The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 16-1 today to confirm Hillary Clinton's appointment as the next secretary of state. The committee's report now goes to the full Senate for a vote after the inauguration. This AP report characterizes Clinton's confirmation hearing testimony as a call for the return of diplomacy and an end to unilateralism: […]
Hillary Clinton is appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's confirmation hearing today and since this is all happening while I’m at work, I’m checking out the Madame Secretary blog for updates. Nice work guys. This AP report also has a summary of Clinton's comments to the committee during her audition to be America's next […]
In this op-ed, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sees great promise for American leadership in addressing the global financial crisis: Not since the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy half a century ago has a new administration come into office with such a reservoir of expectations. It is unprecedented that all the principal […]
Many people believe that U.S. foreign policy is dictated by Israel. A good counterexample to offer such people is the recent revelation by The New York Times that Israel requested U.S. support in bombing Iran's suspected nuclear sites. According to the report, President Bush vetoed this plan and offered only limited intelligence sharing: President Bush […]
I think my son was disappointed at what he got this year. After opening his gifts, he started throwing shoes at me.” -David Letterman, December 29th By now it should be obvious: President Bush's final visit to Iraq, planned in secrecy for dramatic impact, will be remembered for the startling gesture of disrespect invented by […]
In the latest developments in the latest Mideast conflict, Israel rejected the U.N. cease-fire proposal as unworkable as more Palestinian missiles continued to fall on Israel. The U.S. has adopted its traditional role of supporting close ally Israel, laid the blame for the conflict squarely on Hamas, and worked for an equitable ceasefire that would […]
The latest report on how to improve America's public diplomacy has its merits, but overall it inspires deja vu. We’ve been in this place before, trying to figure out how the world's most influential culture and most powerful government might finally achieve a public diplomacy organization that operates at the same level. The Brookings […]
According to this analysis from the International Relations and Security Network, Iran is starting to worry about President-Elect Obama and what his presidency will mean for U.S. relations with Iran and they are preparing their people for something less than a new start: In recent days, Iranian TV has run a number of highly […]
U.S. News & World Report has a feature on the U.S. relationship with Europe focusing on European expectations of President-Elect Obama. The report includes a look at U.S. policy toward Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Cuba. Political pundits inside the Washington beltway used to ask how long the new president's honeymoon would last, now […]
The enmity between the United States and Cuba is well known and is unlikely to change anytime soon, as least on a government-to-government level. This report from NBC News notes that lower-level private approaches may succeed in establishing new links between the two countries. If you are interested in digging deeper, this panel report from […]
I read a wide variety of online news sources and I’m used to seeing certain names pop up on certain sites as regular contributors. It's rare though for a name familiar to me from foreign policy sites to suddenly appear on the trendy pop culture sites, so I noticed when this opinion piece from Joseph […]
The International Herald Tribune reports that the emerging links between the Mumbai terrorists and Pakistan are complicating U.S. diplomatic efforts to ease tensions between India and Pakistan and assist the investigation into the attacks: The new links to Pakistan added fresh complications to American diplomatic efforts to secure cooperation between India and Pakistan, which […]
I really don't like cynicism all that much, it's easy to be cynical but it really contributes very little. Take, for example, this opinion piece by Lionel Beehner, a former writer for the Council on Foreign Relations, who offers a cynical take on President-Elect Obama's new foreign policy team: Pardon the metaphor, but Obama is […]
The New York Times offers this profile of the new foreign policy team: As President-elect Barack Obama introduces his national security team on Monday, it includes two veteran cold warriors and a political rival whose records are all more hawkish than that of the new president who will face them in the White House […]