US Opinion and Commentary

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Thanks to No Drama Obama, American Leadership Is Gone

Posted December 27th, 2016 at 11:09 am (UTC-4)
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If Dec. 7, 1941, is the day that Franklin D. Roosevelt said “will live in infamy,” then Dec. 20, 2016, has got to be a close second….Turkey, Iran and Russia met in Moscow to settle matters in the Middle East. The United States wasn’t even asked to the meeting.

Diplomacy’s Aversion to Power: Consequences of Retreat

Posted October 26th, 2016 at 4:03 pm (UTC-4)
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In practice, aversion to the use of power undercuts the effectiveness of diplomacy. It has been said that power without diplomacy is blind, but it is equally true that diplomacy not backed by power is impotent.

America’s Mr. Diplomacy

Posted September 15th, 2016 at 10:49 am (UTC-4)
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Such criticism is not uncommon among outside experts (and) administration officials who believe that Mr. Kerry too often pursues unwinnable goals and settles for imperfect outcomes. But there has been something honorable, even heroic, about the persistence, hard work and faith in diplomacy that this decorated Vietnam veteran…has brought to his search for peaceful solutions.

Obama’s Chance for Middle East Peace

Posted September 14th, 2016 at 1:54 pm (UTC-4)
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Leaving office without having made progress on an issue he specifically promised to resolve would be a colossal failure for Obama. Fortunately, he still has time…he should push for a UN Security Council resolution that establishes new parameters for a future peace accord…

A World Awash in Change

Posted July 12th, 2016 at 11:35 am (UTC-4)
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There is a global effort opposed to the longstanding state system for bringing order to the world. [T]here are more refugees today than at any time since the end of World War II. All this is in sharp contrast to the economic and security commons that coalesced as the Cold War came to an end.

What America Keeps Getting Wrong in the Middle East

Posted June 16th, 2016 at 3:01 pm (UTC-4)
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Americans must be led to correct our counterproductive misunderstanding of Islam….The presumptive candidate of one of our two major parties has suggested banning Muslims from entry into the United States….If we do not correct these attitudes, we will continue to pay not just in treasure but in blood. Lots of it.

How America Stopped Thinking Strategically About the Middle East

Posted June 3rd, 2016 at 11:52 am (UTC-4)
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The absolutely simplest strategic objective might run something like this: Protect American interests. By such a standard, the last 15 years of war have been a massive failure. Imposing a new political order at bayonet-point has failed, squandering trillions of dollars and thousands of lives — while spawning even more violent successors to al Qaeda.

Can Americans Unite Without Tragedy?

Posted May 31st, 2016 at 10:19 am (UTC-4)
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by Barbara Slavin At a dinner this Memorial Day weekend, guests reflected on the moments when Americans had been most united. For the older folks, the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy was the unifying trauma. Everyone remembered where he or she was when Kennedy was shot as he rode in an open convertible […]

Would a Mideast Marshall Plan Work?

Posted April 22nd, 2016 at 12:14 pm (UTC-4)
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“We face, as the Marshall Planners did not in their dealings with Western Europe, the challenge of intervening in countries in which ethnic strife is high, democratic traditions are few, and America’s presence is a source of suspicion…”

Toward a Global Realignment

Posted April 19th, 2016 at 4:38 pm (UTC-4)
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Since the next twenty years may well be the last phase of the more traditional and familiar political alignments…the response needs to be shaped now. During the rest of this century, humanity will also have to be increasingly preoccupied with survival as such on account of a confluence of environmental challenges.

Will Israel Reach Age 100

Posted April 12th, 2016 at 4:18 pm (UTC-4)
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The region in which Israel lives is melting down at a rate no one would have anticipated….if there are any state disappearing acts, these may be on the Arab side….even with all of their problems, the region’s three non-Arab states –Israel, Turkey, and Iran — are probably the most highly functioning polities in the region.

The World Through Obama’s Eyes

Posted March 11th, 2016 at 4:23 pm (UTC-4)
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Fresh chum was tossed into Washington’s foreign policy fishbowl Thursday with publication of “The Obama Doctrine” by The Atlantic. Using President Barack Obama’s decision to back away from the red line he drew over Syria’s use of chemical weapons as a central theme, author Jeffrey Goldberg gave readers tremendous insight into Obama’s decision-making process and how he thinks U.S. muscle should be flexed. Goldberg reveals details of Obama’s sometimes curt interactions with his national security staff, his disdain for Washington’s think-tank establishment and his admission of failure with regards to Libya. It’s not a light read; more than 19,000 words (some of which are, shall we say, salty.) And thousands more words have already been written in reaction.

A Plague of Black Swans in the Middle East

Posted February 25th, 2016 at 10:04 am (UTC-4)
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[T]he Obama Doctrine…is a cruelly pragmatic strategy…(assuming) the U.S. cannot solve all the problems of the region…and is unwilling to act as a surrogate for our friends in the region…none of the (presidential) candidates would likely go back to a policy that was politically and financially costly, often related only distantly to actual U.S. interests,

Fight or Flight

Posted February 22nd, 2016 at 2:00 pm (UTC-4)
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If the next U.S. president is unwilling to commit to stepping up to stabilize the Middle East, the only real alternative is to step back from it…civil wars do not lend themselves to anything but the right strategy with the right resources, trying the wrong one means throwing U.S. resources away on a lost cause.

Bystanders to Genocide

Posted February 18th, 2016 at 11:55 am (UTC-4)
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Just five years ago next month, President Obama proclaimed a “responsibility to act” when American “interests and values are at stake”…Within days, a no-fly zone was established over Libya…Why didn’t Mr. Obama apply the “responsibility to act” to end the Assad regime’s threat to “our common humanity and our common security”?