Foreign Policy Blogs

U.S. Foreign Policy

Vice President Cheney's Trip to the Middle East

Vice President Cheney's Trip to the Middle East

On his way to a scheduled trip to Israel and the West Bank, Vice President Cheney made an unannounced stop in Iraq. Now five years since the invasion commenced, the Vice President met with Prime Minister Maliki to push him on political reconciliation. While he described changes since his last visit ten months ago as […]

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Mac is Back — in Iraq

Mac is Back — in Iraq

Think of it as fence-mending, image-building and playing his strong suit. With the Republican nomination now in hand, John McCain is making the overseas trip he was forced to delay earlier this month when he still faced opposition from both Mike Huckabee and from conservatives unreconciled to his being the Republican standard bearer. Now he's […]

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A Relatively Good Week for US-Iranian Relations

There have been rumors circulating (or for some hawks, wishful thinking) that the Bush administration has been considering a unilateral attack on Iran. The move would be aimed at halting the Iranian government's nuclear enrichment program, which the US government believes will lead to the development of not just nuclear energy (as the Iranians claim) […]

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Military Community Calls on Presidential Candidates to Use Soft Power

I was sad to miss this event put on by the Center for Global Engagement in Washington, DC last week. The event featured General Anthony C. Zinni, USMC (Ret.) and Admiral Leighton W. Smith, Jr., USN (Ret.) fresh from testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill.  According to the Center, the General and […]

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Sage Advice From Former Deputy Secretary of State Armitage

Richard L. Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State during President Bush's first term, was recently  interviewed by the Washington Diplomat. Armitage  spoke about the need to repair the U.S.'s tarnished image abroad. He told the Diplomat: "The decline in American influence can be a temporary phenomenon. I believe most countries want us to be the indispensable […]

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Former Diplomat John Bolton on the Virtues of Disagreement

Former Diplomat John Bolton on the Virtues of Disagreement

John Bolton, former Bush-appointed Ambassador to the United Nations, recently authored a book, titled Surrender Is Not An Option. The American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank in Washington, DC at which Bolton is a scholar, describes the book: “With no-holds-barred candor, the straight-talking former ambassador to the United Nations takes readers behind the scenes at the U.N. and […]

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Richardson on Rogue States

UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations held a conference yesterday discussing US foreign policy and rogue states. Reviewing the list of accomplished conference speakers, I, and I'm sure my co-blogger would agree, wished the event was held in DC (yes, I see no need to hide my east coast bias). One of the speakers, Dan […]

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The U.S. Through an Asian Lens

The U.S. Through an Asian Lens

The current issue of American Interest has a fascinating article lauding China's "smart policy" compared to the United States. The author, Kishore Mahbubani, is dean of the National University of Singapore. Mahbubani's article predominantly deals with China, however I have teased out several indictments on US actions, as interpreted by a foreign observer. Concerning the […]

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State Department: Living in the Shadow of the Pentagon

A new report from the Washington, DC-based think tanks the Center for International Policy, the Latin America Working Group Education Fund, and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) examines the gradual shift of foreign policy decision-making away from the State Department toward the Defense Department. Cleverly titled “Ready, Aim, Foreign Policy,” it can be […]

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To Pander, or Not To

Is that the existential question? There's been much made of recent comments by Obama advisers that came back to bite them. Economic adviser Goolsbee talked to the Canadian Consulate in Chicago regarding NAFTA, Samatha Power told a UK journalist that Hillary was a “monster.” Both learned the hard way that campaign advisers are fair game […]

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The European Plebiscite

A six-country poll conducted in November, 2007 by The Financial Times, France 24 and Harris Interactive explored various aspects of the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign. The poll found that publics in the U.S., Great Britain, Spain, France, Germany and Italy favored Hillary Clinton as the next U.S. president. Senator Clinton ranked first among the 10 candidates offered to respondents […]

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New York, Oslo and Washington: Talking nukes

Nuclear proliferation was the subject of some important meetings across the globe this week. In New York City: The UN Security Council met to slap Iran with new sanctions for its nuclear program. Reuters reported: “The U.N. Security Council on Monday imposed a third round of sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, even though some members […]

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This isn't the Golden Globes

Journalists like to make fun of the Hollywood Foreign Press (I've done it, I admit), that handful of perk-hungry foreign reporters who decide the Golden Globe winners. They put on a good show but do they really affect the real voting? The Oscar voting? Well the political foreign press is showing they indeed have clout. […]

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Benjamin Barber on Why the Democrats Can't Level with Voters

Benjamin Barber, the author of the international bestseller Jihad vs. McWorld, was the latest guest speaker at the USC Center for Public Diplomacy's "Conversations in Public Diplomacy" series on Thursday March 6th. Barber, who teaches at the University of Maryland in addition to doing high-profile political consulting work for many governments, titled his talk "Obama […]

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The Media Turns to Foreign Policy Issues

The US media has given some much need attention to the US Presidential candidates’ foreign policy platforms this week.  On Sunday, the Washington Post hosted an online question and answer session with Senator Barack Obama. Some of the topics covered include democracy promotion, policy toward cuba, the Isreali Palestinian conflict, and US-Islamic world relations. On Monday, Public […]

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