Syrians lined up today to vote in what was billed by government and allied media outlets as the first multi-candidate election under the Assad family rule. In the run up to the June 3 polls the regime of Bashar al-Assad undertook a savvy public relations campaign to present the incumbent as the sole guarantor of […]
Editor’s Note: The following is a book review by Reza Varjavand, associate professor of economics and finance at the Graham School of management, Saint Xavier University by Reza Varjavand Even though we still do not know for sure how we got to be on this planet, we have a long history of living on […]
Gareth Porter, author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold History of the Iranian Nuclear Scare, is a renowned investigative journalist and historian on U.S. national security policy. Porter was the 2012 winner of the Gellhorn Prize for journalism awarded by the Gellhorn Trust in the U.K. His previous book was Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and […]
Editor’s Note: The following is a contributing piece by Jahandad Memarian. Mr. Memarian is a senior research fellow at Nonviolence International and a contributor to Al-Monitor and the Huffington Post, He holds an M.A. in Western Philosophy from the University of Tehran and was previously an Iranian Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Santa […]
The snafu over Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade’s employment of household servant Sangeeta Richard has subsided. But the incident raises a strategic issue, which goes beyond the question of whether the U.S. treats India, in the words of the Economist, like a domestic servant. There is a tension between developed American freedom and the views of freedom that […]
Hugh Gusterson is a professor of anthropology and sociology at George Mason University who’s also a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He recently wrote that efforts by the Obama Administration to reach a deal with the Rouhani Administration in Iran and bring the Iranian nuclear crisis closer to a closure are met […]
My last post noted how the blockbuster memoir by Robert M. Gates reinforces the points many observers have made about the defects of the Obama administration’s national security process. The revelations also bolster my own argument that President Obama and his team share a good deal of the responsibility for the ongoing crisis in relations between Washington and Hamid Karzai’s government […]
The waning days of 2013 is a time of reflection on the most significant events of the year. It’s also a time to take a look at the most significant, controversial, and attention-grabbing books of the year. This year at the FPA, I picked the books in four categories: U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-Iranian relations, international […]
As regular readers know, the United States and five other countries (P5+1) concluded an interim nuclear agreement (the Joint Plan of Action) with Iran, setting the conditions that will hold during negotiations on a final agreement concerning the Iranian nuclear program and the international economic sanctions imposed on that country and also outlining some aspects […]
AP Photo: David Guttenfelder With the official death toll from Typhoon Haiyan topping 4,000 on Wednesday, nations from around the world are ramping up their efforts to help the Philippines deal with over 1,600 missing persons, 700,000 damaged houses and the nearly 10 million people affected. Australia, Britain and the U.S. have so far each […]
On Friday, we will look back on the 50 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and how that tragic event in Dallas changed history. Also, on Friday, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI will pay a state visit to Washington, D.C. and meet with President Barack Obama to look forward at how both our nations […]
The conventional wisdom about America’s global standing wants to have it both ways. The narrative about last month’s fiscal melodrama in Washington emphasizes how wildly dysfunctional domestic politics are quickening the country’s strategic decline and how China is emerging as the beneficiary. Yet at the same time the outrage over U.S. global surveillance efforts has […]
The management flaws now coming to light in the implementation of the president’s signature domestic achievement have long been evident in the foreign policy realm. As I argue in a new essay on Fair Observer’s website, the White House’s policymaking machinery is overly insular, centralized and politicized. Dana Milbank, the Washington Post columnist who is generally supportive of Mr. […]
In his journey to the White House, Barack Obama made much hay railing against his predecessor’s supposedly go-it-alone mindset and penchant for foreign policy unilateralism. With memories still fresh of the spectacular rupture between Washington and its traditional European allies over the Iraq war, Obama’s claim to be the “anti-Bush” garnered him a euphoric welcome […]
The cover photo of George Kennan on the paperback edition of John Lewis Gaddis’ biography shows a man of ease and erudition – an approachable professor. By contrast, the initial hardcover edition shows an expressionless man in hat and overcoat, stoic and still as a bronze statue. Gaddis writes a life of Kennan that illuminates […]