ROCKET TO RUSSIA.

At National Review Matthew Continetti says when it comes to Russia Obama's a pussy ("the problem isn’t our capabilities. It’s our lack of will," mrrowrr), so let's get back to a Reaganite foreign policy -- like for example arming battalions of psychos in countries we don't understand:

Except for sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the occasional scolding, President Obama has been uninterested in retaliating against imperialism and deterring further aggression. He holds the view that history will expose Putin as a pretender and fool, and that Russia will be bogged down in a Syrian quagmire just as it was bogged down in Afghanistan long ago. What Obama forgets is that the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan came about because the United States financed and equipped anti-Soviet forces — a course of action he has rejected since the Syrian uprising began in 2011.

What could go wrong?

Also, we should return to nuclear brinkmanship, because back when we were still doing that Wall Street was booming and America was in love with a dashing young man named Alex P. Keaton:

We forget we hold nuclear cards, too. This is a fact Reagan did not lose sight of. “The two strategic decisions which contributed most to ending the Cold War,” writes Kissinger, “were NATO’s deployment of American intermediate-range missiles in Europe and the American commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)"... 

Not only would a revitalized and advanced nuclear force, coupled with increased funding and enlargement of strategic defense, assert U.S. supremacy, deter adversaries, and develop innovative technologies. It would also bring political benefits to whoever proposed it.

Political benefits! He buried the lede.

Quoting liberally from such unpunished war criminals as Henry Kissinger and Robert Kagan, Continetti's whole rant is rancid, but the ending's especially nuts:

“The Reagan Doctrine proclaims overt and unashamed American support for anti-Communist revolution,” [Charles] Krauthammer wrote in 1985. “The grounds are justice, necessity, and democratic tradition.” Replace “anti-Communist” with “anti-authoritarian,” and what has changed? If we are to reestablish American ideals, American interests, and American pride, we must hurt the bad guys, and overtly and unashamedly revise the Reagan Doctrine for a new American century.

It's hard to believe that "anti-authoritarian" isn't an inside joke on Continetti's part. Anyone here remember Reagan's U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who believed that in order to defeat totalitarian states like the U.S.S.R. we should tolerate authoritarian states like Roberto d'Aubuisson's El Salvador, Pinochet's Chile, and other factories of murder and torture that happily profited from and advertised our support? The idea of a neo-Reagan policy that's “anti-authoritarian" is absurd, though I can believe if Continetti and his buddies got their hands on power, they might revise Kirkpatrick's totalitarian-vs.-authoritarian formula into authoritarian-vs.-double-plus-nogoodnik or some shit.

Obama made a big mistake not calling Den Haag the moment he was inaugurated.