Hillary Clinton argues in our cover story this week, now available online to subscribers, that America is not so much in decline as adjusting to a world of increasingly diffuse power, where like-minded networked individuals, …
Diplomacy
At the U.N., Obama Presents a United Diplomatic Front as Israelis and Palestinians Fight On
With the country’s attention momentarily on foreign policy, it’s worth making one observation: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have kept near-total peace in the public eye over the last two and a half years. That is no small …
Saudi Threatens U.S. Over Palestinian Statehood Veto
Last night’s GOP presidential debate and the Eurozone financial crisis may seem like the most important issues of the moment, but the biggest news yesterday may have come, barely noticed, on the diplomatic front.
“Nation Building Here at Home”
In this week’s issue of TIME, Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass takes President Obama’s call for domestic investment from a June speech announcing an accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan, and expands it into a new way of thinking about U.S. foreign policy. With the threat of a dominance struggle between global …
Obama Fails to Budge Arab Opinion
The economy and the budget may be consuming Barack Obama’s presidency, but don’t forget that his candidacy was largely–perhaps even mostly–about foreign policy. At the core of Obama’s rationale for running in 2008 was his promise to restore America’s international strength, and diminish the threat of terrorism, by withdrawing our …
Bibi and Barack Meet: So Much for the Fireworks
Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued their icy relationship in front of the cameras Friday after what the President somewhat ruefully called “prolonged” talks, suggesting that Bibi had delivered one of his trademark multi-part lectures on the requirements of Israeli security. The two were correct and diplomatic, …
Bibi and Barack, the Sequel
I’ve already registered my skepticism that not much will come of Obama’s assertion yesterday that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”
The statement is not, as many are claiming today, a demand for a return to pre-1967 borders: 1967 lines refer at most to the deployment of …
Obama Struggles to Keep Pace with the Middle East Mess
Listening to the commentary, you might think President Obama’s speech on Thursday was an important moment in Middle East history. It is a “hugely important speech,” said Wolf Blitzer on CNN in the run-up; Obama to …
Grim Mideast Reality Curtails Obama’s Reformist Vision
In his much-hyped speech on the Middle East scheduled for Thursday, President Barack Obama will argue that the region’s anti-autocratic uprisings and the death of Osama bin Laden have laid a foundation for democratic and …
White House Leans on Regimes in Syria and Yemen
A day before Obama’s address on the Middle East, the White House made two important gestures Wednesday in the ongoing Arab Spring saga. As with much of U.S. policy in the region of late, its not clear how much effect either will have.
Kerry’s Emerging AfPak Role: Precursor to Secretary of State Gig?
In recent years, John Kerry seems to have settled into a new role in the Senate. The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee finally got a major chairmanship at the helm of the Foreign Relations Committee. And he’s been in the …
America and Pakistan After Bin Laden: Still Frenemies
With the fate of Osama bin Laden now firmly sealed, a crucial new question has emerged: Can America’s long-fraught relationship with the country in which the al-Qaeda leader was hiding survive much longer?
For nearly a decade, America has danced a strange tango with Pakistan, our nuclear-armed Islamic ally on Afghanistan’s eastern …
Realist Attack on the “Genocide Chick”
Under the cover line “Interventionista”, the National Interest this week fronts a lengthy story on Samantha Power, Obama’s special assistant for multilateral affairs. Power was an advocate for intervening in Libya, and the article spends a lot of time reviewing her writing to lay out her efforts as a supporter of humanitarian …
