Diplomacy

Obama About as Popular Abroad as He Is at Home

Less than half the world – 46% — would want to see President Barack Obama reelected, according to a new poll out Thursday of 150 nations done by the U.S. Global Leadership Project, a collaboration between the Meridian International Center and Gallup. That’s exactly the percentage of Americans who approve of the job Obama’s doing …

Netanyahu Signals Determination on Iran, But War Will Have to Wait

Had he been speaking Hebrew in a dramatic TV broadcast back home, parts of Benjamin Netanyahu’s fire-and-brimstone speech Tuesday night might have been mistaken for the words of an Israeli prime minister about to launch a fateful war. He painted Iran’s nuclear program as an apocalyptic extermination threat redolent of the Nazi …

Reading the Tea Leaves in Newly Announced U.S. Talks with North Korea

Despite the change in regime, the lines of communication between the U.S. and North Korea have remained open, leading to the announcement on Monday that they they would hold talks on Feb. 23 in Beijing. It will be the third in a series of “conversations” between the two countries which began last July in the hopes of restarting the …

Palestinian Detente Disaster

I’ve been traveling to the Middle East as a journalist for the past 30 years. During that time, Israel has grown into an ethnically diverse, economically successful country with a strong (internal) tradition of democracy, free speech and the rule of law–a tradition not always extended toward its Palestinian neighbors, especially when …

Clinton and Russia Spar Over U.N. Resolution on Syria

You know things are bad when Russia won’t return Hillary Clinton’s calls. For more than two days now, Clinton has been waiting for Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to call her back to discuss a pending United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria. Lavrov is traveling in Australia, prompting some members of the U.S. …

Obama in Foreign Policy Interview: Warmonger or Milquetoast?

To the foreign policy left, Obama is a turncoat who spoke out against the George W. Bush Administration’s expansion of executive power during the 2008 campaign only to adopt some of Bush’s security-over-civil-liberties policies on taking office. To those on the right, Obama is a turncoat determined to cede American global preeminence …

The Great Bain Diversion

The great debate about whether Mitt Romney was a vulture capitalist or venture capitalist at Bain Capital is useful and interesting, but not for the reasons many people pretend it is. The country benefits from a frank discussion about the wages of capitalism and what limits, if any, we should place on free markets. But the specifics of …

Iran’s Dangerous Game

The Republicans running for President have never seemed more ridiculous than when they discuss Iran and gratuitously–and ignorantly–criticize President Obama’s handling of that issue. Obama has patiently increased the economic pressure on Iran and, acting in concert with the Israelis, worked to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program–and …

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