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Clifford D. May

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times. He can be reached at cliff@fdd.org.

Columns by Clifford D. May

Russia, Ukraine and the West’s grand delusion of freedom

Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging a war of imperial conquest. That's despicable but, from a historical perspective, hardly novel.

March 1, 2022

Putin’s winter war

In my column on Feb. 1, I offered a prediction that Russian President Vladimir Putin would "not start a war during the Olympics, which take place in the People's Republic of China.

February 22, 2022

Coalition of the unwilling: Western elites prefer not to fight authoritarianism

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan addressed the British Parliament, expressing optimism about the "global campaign for democracy now gathering force."

February 15, 2022

Amnesty International spreads the virus of antisemitism

Antisemitism is an easily transmissible virus. Mutations are not necessarily less lethal.

February 8, 2022

If Putin wins, it’s not only Ukraine that loses

Unless your name is Vladimir Putin, you don't know whether Russian troops are going to invade Ukraine.

February 1, 2022

To the fashionably woke, Uyghur lives don’t matter

Chamath Palihapitiya is a household name - at least in the kind of houses featured in the Wall Street Journal's weekly "Mansion" section.

January 25, 2022

All the president’s enemies

As he begins his second year in office this week, President Biden looks toward the horizon and sees multiple challenges and threats.

January 18, 2022

The U.N.’s final solution to the Israel question

Historians usually date the start of the Holocaust to June 1941 when German troops invaded the Soviet Union, identified Jewish civilians, lined them up and shot them by the thousands.

January 11, 2022

U.S. adversaries are becoming South American conquistadores

In November 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry, addressing the Organization of American States, made news by announcing: "The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over."

January 4, 2022

American Revolution was not about tyranny (or slavery)

Science is never settled. Among those who established that: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein. History is never settled either. No one has done more to establish that than Andrew Roberts, the great British historian.

December 29, 2021

Biden’s weak defense of democracy

The Summit for Democracy upset China's totalitarian rulers. That's the most positive thing I can say about the two-day virtual conference convened by President Biden earlier this month.

December 22, 2021

China, Russia and Iran: The empires strike back

Let's play Jeopardy! The answer: "All were great empires in the past, and all now have rulers determined to establish great empires in the future." And the question is: "What are China, Russia and Iran?"

December 15, 2021

Beijing’s strategy for global dominance

The Cold War was a struggle for global supremacy between two superpowers. It ended thirty years ago this month when the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin.

November 30, 2021

Saule Omarova: Biden’s leftist banker

For decades, Joe Biden was known as a man of the center-left, a normal guy, a regular Joe. His views have changed. I'm going to venture a guess as to why.

November 23, 2021

United Nations’ transnational bureaucrats now do Beijing’s bidding

For decades, the United Nations has wasted billions of dollars, achieved little, and tolerated misconduct - the Oil-for-Food scandal and sexual exploitation by U.N. peacekeepers are just two examples.

November 16, 2021

Chill out about global warming

At the United Nations Climate Summit (aka COP26) in Glasgow last week, President Joe Biden declared that climate change is "the existential threat to human existence as we know it."

November 9, 2021