It’s not exactly yellow cake, but the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the US Treasury Department accused Iran of aiding and partnering with Al Qaeda: The U.S. for the first time formally accused Iran of forging an agreement with al Qaeda, helping operatives move money, arms and fighters through Iranian territory to the terrorist […]
I just spent my Saturday morning doing some solid nerding. By that I mean, I read two great articles about that rising behemoth, China. The first was ‘China’s Bumpy Road Ahead by international consultant and geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer. Bremmer, has a blog at Foreign Policy that features many guest writers and covers impactful global […]
Preeminent international relations scholar G. John Ikenberry’s article ‘A World of Our Making‘ is his latest piece defending and promoting the extension of the liberal world order. Ikenberry is a strong believer in international norms and institutions that have been building since the end of World War II and supports the United States leading this […]
Just as I was finishing the Kissinger/Nixon ‘Detente’ chapter of John Lewis Gaddis’ “Strategies of Containment“, I came across this excerpt from Henry Kissinger’s new book “On China”. Kissinger, whose strategic leadership comes across very well in Gaddis’ book, dishes about his secret trip to Beijing in 1971 to lay the ground work for American […]
While reading one of my favorite foreign policy blogs, The Compass, I came across this interesting story of Iran’s secret training of militant forces in Latin America, specifically Venezuela, by Fausta Wertz. Wertz apparently came across the story in the Arab Times, which states: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is allegedly training a large number of Kuwaitis, […]
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal published this fascinating piece on the rising, so far just cold, conflict between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran. Now these two regional powers have been in competition since the fall of the Shah in Iran in 1979, but as the article by Bill Spindle and Margaret Coker […]
Everyone would agree that the United States needs to take their enemies seriously, know who they are, and what they stand for. This is why I get so frustrated when the Obama administration has gone out of the way to not use the words ‘terrorism’, ‘Islamism’, and now, even ‘war’. It should also be noted […]
Pinchas Landau, author of The Landau Report, is one of Israel’s leading independent analysts and commentators on economic and financial affairs. Prior to establishing an independent consultancy, he was for many years one of the country’s most prominent financial journalists. In 1996, Pinchas launched The Landau Report, a newsletter and consultancy service addressing the needs of foreign firms and […]
I recently read Robert Kagan’s article ‘The Price of Power‘. Here’s his intro: The looming battle over the defense budget could produce a useful national discussion about American foreign and defense policy. But we would need to begin by dispensing with the most commonly repeated fallacy: that cutting defense is essential to restoring the nation’s […]
It’s hard to throw a virtual rock nowadays at any foreign affairs publication and not find statements of the demise or fall of American power. In many ways, these are accurate statements as American economic power is falling in proportion to some of the rising economies around the world (although it is still top dog […]
True, the Mubarak regime was authoritarian and at times brutal with its domestic opponents; true, Mubarak squandered opportunities over three decades to gradually introduce pluralism and democracy. But, compared to other such regimes, was it so bad, especially from the American perspective? Why were Western governments so eager to topple him, yet still tiptoe around the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or his […]
I have admired Barack Obama for some time, but since early in the 2008 Democratic primaries, I have written that his Achilles’ heel is his hubris. It is his strength, for sure, propelling a charismatic politician with little experience (especially on foreign policy) into the White House. But it can be his undoing. On […]
Credit Suisse today reported that a number of emerging market (EM) economies are experiencing rising inflation; and in some, central banks are countering with interest rate hikes (see excerpt below). Might seem strange to those of us who live in a country where policy interest rates are at zero and the Federal Reserve seems to be more […]
Some Russians want to rehabilitate the great novelist Leo Tolstoy. (Read a NYTimes article on the subject here.) Russia’s post-Soviet regime turned a cold shoulder to the author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace because the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him in 1901 and because he was later exalted by Soviet leaders. In the late 19th century, […]
Congratulations! Brazil inaugurated its first woman president in history on the first of the year. Read her inaugural speech below. President Rousseff, a close ally of outgoing President Lula since 2000 and his anointed successor, lacks the charisma of her benefactor, but not the resume. Fighting as a Marxist urban guerrilla against Brazil’s military regime in […]