How Deep Is the Deep State?

How Deep Is the Deep State?

The deep state resists exposure—but not forever. Patience, persistence, and power may yet cauterize the Leviathan.

Roger Kimball, American Greatness

How deep is the deep state?  That’s a question I have thought and written about a lot.  I had something to say about it recently at The Spectator on the occasion of Abigail Spanberger’s recent election as governor of Virginia. It saddens me to report that every time I think I have taken the measure of the Leviathan that is the deep state, new precincts and vistas open up beyond the boundaries I had delineated.

Sometimes I think the deep state is like an onion. Peel back one layer, and another layer presents itself.

Sometimes I think it is like a basement with an endless procession of sub-basements. Excavate one, and you encounter another below it.  It is like that bit of Hindu cosmology that envisions the world resting on the back of a turtle, which rests on the back of a larger turtle, which rests on the back of a still larger turtle.  Asked what that larger turtle stands upon, the answer is that it is “turtles all the way down.”

That said, I suspect that the difficulty in surveying the deep state is not its depth but its extent.  That is, I suspect that its roots are shallow while its area is both indefinitely large and protean.

The deep state also seems to resemble the Lernaean Hydra of Greek mythology.  Hercules was sent to dispatch this multi-headed monster in the second of his twelve labors. Not only did the beast have poisonous breath, but its blood was so toxic that even its scent was fatal. Furthermore, the hydra had this alarming characteristic: if you cut off one of its heads, two grew back in its place. Hercules overcame this problem by having the stump of each head cauterized as soon as he had cut it off.

Another curious feature of the deep state is that exposure often fails to elicit effective condemnation.  This is due in part to the propaganda arm of the deep state, sometimes called “the media,” which does not so much report the news as echo the narrative fabricated by the deep state.

Consider the revelations about the Somali fraud in Minneapolis.  I thought, and I continue to think, that that massive fraud perpetrated by Democrats will (to continue with Hercules) cauterize one head of the deep state hydra.  What is interesting, though, is the alacrity with which the deep state stepped up to replace or at least drown out that revelation with the cacophony about ICE murdering innocent protestors.  At the end of the day, I do not think that gambit will work in the court of public opinion. If you drive your car into an ICE agent, you should first be sure that your life insurance premiums are current.  The same can be said about carrying a military-grade handgun to a protest and then getting into a fight with ICE agents.  It’s not a recipe for longevity.

Nor has the deep state been effective in countering the ongoing revelations pouring out of Georgia about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Democrats have denounced the actions of the Trump administration, going so far as to try to prevent it from investigating election records, ballot boxes, and voting machines across the country.  A bad look, that.

Also ham-handed was the attempt by Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) to smear Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, over a fake whistleblower complaint. Gabbard skewered that effort like Errol Flynn dispatching a baddie. “It is a hoax,” Gabbard wrote on X. “And they don’t even bother rewriting the script: same deep state, same counsel, same playbook. Democrats in Congress & the propaganda media fall in line every time.”

You can’t blame the Democrats for wanting to shut up Gabbard.  She has been one of the administration’s most effective tools for exposing deep state corruption.  The latest revelations concern the direct, personal involvement of Barack Obama in the effort to take down Donald Trump in the aftermath of his election to the presidency in 2016. Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, outlined the findings in a press conference with Gabbard:

While pretending to engage in a peaceful transfer of power, Barack Hussein Obama, in private, went to great and nefarious lengths to sow discord among the public and sabotage his successor, President Trump.

The new evidence released by the Director of National Intelligence confirms that the Obama administration manufactured and politicized intelligence, which was later used as justification for baseless smears against President Trump—an effort to delegitimize his victory before he even took the oath of office.

The truth is that President Trump never had anything to do with Russia, and the Russia collusion hoax was a massive fraud perpetrated on the American people from the very beginning. The worst part is that Obama knew the truth, as did all the other officials involved, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and many others.

I suspect that other stumps are about to be cauterized. Last summer, in another meditation about the persistence of the deep state, I drew upon J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books to describe its astonishing longevity.  Voldemort, Rowling’s chief villain, had a clever way of preserving himself. Rightly worried that the forces of good might try to destroy him, the Dark Lord devised a way of infusing living bits of himself into various objects and people. Rowling called the resulting magical charm a “Horcrux.”

“If the body of a Horcrux owner is killed,” we read in a Potter gloss, “that portion of the soul that had remained in the body does not pass on to the next world, but will rather exist in a non-corporeal form capable of being resurrected by another wizard.” Nice work if you can get it. As I said last July,

I have often wondered whether the architects of the deep state have been inspired by Rowling’s tale. For, like Voldemort, they have taken care to distribute their essence in external objects and institutions. Wizards like Donald Trump and Elon Musk pronounce anathema upon their activities. They cast death spells that evaporate the elixir that imparts life—dollars in all their glory—but somehow the deep staters manage to evade death.

One problem is that a Horcrux cannot be destroyed by conventional means. It cannot be destroyed by being smashed, ripped, or burnt, for example. What is needed is Basilisk venom, the Sword of Gryffindor, or a magical, inextinguishable flame. You won’t find any at your local Costco or Walmart.

That’s one bit of bad news. Another is that it is generally difficult to discover where a Horcrux resides.  Often, they take up residence in unlikely people or places. How many smiling GOP faces, ostensibly anti-deep state campaigners, are actually hosts for the agents of darkness?

One bit of good news is that Donald Trump and his lieutenants, like Hercules, have unraveled the mystery and the methods of the deep state.  Initiatives like the SAVE Act, for example, which requires individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections, will help frustrate the efforts of the deep state to rig elections.

What is needed to destroy the deep state is patience, persistence, and power.  Donald Trump, in his second term, has marshaled all three. The deep state is clever. It is insidious. But it is not invulnerable. Trump and his team have assembled an extraordinary range of legal and political weapons to undo the machinations of the deep state. Trump has also managed a sort of economic miracle, bringing down inflation and the cost of many consumer goods while boosting wages, the stock market, and employment.

Will all that be sufficient unto the day? I hope so. I think so. It is not too much to say that the future of the republic depends on its being so.

Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the president and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (St. Augustine's Press), The Rape of the Masters (Encounter), Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (Ivan R. Dee), and Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity (Ivan R. Dee). Most recently, he edited and contributed to Where Next? Western Civilization at the Crossroads (Encounter) and contributed to Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order (Bombardier). 

Trump keeps the world guessing

 

Trump keeps the world guessing 

From Venezuela to Tehran, Trump keeps the world guessing — to his advantage

Martin Gurri, California Post

We Americans are a parochial people — we’re homebodies.

War with Iran?

We’d rather watch the Super Bowl.

Overthrow a South American dictator?

Are you kidding?

Let’s talk about the Epstein files — sex, a supposed suicide and CIA all wrapped in one lurid package.

It’s one of our better traits.

Our country is often accused of rank imperialism, but in truth we’d rather putter around our own backyards.

Now and then, though, we need to peek over the garden wall and see how the rest of the world is doing.

If we do so today, we’ll find our sitting president, Donald Trump, feverishly rearranging the scenery and props on the geopolitical stage.

If the play he inherited from his predecessor was “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire,” Trump’s new production is an updated remake of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

Everything is in an uproar, everything looks different — mostly, I must say, to the president’s advantage.

Venezuela surprise

The Western Hemisphere can stand as Exhibit A of Trump’s global hyperactivity.

In Venezuela, a US carrier fleet steamed offshore for months, as a warning to the anti-American dictator of that country, Nicolás Maduro.

To most wise observers, myself included, the move looked like a simple application of pressure. It felt like a bluff, to see if Maduro would fold.

The reality is that Trump blusters a lot.

The reality also is, sometimes he means it.

In one of the most remarkable episodes in recent history, US special forces swooped down on Maduro’s fortress, slaughtered his Cuban bodyguards and removed the dictator and his wife from their bedroom to New York City, where both will face trial on drug-running charges.

Trump then told Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, that she could stay in charge if she did exactly what he told her.

A nervous Rodríguez immediately agreed.

Unlike the Iraq operation, the US surgically transformed a hostile regime into a dependent one, without getting stuck with having to fix a broken country.

Venezuelan oil is now being sold by American companies — a fact almost as astonishing as the night raid itself.

Normally, Latin American governments of all political stripes condemn US military interventions in the region.

It’s a conditioned reflex.

Not this time.

An unprecedented trend has seen the rise of pro-US and more specifically pro-Trump leaders in Latin America, starting with Javier Milei in Argentina and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador but including the recently elected presidents of Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Honduras and Costa Rica.

After the raid, Milei called Maduro a “narco-terrorist” and offered his “full support” to Washington.

Also after the raid, Panama booted out the Chinese company that had managed the ports at either end of the canal — just to make sure Trump stayed happy.

Meanwhile, the Cuban economy, already in free fall, suffered a devastating blow from the loss of subsidized Venezuelan oil.

Trump appears determined to starve the island of fuel until the communist regime collapses.

Is he bluffing?

Does he mean it?

Nobody knows.

But we do know that after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum decided to send oil to Cuba for “humanitarian” reasons, all it took was a phone call from Trump for Sheinbaum to change her mind.

Right now, the Western Hemisphere is Trump’s sandbox to play in whatever way he chooses.

Tehran faces a test

Matters are more complicated when it comes to Iran.

The ayatollahs have been battered by recent events — first, getting crushed in a 12-day war with Israel, then watching Trump drop bunker-busting bombs on their precious nuclear facilities, finally enduring a massive street revolt that unmasked the brutality and illegitimacy of their rule.

The regime is at its lowest point, probably ever.

So naturally Trump wants to negotiate.

First, though, he ordered yet another carrier fleet off the Persian Gulf.

It is now in place.

The Iranians are unlikely to yield to Trump’s demands.

The country is a much larger and harder target than Venezuela.

Snatching Ayatollah Khamenei in his pajamas won’t accomplish much.

So what’s next?

This is a good place to bring up some of the president’s personal qualities that must unnerve his foreign opponents.

First, he’s utterly unpredictable.

I said that before — sometimes he’s bluffing, sometimes not. Which time is this one?

Second, he’s willing to take tremendous risks.

Most heads of state in democratic countries tend to plan small so they can survive failure.

Trump, builder of gilded towers, is pretty much the exact opposite of that.

Lastly, he is not bound by the rules and rituals of traditional statecraft.

His is a strange and original mind.

Picking off Maduro was foreseen by absolutely no one.

If Trump decides to act in Iran, it will be at a time and in a fashion that will surprise not only the Iranians but the rest of us Very Smart People too.

These are the thoughts that trouble the heads of the Iranians as they stare across the table at the American negotiators.

China in turmoil

With China, the president has been handed an unexpected gift.

China is our strongest geopolitical antagonist — the rising economic and military power, ambitious to replace the US as the alpha dog in the global pack.

 An image collage containing 2 images, Image 1 shows Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a ceremony in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 17, 2026. , Image 2 shows A protester calls on President Donald Trump to "Act Now" against the Iranian regime during a protest outside the US Embassy in London, England, on Jan. 31, 2026

Iran’s supreme leader warns any US attack would spark ‘regional war’

To get there, China must first attain supremacy in its own region — and to achieve that, it must conquer Taiwan, which it has always viewed as a breakaway province.

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese communist regime has spent much of its considerable wealth building up potent military and naval forces, with the immediate objective of invading Taiwan.

Since the US is unofficially committed to defending the island, this would precipitate a shooting war between the two nuclear superpowers.

Fortunately, palace intrigue has intervened.

For reasons that are at best opaque, Xi has decimated the top leadership of the Chinese military.

The purge has sent old-school, well-respected generals to prison.

It could be argued that Xi is now in a stronger position — but I doubt it.

The whole episode smacks of fear and weakness.

The Chinese military caste likely feels that Xi and the Communist Party are the enemy.

The top echelons must be in disarray.

Whoever replaces the disgraced generals will be either resentful or terrified — both emotions are reasonable under the circumstances.

Invading Taiwan, at the moment, is a distant dream.

Trump could have faced in Xi a cunning, hyper-rational adversary, the kind of strategic thinker who might have lured the president into making a false move.

Instead, through no effort of his own, he finds himself dealing with a paranoid emperor intent on smashing rival domestic centers of power even at the cost of his country’s geopolitical objectives.

At the other end of the world, among the Europeans, the president has gotten his way as well.

Europe is the Joe Biden of continents — aging, self-destructive and thrilled by the sight of hordes of arriving immigrants.

Like Biden, most European leaders think of Trump as a cross between Attila the Hun and a Marvel supervillain, someone who loves to shatter the tranquility every culture in decline desperately craves.

European theater

The president wanted just two things from the Europeans.

One was that they pay for their own defense and not rely on Uncle Sam for protection.

This proposal greatly amused the Europeans — until Trump began to walk away from the Ukraine War and the mockery turned to panic.

In the end, all on their own, the Europeans decided to spend more money beefing up their military establishments — and the joke is that they thought they were doing this to spite Trump, even as they were bending to his will.

The president’s other demand related to Greenland.

Out of kindness to my readers, I’m going to skip over most of the theatrics surrounding this issue.

Yes, Trump threatened to snatch the island away by force, as if it were a gigantic version of Nicolás Maduro.

And yes, that time he didn’t really mean it.

But the threat made possible some wonderful comic fantasies, such as a war between the US and Denmark, and some even funnier moments, such as the trickle of soldiers sent symbolically to Greenland by Europe’s biggest countries.

Britain, home of awesome warriors, sent a single officer to defend the island.

Once again, while the Europeans squealed with delight because an invasion had been averted, Trump got everything he needed from them on Greenland — without the burden of having to pay for or run that Arctic icebox of a place.

Our last stop is Russia, a once-formidable enemy now stuck in the muck of the Ukraine war.

Because bombing has largely destroyed Ukraine’s power grid, the Russians had a winter window of opportunity to break through to victory.

But it’s already February.

The Ukrainians are freezing yet they remain unbroken.

Dealing with Russia

If spring arrives with few changes at the front, it will become clear, maybe even to Vladimir Putin, that Russia will never win this war.

For many reasons, not least to wean Russia away from total dependence on China, Trump wants to end the conflict.

During the presidential campaign, he boasted that he would do it on “Day 1.”

That didn’t happen.

The issue throws a spotlight on an unexpected aspect of the president’s character.

Trump has a frantic style. He flits from controversy to controversy without a pause for breath — his policy-making appears afflicted by an attention disorder.

In fact, he’s relentless.

He has come back to the Ukraine negotiations again and again.

He’s ticked off one side then the other.

As always with Trump, offending his interlocutors is part of the fun.

But he is completely outcome-oriented — he doesn’t give a hoot about process, he wants peace.

At worst, the fighting will continue, leaving Russia a greatly diminished antagonist.

I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if some sort of armistice was concluded under American auspices before the end of 2026.

Were that to occur, it will be one more hint that, at present, we are all living in Donald Trump’s world.

Trump Must Help Iranians

 

Trump Must Help Iranians Bring Down the Islamic Regime

With Diplomacy on the Verge of Faltering, Preparations for an American Military Strike Are Proceeding Apace

Jonathan Spyer, The Spectator

With diplomatic talks between the US and Iran set to take place in Muscat, Oman, today, the prospects for de-escalation between the two countries appear slim to non-existent. Teheran is clear that it is prepared to discuss only its nuclear programme and has so far refused the White House’s demands to put its ballistic missile programme, support for regional proxies, and internal repression on the agenda.  

With diplomacy on the verge of faltering, preparations for an American military strike are proceeding apace. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group has now reached Middle Eastern waters and the area for which United States central command is responsible. Additional military assets – F15E strike aircraft, THAAD and Patriot PAC 3 batteries, tanker aircraft – have also been deployed. Action against Iran could come at any time. President Trump will keep the regime guessing until the last moment.

Substantively, however, historical precedent and reality don’t suggest that a one-and-done US airstrike or special forces operation in the vein of Venezuela could rapidly destroy the Islamic regime in Iran. Trump’s stated preference for ‘swift and decisive’ military action that delivers this collapse is no easy feat when the Iranian ayatollah has more than one million armed fanatics under his control. These are true believers who haven’t hesitated to murder many thousands of unarmed Iranian civilians in the past few months.

The choice available to the US and its allies is either concerted, strategic action along a variety of lines and over an extended period of time or no action at all. If the latter course is chosen, the murderous regime of the mullahs is likely to survive. The former course doesn’t guarantee success for America either. But it makes it possible.  

If a single, spectacular act cannot bring down the nearly 50-year-old regime in Tehran, what course might be adopted? Unless the US or someone else wants to send a large military force on the ground into Iran to destroy the regime, the remaining available option is to assist the Iranian people in their own efforts. Once this is understood, a number of options become feasible.

Firstly, the single most significant factor currently absent on the Iranian scene is a divide within the Iranian security forces. Potential fissures exist. Perhaps the most significant is between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Artesh, the conventional armed forces of the country. Any work which can be done in reaching and incentivising commanders of the Artesh to defect from the regime would be of immense value. The regime lacks legitimacy and is teetering. Increasingly it remains in power because of the naked exercise of force. The US and other anti-regime countries possess the capacity to reach and incentivise Artesh commanders to do their bidding.

Secondly, ongoing actions from the air (and if possible, via covert action on the ground) to disrupt the regime’s own efforts to suppress unrest are both feasible and advisable. Killing senior IRGC commanders, destroying bases, striking regime IRGC military and civilian infrastructure would all serve the dual purpose of weakening the regime’s capacity to respond to protests and building the morale of the protestors themselves.  

Thirdly, the regime understood what it was doing when it prioritised shutting off the internet last month. A people which can’t communicate with the outside world or with one another can be slaughtered in silence. It is therefore of paramount importance to take the necessary measures to enable communication. Independent satellite internet services are vital here. State-directed efforts to ensure the presence of Starlink terminals and other technical means on Iranian soil have a crucial role to play.  

Offensive cyber actions to disrupt the regime’s own abilities to manage and rule Iran should be undertaken. The US is the world leader in this field.  

Finally, there should be practical assistance on the ground to provide both medical facilities and weaponry for a growing Iranian insurgency. The need for protestors to seek medical assistance in state medical facilities is a key vulnerability. This problem could be remedied through direct assistance from America or any other anti-regime country. 

Sporadic acts of armed resistance against the Islamic regime have already begun. At present, they appear to be mainly restricted to peripheral parts of the country and to involve Iran’s ethnic minorities, in particular its Kurds. The determined but small Kurdish paramilitary groups mustn’t and can’t be left to fight the regime alone. An insurgent counterforce needs to be built, in the same way that the US and regional powers built the insurgency that challenged the Assad regime in Syria, and the coalition of ground units that destroyed the ISIS ‘caliphate’.  

In some ways, the situation in Iran currently resembles Syria 15 years ago, when the Assad regime sought to drown a civil uprising against its rule in the protestors’ own blood. Instead, Assad’s brutal measures generated an insurgency which eventually consumed his regime. Iranians don’t have 15 years to wait, of course, and the regime they face is more sophisticated and better organised than Assad’s authority. 

The Iranian regime’s bloody footprint extends across the world, but it lost control of events after Hamas’s 7 October pogrom in 2023. Yahya Sinwar’s diabolical rampage inadvertently hastened the downfall of Iran’s regional terror shield as Israel engaged in an existential battle for the Jewish state’s survival. It is now for the courageous people of Iran – who have long detested the regime’s prioritisation of terrorism – to remove it and usher in a new Middle East. To do so, the West needs to step up and support the efforts of the Iranian public. Time is of the essence.

Jonathan Spyer is a journalist and Middle East analyst. He is director of research at the Middle East Forum and the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict.

Khamenei has gone underground

 

Khamenei has gone underground

Iran’s supreme leader retreats underground, warned of likelihood of US airstrikes

Shane Galvin, New York Post

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has gone underground, reportedly hiding out in a bunker out of fear of being wiped out by US airstrikes — as the USS Abraham Lincoln steams toward the Persian Gulf.

The 86-year-old supreme leader has moved to a fortified shelter in Tehran connected to a series of elaborate underground tunnels after senior military officials warned of the increasing likelihood of an imminent US attack, Iran International reported, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Khamenei has left his youngest son Masoud Khamenei, 53, in charge of running the day-to-day management of the Islamic Republic, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Masoud Khamenei’s emergency duties include being the primary communication channel with the regime’s executive branch, according to the report.

Iran has deemed the likelihood of US airstrikes to be high after President Trump announced that warships were headed to the Middle East as a warning to the ayatollah, following a continuing war of words between the two leaders in recent days.

Trump boasted Friday that the US Navy was sending a massive “armada.”

The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, which includes three destroyers, is currently motoring from the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf region of Iran, Stars and Stripes reported.

Publicly, Tehran has not backed down from heightened tensions with the US as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian threatened to treat any attack against the supreme leader by the US or Israel as “an all-out war against us.”

Iran’s national security parliamentary commission also declared this week that any attack against the embattled Khamenei would trigger a declaration of jihad, the Iranian Students News Agency reported, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Khamenei, who is frequently active on social media, has not posted on X since Jan. 17, though it is not known when he allegedly entered into hiding.

It’s not the first time the supreme leader has holed up underground. Khamenei also went silent after retreating to a bunker last June, during the 12-Day War with Israel. He reportedly had even drafted a list of potential successors in the event he was killed in the short-lived conflict.

His latest X post this year threatened to go after both internal and international “criminals” who he claimed were responsible for the widespread protests that have gripped the nation since Dec. 28.

Those protests — against a disastrous economy that came on the back of the worst drought the country has seen in decades — have seen regime forces gun down at least 3,000 civilians, with some groups claiming the death toll as high as 20,000.

The American Grizzly

 

The American Grizzly

Richard Jordan, Law & Liberty

The first year of Trump 2.0 has seen extraordinary changes in American foreign policy. Last December, the new National Security Strategy (NSS) made waves, and like everything about President Trump, responses were never tepid. From “alarming” (the NYT) to “beautiful” (The American Conservative), our twittering elites were glad to have a new reason to rant about foreign policy. In any case, the recent spectacle in Venezuela certainly demonstrated the administration’s resolve to put its new NSS into practice.

Still, many commentators, even on the right, have been frustrated that Trump’s new NSS doesn’t offer a “doctrine.” As everyone who studies international relations knows, every president needs a doctrine: some readers may remember the Truman Doctrine, and in my lifetime we’ve had a Powell Doctrine, a Bush Doctrine, an Obama Doctrine, and even (bless his heart) a Biden Doctrine. So where is the Trump Doctrine?

In short, there isn’t one. In both domestic policy and foreign policy, Donald Trump has never peddled an ideology. From the beginning, “America First” has been much more of an attitude than a blueprint. With the new NSS, his bold moves in Venezuela, and even his rhetoric around Greenland, Donald Trump is offering what he has always offered: a character, a WrestleMania narrative for America abroad.

This need for character, not doctrine, has always tripped America’s elites. For all his brilliance, Henry Kissinger saw his foreign policy eclipsed by Ronald Reagan’s, because Reagan understood American character and Kissinger did not. Americans do not want realism or “restraint”—though Donald Trump’s foreign policy could arguably fit both. Rather, Americans want to understand their role in the world. They want to understand how American character fits into the script of international politics. Elites talk about worldviews. Normal Americans don’t. They talk about stories.

So what is the American character, and what does that character look like on the international stage?

That question is engaged directly, and unapologetically, in the last of Hollywood’s great sword-and-sand adventures, The Wind and the Lion (1975). Starring Sean Connery as a Moroccan bandit chief (complete with Scottish brogue), the film centers on the kidnapping of Eden Pedecaris (Candice Bergen) and the efforts of Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Keith) to recover her. John Milius, one of Hollywood’s most gifted screenwriters (Apocalypse Now) and rare conservatives (he preferred to be paid in kind with guns rather than cash), wrote and directed the swashbuckling desert epic. While overshadowed at the box office by Jaws, it has long since cemented its status as a classic. And fifty years later, it is hard not to see it as a commentary on modern America and our own twenty-first-century larger-than-life populist.

At the start of his first term, Donald Trump chose Old Hickory’s portrait to hang in the Oval Office. He might have done better to choose the Rough Rider.

Under Teddy Roosevelt, the United States for the first time stepped fully into the role of a Great Power. Milius intuited that in the first decade of the 1900s, American character on the world stage was being redefined, and this redefinition was embodied in the man of Theodore Roosevelt. You cannot understand how America sees itself in the world without understanding it. And Milius understands it well.

The Wind in the Lion opens in Tangier, where Mrs. Pedecaris, an American citizen, is kidnapped by desert brigands. The film tracks the initial, failed diplomatic efforts to secure her release, and it culminates in a spectacular American show of force that, in a single day, upends the Great Power politics of the region, with the fate of Morocco firmly in the hands of a singular American president. (One can’t help but draw parallels to the current situation in Venezuela.) But unlike most films about foreign policy, even exceptional ones like Argo, The Wind and the Lion does not keep its characters in constant danger or its audience in constant suspense. The opposite of Hamas, these Muslim brigands treat Mrs. Pedecaris with respect, and the tension in her scenes is usually thanks to Sean Connery’s sex appeal rather than any immediate threat to this heroine’s life or limbs. The film revels in landscapes and horses and Winchester rifles, but above all in the American soul and the way Roosevelt embodied so much of what is best in our country.

Although a grand adventure story, and one that took several crowd-pleasing liberties with its historical source material, the film centers on a pensive monologue given by Roosevelt in Yellowstone. That monologue is worth quoting in full:

The American grizzly is a symbol of the American character: strength, intelligence, ferocity. Maybe a little blind and reckless at times … but courageous beyond all doubt. And one other trait that goes with all previous. … Loneliness. The bear lives out his life alone. Indomitable, unconquered—but always alone. He has no real allies, only enemies, but none of them are as great as he. … The world will never love us. They respect us—they may even grow to fear us. But they will never love us. For we have too much audacity. And we’re a bit blind and reckless at times, too.

Teddy Roosevelt bequeathed to America the Roosevelt Corollary and the Big Stick—both of which, incidentally, Trump has now wielded in Venezuela. But what Roosevelt really stamped upon the face of America was not a doctrine but an ethos. Ever since, American foreign policy has been something of a grizzly bear: strong, audacious, and (mostly) alone.

America is strong. The Wind and the Lion revels in the martial parades, swagger, and iconography that once captivated Americans and still captivate our president. Roosevelt is portrayed, accurately, as a man’s man: a powerfully built and virile boxer; an impeccable shot; and a loving and authoritative father. Unlike his willowy Secretary of State (a delightfully sly and cynical John Huston) or the stooping Washington creatures who mill about him, Roosevelt—like the crowds that adore him—is upright, energetic, and imposing.

The same vim enlivens American policy. Where Europeans had paid handsomely for their ransomed nationals, Roosevelt defies the Moroccan bandits with clear threats and bold action. The Europeans sent gold; Roosevelt sent warships. And in a Kiplingesque touch, Keith’s Roosevelt and Connery’s Raisuli gradually come to admire each other: they respect the strength and daring of the other man, and each, of course, wants to “find out what kind of weapon the old ****** uses.”

Along with this strength, the United States has historically exercised a brash disregard for Old World niceties. International law is often the first casualty of our gumption. At one point in the film, Secretary Hay objects, “But that’s illegal,” and Roosevelt responds, “Now why spoil the beauty of a thing with legality?” Yet this blithe treatment of international norms does not mean America is warmongering: Roosevelt, like Trump, brokered many peace deals and started no wars, and the film depicts the Japanese celebrating the new “American wind” that blows against injustice—not unlike the Venezuelans who are rejoicing in the streets, even as comfortable elites wring their hands over legal indelicacies.

A second casualty is our opinion of Europe, and theirs of us. Donald Trump is by no means the first president to recognize in the Old World a tendency to authoritarianism, decadence, and debility; Milius gives us the same glimpse in 1904 Tangier. Indeed, if anything, the semi-barbaric Muslim Berbers are portrayed with much greater sympathy than the Europeans. Moreover, Milius does not try his audience’s patience with ahistorical depictions of Islam as a tolerant and egalitarian “religion of peace.” Rather, he paints the Berbers in all their raw virtues and vices. Roosevelt feels a kinship with this kidnapping desert brigand, and so too does Mrs. Pedecaris, because they are all strong-willed and audacious characters who thirst for great things, whereas the Europeans do not.

And this is perhaps the most poignant theme of the film: greatness means loneliness. Roosevelt cautions his daughter Alice that he does “not pity any man who has the good sense not to [pursue] it.” Aristotle made the same point about his great-souled man. Whether Donald Trump understands this truth on a personal level, I cannot say; but on a national level, he does seem to grasp that American greatness sets it apart. When I was an undergraduate, elites felt a great deal of anxiety about anti-Americanism. At the same time, I noticed that ordinary Americans did not share this anxiety; instead, they expressed a certain (deserved) contempt for the French and the Germans, but also tended to accept that our country could not exercise great power without arousing a certain amount of envy. America, I hope, will not return to isolationism, but it will always be isolated. It is part of who we are.

At the beginning of the Cold War, Charles Burton Marshall warned that “a world power cannot lead a double life.” Its policies, he insisted, must match its character. Too often our policy elites, on the left and right, have demanded doctrines and worldviews but neglected this more elemental matter of the nation’s personality. Our rulers and prognosticators pay great attention to national security, but they ignore national character. For the past few decades, both our realists and our idealists have been obtuse because they have been denationalized: the idealists have thrown overboard Woodrow Wilson and anything that might make them distinctively American, while the realists have forgotten Teddy Roosevelt, and with him any narrative that might once again capture the American imagination. Thankfully, that seems to be changing.

At the start of his first term, Donald Trump chose Old Hickory’s portrait to hang in the Oval Office. He might have done better to choose the Rough Rider. Roosevelt’s swagger and bravado, his contempt for dandified, out-of-touch elites, his willingness to flaunt convention—these are all hallmarks of Roosevelt and, in truth, hallmarks of the American personality. Of late, our storytellers have stopped exploring these facets of our national ethos. I believe that is all the more reason to revisit an old favorite. In The Wind and the Lion, John Milius presents us with a spectacular vista of American greatness—in all our power, audacity, and solitude, a nation at times terribly near-sighted, and yet somehow also indispensable, indomitable, and good.

Richard Jordan is an associate professor of international relations at Baylor University, where he studies grand strategy, game theory, and imagination.

The party of lawbreaking

 

Democrats — the party of lawbreaking

Hugo Gurdon, Washington Examiner

Minnesota’s Democratic politicians have lost touch with reality — hardly surprising when their heads are lodged in a fundamentally dark place. Despite strong political competition to say the most clueless and incendiary things, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) might already have won this year’s prize.

Inveighing against federal enforcement of immigration law, Frey said, “Imagine [your] city or town was suddenly invaded by thousands … that do not share the values that you hold dear. Imagine if your daily routines were disrupted. … Imagine if schools shut down.”

The supposed invasion he refers to is by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, whose search for and detention of illegal immigrants is necessitated only because Frey’s “sanctuary city” bans local police from cooperating with ICE, so even violent criminals are let go rather than being handed to the feds. If Minneapolis cooperated with ICE deporting criminals, the mayhem Frey bemoans would not be happening.

Americans also don’t have to imagine schools being closed unnecessarily, they only have to remember it. That’s what they endured in 2020-2021. Minneapolis schools have closed again, supposedly for fears of children’s safety amid the “invasion,” but those same children are being organized into anti-ICE street protests. One suspects safety is not the real concern of teachers unions, who think more about left-wing resistance and propagandizing rather than educating students.

There is an even more stark detachment from reality in Frey’s rhetoric. When he calls the influx of ICE officers an invasion of aliens who don’t share local values, does he not hear himself? To him, American federal agents are invaders but not the foreign migrants from alien and often incompatible cultures with whom ICE is dealing. The former are just doing their jobs in difficult circumstances but are condemned, the latter — one thinks of Somali fraudsters who ripped off billions of dollars from taxpayers — are protected during years of official refusal to hold them accountable?

Frey and his ilk are hermetically sealed in a left-wing bubble and can’t or won’t hear the cries of a public that sees up to 20 million outsiders who have no right to be here, who have brought customs and mores that create a low-trust society that, for many Americans, makes the country unrecognizable as the one they grew up in and love.

Frey is not the only one confusing citizens for outsiders and illegal migrants for locals. Walz made an extraordinary speech on Jan. 14, referring to ICE officers’ presence in his state as an “occupation,” and accused them of conducting a campaign of “organized brutality” for President Donald Trump.

Perhaps Walz is going for broke because, after abandoning his hopeless reelection bid, he no longer has any political reason for restraint. This is a man who, if the Democrats had won the White House in 2024, would now be vice president, a stopped heartbeat from the Oval Office.

He and Frey represent what the Democratic Party has become — a party that doesn’t believe in enforcing laws it does not like, which wants citizen resistance to law enforcement, and whose rhetoric encourages the violence and confrontation they deplore.

Recent events in Minnesota reveal that acceptance of lawbreaking and obstruction has become the norm for the party of the Left. It is its modus operandi. It wants to make laws for the nation, but when the nation puts the other party in charge, it wants the laws broken with impunity.

Erase Jimmy Carter’s Iran shame

Erase Jimmy Carter’s Iran shame

Rich Lowry, New York Post

The 1979 Iranian Revolution was one of the most stinging US setbacks of the Cold War era. 

A longtime ally that the United States depended on as a pillar of regional security, the Shah, gave way to a theocratic regime based on hostility to America. 

The revolutionaries stormed the US embassy and seized our diplomatic personnel in November 1979.

If that wasn’t enough of a national embarrassment, a dramatic rescue attempt by the US military in April 1980 ended in abject failure at a staging area in Iran dubbed Desert One. 

As the Islamic Republic totters on the precipice, struggling to put down country-wide protests that are more threatening than any it has ever faced, it’s possible to imagine that we could be about to experience a bookend, from 1979 to 2026. 

The first Iranian revolution came in the context of a United States brought low by its exit from Vietnam, of a hollow US military, of the advance of our enemies around the world (from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the Sandinista takeover in Nicaragua) and of a feckless president in the person of Jimmy Carter whose administration was associated with American retreat. 

A second Iranian revolution, which is obviously not guaranteed, would underline the opposite dynamic on all counts. 

It’s not true that Carter threw the Shah overboard: The Iranian ruler’s own incompetence and indecision did him in.

He couldn’t decide to suppress or placate the protest movement, and proved unable to do either. 

By some estimates, it was — as a share of the population — the largest revolutionary movement in modern history.

In echoes of the current situation in Iran, rampant inflation, regime self-dealing, middle-class disaffection, and ideological and regional priorities that didn’t align with what most Iranians wanted fueled the revolt. 

In a crucial dynamic that we haven’t yet seen in contemporary Iran, the military began to melt away — and it wasn’t clear, if the Shah had tried to shoot his way into staying in power, how many troops would have been ready to carry out his orders. 

Once in charge, the mullahs undertook a low-level, ongoing war against the United States via terrorist proxies, and spread their malign tentacles throughout the Middle East in a bid for regional dominance. 

American presidents tended to believe that it was too difficult to do much about this, and Barack Obama actively sought to accommodate Iranian power. 

Now, though, the dynamic has changed.

As President Donald Trump has said in a different context, the hunter has become the hunted. 

After Oct. 7, the Israelis systematically neutered Iran’s proxies, and Tehran lost a significant ally with the fall of Syria’s Bashar Assad. 

Whereas Iran humiliated us in 1979 with the embassy seizure, we humiliated Iran last year with the strikes on its nuclear sites that made the regime’s painful, decades-long effort to get a nuke seem a costly misadventure. 

The contrast in US military proficiency between Operation Eagle Claw, the aborted Delta Force operation in 1980, and Operation Midnight Hammer in 2025 couldn’t be starker.

At the same time, the United States now has a president very different than Jimmy Carter.

No one will ever find Donald Trump wearing a sweater and talking to the nation about malaise.

Trump’s mode is pure assertion, based on an impulse toward personal and national dominance alien to Carter. 

The Iranians may be able to cajole Trump into negotiations, but they will never be able to push him around, and they disregard his threats at their peril.

If the regime actually falls and is replaced by an allied or non-hostile government in Iran, it would move a large piece off the strategic chessboard for our enemies, and change the geopolitical balance of the Middle East.

As much as the 1979 revolution was a debacle to the West, a favorable 2026 revolution would be a boon — to the Iranians, and to us and our allies.