Foreign Affairs
The headline caught my attention: “Iranian forces take over Iraq oil well.” Yikes. Then I read the story…and the real situation is described by U.S. Colonel Peter Newell: “What happens is, periodically, about every three or four months, the oil ministry guys from Iraq will go … to fix something or do some maintenance. They’ll…
You’ve seen this news, I imagine: Swiss voters on Sunday overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on minarets, barring construction of the iconic mosque towers in a surprise move that put Switzerland at the forefront of a European backlash against a growing Muslim population. Muslim groups in Switzerland and abroad condemned the vote as biased and…
Having some kind of head cold nastiness for the better part of a week has left me more befuddled than usual and less able to focus thanks to various apothecary concoctions. Here’s what I’ve been muttering about…. Apparently, Gen. Treasurer Frank Caprio is going to campaign as a right-of-center progressive. Tiger Woods has garnered a…
Folks over thirty may find it a strange reemergence to hear talk of nuclear disarmament. In what way is it plausible to expect those who seek leverage against us to decrease their efforts to correspond with our own unilateral dismantling of our weapons of mass destruction? That’s among the questions that Keith Payne takes up…
… that would be right around the time President Obama announced that his administration would abandon plans for an American missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. In August, 2008, Poland had reached an agreement with the Bush administration to host components of a missile defense shield, an arrangement that had “deeply angered”…
Given recent events, I found it difficult not to sigh and worry upon reading this parenthetical note from Paul Lettow’s review of Nicholas Thompson’s book about two early American Cold War strategists: (Thompson helpfully quotes a later reflection from Andrei Sakharov that the Soviets would have perceived any U.S. refusal to pursue the hydrogen bomb…
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton’s assessment of the options available to the United States in dealing with Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons ought to be absorbed and addressed by those on any side of the debate: Sad to say, Obama’s Iran policy is not much different from that of George W.…
It looks like the Obama administration is casting about for some excuse to do the wrong thing in Afghanistan: Before President Obama commits additional troops to Afghanistan, the United States needs assurances that Afghan leaders preside over a stable government that is seen as legitimate in the eyes of its citizens, top Democratic officials said…
Pete Wehner on Obama’s foreign policy in The God That’s Failing…: …President Obama looks to have been taken to the cleaners by the Russians. The United States bowed before Russian demands when it came to retooling a missile-defense system for Poland and the Czech Republic. We gave up something tangible and important — and in…
Well, there you have it, from the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee: Jagland singled out Obama’s efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe. “All these things have contributed to – I wouldn’t say a safer world…