Secure Freedom Minute

Tomorrow, yet another vital nation may be lost if the people of South Korea decide to elect a pro-North Korea, anti-America Communist as their next president. Or alternatively, if, despite the majority’s preference for his pro-freedom, conservative opponent, this election – like the parliamentary ones of 2020 – winds up fraudulently giving victory to the radical left.

Either way, the outcome would be a further blow to America’s strategic position in the world – and boon to Communist China’s.

Coming on the heels of the loss of Peru, Afghanistan, Chile and Ukraine in the past year, and the prospect that U.S. allies may be voted out in Colombia and Brazil in the next few months, our enemies will surely be further emboldened and our remaining friends destabilized.

A generation ago, the question was “Who lost China?” Today, it will be: “Who lost the Free World?”

This is Frank Gaffney. 

While the world’s attention is focused on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the likelihood grows that ominous conflicts will erupt elsewhere, as well.

The obvious one will involve the Chinese Communists moving against Taiwan, either directly and forcefully or via a flanking maneuver, blockade and or other coercive, non-kinetic techniques including cyber, information and economic warfare.

In addition, even as Vladimir Putin pursues his Ukrainian invasion, he has put a large naval force into the Eastern Mediterranean. This may be an indicator that hostilities are imminent between Israel and one, or both, of the Kremlin’s regional clients: Iran and Syria.

Such a prospect is another reason, if any were needed, for Team Biden to abandon its appalling appeasement of the mullahs. The idea of giving them still more billions for additional empty promises to abandon their nuclear ambitions is not just reckless. It’s insane.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The Secure Freedom Minute - the most interesting, informative and life-saving 60 seconds of your day

Joe Biden’s Gaslight of the Union Tuesday was riddled with falsehoods and deflections. Particularly striking, however, was his failure to mention even once Communist China. That’s like having your doctor examine you for Covid, but not discuss your stage-five cancer.

We can speculate about why the Commander-in-Chief would completely leave out of what was supposed to be his assessment of the state of our Union the immense damage being done to it by the Chinese Communist Party’s decades-long “unrestricted warfare.” Perhaps his personal and family corruption by Beijing – shockingly documented in Peter Schweizer’s new book, Red-Handed – explains his completely ignoring its killer virus, deadly fentanyl smuggling, hollowing out of our economy, espionage, unreliable supply chains and growing military threats.

As it happens, the CCP did a simultaneous throw-down by threatening Taiwan. Joe Biden can pretend China is no problem. We can’t.

This is Frank Gaffney.

News Flash: Joe Biden did not deliver the State of the Union last night. Instead, the man who plays the President of the United States on TV presented the Gaslight of the Union.

Virtually the entire speech before a joint session of Congress and a national – indeed, global – audience was a clearly poll-tested description of what the American people want – not what they have been getting from the Biden-Harris administration.

For example, the Commander-in-Chief professed his determination to secure the border. To fund the police. To lower inflation and decrease energy prices. To support the people of Ukraine in their desperate fight for freedom. 

Unfortunately, a president who uses his most powerful platform of the year to lie to the American people about his record and priorities is unlikely to live up to the many, desirable commitments he made last night.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The Secure Freedom Minute - the most interesting, informative and life-saving 60 seconds of your day

Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight will likely feature promises of more federal spending aimed at advancing the radical left’s “fundamental transformation” of our country and spinning of his administration’s abysmal foreign policies.

A shocking “60 Minutes” segment aired on Sunday should prompt Mr. Biden to include in his remarks several concrete and immediate actions to address what is arguably the most important public policy issue of all: the danger that our electric grid is vulnerable to potentially catastrophic take-down.

The President must: make protecting the grid against all hazards a top priority; create a “czar” responsible for performing it; secure legislation requiring electric utilities to do their part; and prevent them from utilizing likely compromised equipment from China and other hostile powers.

We must secure the grid now, before it sustains devastating attack, endangering tens of millions of Americans.   

This is Frank Gaffney. 

The Secure Freedom Minute - the most interesting, informative and life-saving 60 seconds of your day

Fifty years ago this month, President Richard Nixon went to Communist China. The object was what his successors of both parties have done ever since – namely, seeking China’s assistance with some American priority or another, from countering the Soviet threat to help in ending the Vietnam war to opening markets to mitigating climate change.

Whatever the U.S. motivation for “engaging” with the ruling Chinese Communist Party, the actual effect five decades later is clear: The CCP has eaten our lunch.

Instead of our enriching the Chinese Communists translating into actual help from Beijing – let alone making them more like us – we have simply enabled China to wage what the CCP calls “unrestricted warfare” against this country and the Free World more generally.

It is absolutely insane for us to persist in engaging with, let alone continue underwriting, our most dangerous enemy ever.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The Secure Freedom Minute - the most interesting, informative and life-saving 60 seconds of your day

“Decapitation” is graphic way of describing the evident object of Vladimir Putin’s intensifying invasion of Ukraine. Unfortunately, if this despot can get away with not only eliminating an elected government in one of Russia’s neighbors, but presumably installing one to his liking there, other enemies of freedom will surely be emboldened to do the same.

Former President Trump warns that Russia’s “twin sister” –  Communist China – will be next to act on Beijing’s longstanding ambition to extend its enslaving misrule to Taiwan.

The question now is: Can such calculations – whether by the Chinese Communist Party or other thugs allied with Russia and China – still be influenced? That will depend in part on whether endangered governments are convinced that they will be better supported than we have those of Afghanistan, and now Ukraine. Or whether they should simply surrender preemptively to freedom’s enemies.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Overnight, Vladimir Putin went to full-on war in Ukraine. The Russian dictator is appears set on nothing less than the conquest of that neighboring nation, demilitarizing it, changing its government and dominating it henceforth in a manner reminiscent of the Kremlin’s previous enslavement of Ukrainians and others during the Russian empire and its Soviet counterpart.

Regrettably, such aggression seems unlikely to end there. Putin and his partners in China, Iran and North Korea appear to perceive a window of opportunity, thanks to weakness in Washington and the West more generally, to use violence to reorder things to their liking.

In the face of such dangers, America must revert to a policy of peace through strength aimed at demonstrating convincingly that the United States and its allies have the capacity and the will to counter aggressors forcefully, not just punish them economically.

This is Frank Gaffney.

On February 11th, I asked in this space, “What is Vladimir Putin thinking?” Now we know. After the Russian dictator invaded eastern Ukraine earlier this week, he’s channeling another tyrant’s calculations of nearly nine decades ago.

Similarities between Adolf Hitler’s actions and Putin’s recent conduct are striking. An Anschluss like the Nazis’ uncontested occupation of Austria has lately happened in Belarus. Putin has reprised the Third Reich’s brazen seizure of Czechoslovakia’s German-populated Sudetenland, in the name of ethnic solidarity, with his operations in Ukraine’s Crimea and Donbass regions.

Vladimir Putin now probably calculates that, like Hitler, he can finish the dismembering of the country he’s targeted. The Western response again has been too little, too late. And, most worrying, like Hitler, he has a powerful partner in such crimes. His Stalin is another ruthless Communist: China’s Xi Jinping.

Brace for impact.

This is Frank Gaffney.

So it begins. As predicted in this space, now that China’s Genocide Games are complete, Vladimir Putin has launched his long-planned invasion of Ukraine. It turns out not to be a “minor incursion.” Rather, the Russian dictator has – clearly by pre-arrangement – recognized the independence of two Ukrainian provinces in the Donbass region and moved so-called peacekeeping forces in to begin the process of annexing them to Russia.

This is unlikely to be the extent of what might be called the “Not-So-Great Reset.” In a speech yesterday forcefully denouncing the legitimacy of Ukraine’s sovereignty, Putin made plain that his ambitions extend to the whole of that country.

In the absence of the needed, credible deterrence by the United States, we must expect moreover that Putin’s Communist Chinese allies – and perhaps others – will seize the opportunity for aggression, as well. That will end badly.

This is Frank Gaffney. 

The Secure Freedom Minute - the most interesting, informative and life-saving 60 seconds of your day