"The Obama administration has the wrong mind-set on our future U.S. military posture in Afghanistan.  Exit should not be the strategy or objective.  Protection of the homeland is the right metric.  Instead of trying to leave by a given date, we should be planning to stay." 

"An unresolved territorial conflict will impede Ukraine’s westward march while at the same time it will be a violent reminder of Europe’s inability to deal with military threats, the Achilles’s heel of the post-modern political architecture built in Brussels." 

In the American, AHS speaker Michael Rubin explains why subordinating the Islamic basis for ‘violent extremism’ to diplomatic sensitivity leads not to solutions but rather to the ridiculous:

"By performing intellectual somersaults to deny the theological basis and justification of Islamist terrorism today, and by ignoring the need to engage in a battle of interpretation within Islam, at best, the White House initiative will be ineffective.  At worst, it will provide cover for extremism." 

"Doing nothing or little to respond to Putin means accepting the likelihood of him succeeding.  The biggest immediate danger is the West’s fear of risk.  Exploiting that unease is Russia’s surest pathway to success." 

"America can learn from history and try not to repeat the bloody history of rising powers.  High diplomacy is an essential part of U.S. China policy.  Washington should do what it can to avoid conflict even as it upholds its interests in Asia.  But a security competition intensifying between Beijing and Washington and no new formula for relations will erase that fact." 

"Instead of deterring Russia militarily while continuing to engage it economically and in energy terms, the United States and Europe have undermined territorial security while attempting to cut off Russia’s principal sources of income.  This gets the sequence of strategies wrong.  Persistent sanctions without credible deterrence are likely to elicit exactly the response from Putin that the West wants to oppose.  By leaving itself open to incremental aggression fed by irredentist manipulation, the West scourges the Russian bear through economic denial, while not caging it in any viable way militarily." 

"The United States often insists on immediate results, in international affairs as in so many other aspects of government activity.  Smart strategies take into account cost-effectivness, and immediate effects are often extremely costly."