The news cycle has moved on and few are talking about President Obama’s Nobel Prize award but the event did prompt me to wonder how the U.S. was doing overall in the prize count. We like to think of the U.S. as producing outstanding achievers in almost every area of human endeavor, but does the […]
Like many people I’ve been fascinated with the news that President Obama has won the Nobel Prize. The story isn’t really dying down at all and it’s dominated chat in the blogosphere. What strikes me most about the coverage of this story is how often commentators link the award committee’s reasoning to notions about the […]
There were two important developments today in the Afghan war effort and the debate about the overall strategy. First, President Obama has received an unofficial copy of General McChrystal’s recommendations. I’m a bit confused about how a general’s recommendations can be considered unofficial when given to a president, but that is what the media is […]
Nicholas Thompson responds in this blog post to Andrew Bacevich’s article in The Washington Post about updating the Cold War doctrine of containment for the war on terrorism. He agrees that here is much in George Kennan’s original idea that could be applied to the present conflict with global jihad while suggesting that the effort […]
In Washington last week I sat down with a group of bloggers to interview two smart and savvy foreign correspondents. The fact that they were women, representing influential media from the Middle East, made their views interesting on several levels. Nadia Bilbassy is a correspondent with MBC (Middle East Broadcasting Co.) and Joyce Karam is […]
Yesterday I was invited to attend a civil society plenary session on UNSCR 1540 (obliging States to refrain from supporting by any means non-State actors from developing, acquiring, manufacturing, possessing, transporting, transferring or using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their delivery systems) at the UN organized by the Stanley Foundation . The session was co-sponsored by the […]
President Obama is engaged in a comprehensive policy review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and meetings this week at the White House have produced a flurry of news reports about about the situation there. In this report in the LA Times, General Stanley McChrystal makes the case for a “troop-intensive counter-insurgency strategy” that would call […]
In an extraordinary move, President Obama today presided over a meeting of the U.N. Security Council and turned the U.S. into the world’s number-one anti-nuclear crusader. In an unanimous vote, the Security Council issued a call for global nuclear disarmament. President Obama has acknowledged that this will be a very long term effort, but the […]
Josh Rogin at The Cable notes that Senators Kerry and Lugar have written to President Obama urging that a USAID administrator be appointed as soon as possible.
The annual gathering of world leaders to mark the start of a new session of the U.N. General Assembly provides the U.S. president with an opportunity to clearly define his vision of the U.S. role in the world. Think of it as a State of the Union address, except it’s to the world rather than […]
A huge banner with a photo of David Plouffe festooned a media conference I attended in Croatia last week. The former Obama campaign manager is coming to Zagreb later this year and those running local election campaigns are eager to welcome “the unsung hero” who “helped restore the trust in the United States of America.” […]
Last week I was pleased to meet with a delegation of Members of Parliament and staff from the Parliament of Ghana, who were in town as part of a USAID-supported legislative strengthening visit coordinated by the SUNY Center for International Development.While in Albany, NY they spent the week meeting with state legislators, staff from the […]
President Obama reversed course on missile defense this week, announcing a retreat from the Bush plan of stationing missile interceptors and radar bases in Eastern Europe: In one of the biggest national security reversals of his young presidency, Mr. Obama canceled former President George W. Bush’s plans to station a radar facility in the Czech […]
This past Thursday I attended an annual event of the International Center of the Capital Region that honors people in the community who have taken time out of their busy schedules to meet with delegations brought to the US through the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. It was a wonderful gathering that included federal, state and […]
Admiral Mike Mullen said yesterday that he anticipates more troops will be needed in Afghanistan: Admiral Mullen, called before the Senate Armed Services Committee to testify for his nomination to serve a second term as chairman, said that no specific request for more troops had yet been received from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior […]