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The mood music of the last 10 years has sounded very much like the mood music of the 1930s,

in which dictators aggressors aggress at will, and democracies are timid and inward-looking. We may very well recall Trump's moves,

which are now being cast as hyper-aggressive and sort of in line with the new era of great

power competition and winner-take-all geopolitics, and say that these were essential, necessary, and ultimately peace-producing signals

to foreign dictatorships, that the United States meant business, that we were not a power

to be trifled with, that we were capable of executing complex military operations with an astounding degree of success,

as we just were with Maduro, as we were in Operation Bin Night Hammer, that they should think twice before they next try to invade one of their neighbors.

And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that's the version of reality we're looking at in which we are averting great power wars

rather than hurdling towards them. But we are definitely in an era that is more fraught,

more dangerous than we were, certainly when I was coming out of college. And the only question was

who was going to sign the next free trade deal with the United States.

It's 11.30 a.m. on Wednesday, January 7th in New York City. It is 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 7th in Israel, where Israelis are winding down their day. On Tuesday, tens of

thousands of ultra-Orthodox Israelis gathered in Israel for an unruly and at times even violent

protest against the issue of military conscription for the

Kharedeem, the ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews. During the protests, a 14-year-old

Karadi boy was tragically killed when a bus driver accelerated into a crowd that was blocking

a street. There is a preliminary investigation underway to understand

what actually happened. In other news, following the U.S. capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas

Maduro, President Trump and other American leaders have made strong threats against the Islamic

regime of Iran, which the U.S. hit forcefully back in June of last year.

The regime now faces its 10th day of nationwide protests. And some analysts are wondering whether

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