us.

He called for an economic policy where the Americanism of the people replaces the globalism of the transnational elites and their K Street lobbyists and congressional water carriers.

He denounced NAFTA, and the trade deals and trade deficits with China, and called for rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

By campaign’s end, he had won the argument on trade, as Hillary Clinton was agreeing on TPP and confessing to second thoughts on NAFTA.

But if TPP is revived at the insistence of the oligarchs of Wall Street, the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — backed by conscript editorial writers for newspapers that rely on ad dollars — what do elections really mean anymore?

And if, as the polls show we might, we get Clinton — and TPP, and amnesty, and endless migrations of Third World peoples who consume more tax dollars than they generate, and who will soon swamp the Republicans’ coalition — what was 2016 all about?

Would this really be what a majority of Americans voted for in this most exciting of presidential races?

Pat Buchanan on The Laura Ingraham Show (8/3/2016)

Last night panic spread through New York’s John F. Kennedy airport as reports of shots fired spread. Two terminals were closed, passengers were fleeing blindly and ducking for cover, and police escorted innocent civilians out of the building with weapons drawn.

In reports, travelers told the media they ran because everyone else was running. Without detail, and without any information, people panicked. The key to improving your chances in a herd-stampede situation like this is situational awareness. You can improve yours by being on guard, aware of your surroundings and by critically analyzing the actions of those around you.

If you want to improve your situational awareness thinking, there are many training courses available. Instructor Steve Tarani, who has given guest lectures at my favored Sig Sauer Academy, teaches a course focused on “preventative defense.” Tarani covers:

• The 90% Advantage – Learn how to control a “threat progression” and how you can take the VERY “unfair” advantage of successfully managing a potential threat BEFORE it progress into a physical altercation

• Threat Management – Using “threat identification” skills, situational awareness, and professional observation skills, learn how to avoid, mitigate and if necessary defend against a real-world threat.

• Empowerment – Gain the protective knowledge plus the field-tested skills of protection  professionals and exactly how to apply them in your day at home, school, work, while driving, shopping, on vacation, etc.,

Be proactive. Assess the measures you use to monitor your surroundings, and consider what you can do to upgrade your own safety and that of your family.

Hillary Clinton went to Michigan last week to deliver her big economic speech in which she laid out what she would do if elected president. Here’s what Ms. Clinton proposes:

• “job creation”—where government hires people to build things.
• “infrastructure bank”—the ultimate in crony capitalism with the government deciding which projects get or do not get funding. Or, scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.
• “increasing taxes” through “the Buffet rule”—the little problem is that W.B. makes most of his money in the form of unrealized capital gains, which are not taxed. And H.C. is not proposing that they should be.

From the government’s limitless credit card Hillary also wants “free college!  Student loan forgiveness!  Handouts to everyone for childcare!” As Francis Menton notes in the Manhattan Contrarian:

The speech is devoid of any recognition that the wealth of society comes from the hard work of free people in the private sector, or that the private sector needs freedom from oppressive government taxation and other meddling in order to do its job.  Instead, in this vision, wealth either magically pre-exists or comes from government initiative, and then the government brings about perfect fairness and justice by an ever-expanding list of handouts and programs that will always work perfectly and never have any downsides.

… Larry Kudlow calls Hillary’s plan “insanity.”  I’d call that charitable.  The sad news is that Donald Trump’s proposals aren’t a whole lot better.  But Trump has recently taken on Stephen Moore as his economic advisor, so maybe there is some hope.

Larry Kudlow on Business and Job Creation – Over Taxation – Hillary Clinton

Over at the Cato Institute, William Ruger and Jason Sorens have compiled the 2016 ranking of Freedom in the 50 States. This is the fourth bi-annual edition of the rankings. Can you guess how your state fared? Take a look at the map below to find out. And if you guessed New York was the least free state in America, you’re right.

Freedom in the 50 States

At 29, Usain Bolt is old, but not ancient. Sunday night Bolt did it again. The Jamaican sprinter has already defied time by winning his third consecutive Olympic gold medal in the 100-meter dash, or bolt, if you will. Writes the WSJ:

He’s fun to watch as a three-Olympics geezer. It’s pretty clear Bolt will never again threaten his 9.58 world record, which still stands, but he now substitutes the otherworldly speed of his youth with a charming, veteran craftiness. On Sunday, Bolt never came across as anxious or overmatched, unprepared for the moment. He’d been there. He knew what he needed to do to win. He won. It may have not been the full electric Bolt show, but first is what matters now.

He is utterly comfortable in those golden shoes, the pressure of that moment. Think about it: Bolt is on the shortest list of earth’s most recognizable beings. He’s known everywhere he goes. And yet he projects no existential fatigue with the position, or the global craving for him to deliver. The most recognizable man at the Olympics is staying in the Olympic Village, for goodness’ sake, posing for selfies with mortals who will never make it out of a preliminary heat, pulling his own luggage, turning the same wobbly doorknobs like everybody else. He’s OK with that. He’s into it. There are backup right-fielders in baseball who project more jaded weariness about celebrity than Bolt.

Usain Bolt—a joy to watch on or off the track.

You can watch the race here.

Usain Bolt Olympic 2016 | Usain Bolt wins 100m gold in 9 81 seconds, becomes first

It’s been clear for some time that neoconservatives would prefer Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, for a host of different reasons–and one big reason.

Writing in the New York Daily News, Michael Tracey judges the neocons-for-Hillary alliance a “strange relationship,” and worries that by using her neocon endorsements as a political cudgel, Clinton risks “rehabilitating” their reputations, which would threaten to allow them eventually to “accrue renewed prestige and eventually insinuate themselves back into positions of power.”

I don’t think there’s anything strange about the relationship at all, and it was foreordained that the neoconservatives would return to positions of political power.

Consider: Clinton is a thoroughgoing war hawk, whose considerably more dovish husband signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law after the neocons brought it to his desk. My former colleague Gene Healy has been attempting to tag her campaign with a line she used describing her time as first lady: “I urged him to bomb.”

As Tracey’s piece points out, Robert Kagan’s wife Victoria Nuland was a high-ranking official in Hillary Clinton’s State Department–well before the rise of Trump. Kagan has been writing passionately against Trump in the Washington Post, holding fundraisers for Clinton, and telling anyone who will listen that Trump is a danger to the republic.

The way Clinton, Nuland, and the rest of the Clinton forces behaved while in office shows why Kagan’s enthusiastic about their return. When there were disagreements about foreign policy within the Obama cabinet, Clinton was on the side of the hawks every time, including her preference to attack the Assad regime in Syria using the U.S. military. (Clinton’s likely Secretary of Defense nominee, Michele Fluornoy, holds the same view.)

The substantive policy difference between the neocons and the Clinton people at this point seems to be that the Clinton people are willing to say that if they could, they would go back in time and reverse their positions on Iraq, while the neocons mostly refuse to admit it. That’s not much of a substantive policy difference.

And consider at the same time that Trump’s bizarre antics and his campaign’s apparent inability to control him have left Clinton the perfect opening to make a tantalizing political argument: “only a tiny rump of radicals, racists and weirdos support Trump. Even the Republicans know I’m a steadier hand!”

Neoconservatives and Clintonista foreign policy hands are two sides of the same coin. Combine that fact with the fact that using her neocon–ahem, Republican–endorsements as a weapon against Trump makes good political sense, and you see that the alliance isn’t strange at all. For either side.