No Solutions, Only Trade-Offs – Ukraine Edition

The great Thomas Sowell often notes that when looking to solve problems, there are no perfect solutions, only trade-offs. You weigh the cost of your various options and look for the one that creates the fewest additional problems. You look for the best trade-off. Make your concessions based on three factors – compared to what, at what cost, and based on what evidence? Nowhere does this practice come into play more than in foreign policy. Today we’re going to look at the ongoing situation in Ukraine, and weigh the options based on historic parallels.

Crisis in Ukraine
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Casting Doubt on the “Last Testament of Lenin” Myth

There is a common view amongst today’s Marxists and academic class that the terrors under Stalin were somehow a bastardization of Vladimir Lenin’s true intentions. The mass murders that occurred under Stalin’s U.S.S.R. occurred because he perverted Lenin’s idea of a Marxist utopia. I don’t believe that there is any evidence to back these claims. Common historical consensus states that Lenin wrote a “Last Testament of Lenin” before his death, warning others of the threat that “the mass murderer” Stalin posed to communism. I think the timeline shows that this is false. Let’s take a look.

Lenin and Stalin.
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Kazakhstan: The Next Phase of U.S. Foreign Policy?

When the Biden administration pulled U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in summer 2021, it signaled the end of the War on Terrorism that the United States has been involved in since 2001. However, we are still involved in Yemen and other areas in the Middle East. And the Biden administration is still waging economic war on Afghanistan, starving their citizens, and even drone striking innocent civilians. While it doesn’t seem that our Middle East adventurism will ever truly be over, leaving Afghanistan does seem to close the chapter on a significant phase of U.S. foreign policy. So, the question begs, what next? Since the era of early-20th-century global progressivism, outside of very brief periods, U.S. foreign policy has always proactively looked for dragons to slay. The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower belatedly warned us about cannot afford to rest. This is why you should pay very close attention to what U.S. corporate media tells you about Kazakhstan over the next few weeks.

protests in Almaty, Kazakhstan
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