World

Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that he was not bluffing about using nuclear weapons against the West in his war on Ukraine is one of the strongest indications yet of the risks the liberal world now faces in opposing authoritarian aggression. In the face of Russian aggression, or in committing the United States to defending Taiwan, as President Joe Biden did yet again recently, Washington and its partners face the possibility of direct confrontation with the world’s most powerful, nuclear-armed militaries. For the first time in a generation, Western powers risk being checked by adversaries willing to threaten massive conventional and nuclear warfare. The era of cost-free intervention to uphold the liberal world order is over.

Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz announced this week that Israel would maintain its policy of not supplying weapons to Ukraine. This drew criticism, including charges that Israel has a moral obligation to help Ukraine and is instead foolishly prizing its relations with Russia. Critics also note that Israel’s archenemy Iran is providing weapons and advisors to Russia. They further point out that Israel’s Ukraine arms embargo puts it out of step with Israel’s most important partners in the West, especially the United States. Yet aiding Kyiv is a far riskier bet for Jerusalem than for most Western capitals. This is no easy call, and the one Israel made is probably the right one.

Traditionally, the GOP has been the favorite of those concerned with safety and national security. The party of Ronald Reagan emphasized the need for strong engagement abroad, a willingness to project power when necessary, and a commitment to the free world. Yet the contours of the conservative movement have begun to change in recent years, calling into question the GOP’s credibility on the issue of security. The growing support for a sort of soft isolationism is a problem. It is also fundamentally not conservative. Prominent voices from the American right have been carrying the banner of soft isolationism for years, from Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance to Senator Josh Hawley and former president Donald Trump.

Italy is about to have its first female leader and the American left is furious. Giorgia Meloni grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Rome and was raised by a single mother, after her father, a communist, fled to the Canary Islands and was later convicted of drug trafficking in Mallorca. She wrote in her autobiography that her mother planned to have an abortion when she was pregnant with her but changed her mind at the last minute. Meloni worked as a nanny, a waitress, and a bartender before getting into politics, but she’s no AOC. Meloni, 45, is the leader of the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy party, which recently won Italy’s general election with 26 percent of the vote. She’s widely expected to be named Italy’s first female prime minister.

Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine is coming up on its eighth month, and the costs to the Kremlin’s military have been immense. Increasingly isolated on the world stage, Vladimir Putin has joined the world’s club of pariah states, the only group willing to give him support. Chief among his allies is the Islamic Republic of Iran, a state with similarly imperialistic designs and global isolation. This axis has been brewing for some time — the two nations worked together extensively in Syria, for example — but the relationship has reached new heights as the Russian armed forces buckle under the strain of war. Perhaps the most potent symbols of this relationship are the hundreds of Iranian drones flooding into Ukraine to fill a gap in Russia’s weapons inventory.

Since the onset of Venezuela’s economic and humanitarian crisis back in 2015, around 6.8 million people have fled the country in search of refuge. The most popular destinations include neighboring countries Colombia and Brazil, as well as a host of other Latin American countries. Many who can afford it have also found safe passage to Europe. Yet many of Venezuela’s poorest and most disaffected are setting their sights on another destination entirely: the United States. At the height of the country’s troubles between 2015 and 2018, the number of Venezuelans apprehended by US officials never exceeded 100 people a year. Fast forward to 2022, and more than 150,000 Venezuelans have arrived this year already.

What’s more alarming than President Trump trying to frighten Kim Jong-un with “fire and fury”? President Biden trying to frighten Americans with Putin. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” the president riffed at a New York fundraiser, while fretting to supporters about his need to find that elusive off-ramp for the Russians. Biden’s loose talk about Putin’s formidability contrasted with US handwringing fits a pattern. Pervasive throughout Putin’s war has been far too much focus on what the United States should do to help Putin find these mythical off-ramps, and on how to restrain Ukraine to prevent it from getting nuked.