Tag Archive for ‘Foreign Policy’

Syria Gets Complicated

The regime of Bashar al-Assad is in some trouble, but it is not in any immediate danger of collapsing; if there is no foreign intervention it may survive.

The Liberal Hawks’ Neoconservative Allies

The problem with President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is not that it is “too pragmatic,” as recently alleged. The problem is that Obama combines the broad ideological assumptions of liberal interventionists with a leadership style that allows people more doctrinaire than he to dominate the internal debate and decision-making process. Libya is the product of his disinclination to reject interventionism in principle, and his simultaneous inability to oppose the liberal hawks in practice.

Belarus: Still No Country For Sold Men

Alexander Lukashenko has won the fourth presidential election in Belarus, taking 79 percent of votes cast in the turnout of over 90 percent, according to official figures. The opposition staged a protest rally in the central square in Minsk after polling stations had closed on Sunday, claiming that the election was stolen.

Time To Leave Korea

North Korea’s artillery attack on a South Korean island on Tuesday was the latest in a series of Pyongyang’s aggressive moves over the past year and a half. They started with ballistic missile tests in April of last year, soon followed by a nuclear test in May. Kim Jong Il upped the ante last March with the sinking of a South Korean corvette, the Cheonan, with the loss of 46 lives. Given his erratic ways and the hellish nature of his regime, America would be well advised to leave the Koreans, north and south, to sort out their differences well alone.

Ukraine: Yulia’s Breath of Stale Air

According to a seasoned observer of Moscow’s political scene, the Russian political class cringed last Wednesday morning on learning that Obama had suffered a humiliating political defeat. The Russian leaders don’t think much of Obama personally, but they are worried over what the Republican control of the House might mean for the fledgling “reset” in US-Russian relations—the solitary foreign policy success of the Obama administration.

Iran: The Score, the Options

In recent weeks the proponents of an American war against Iran have been getting impatient with President Obama’s apparent unwillingness to get with the program. Joe Lieberman, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman, and Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, now press the President to impose a short time limit on the effectiveness of the most recent set of sanctions imposed on Iran.

Joe Sobran’s Timeless Lesson on America’s Role in the World

Joe Sobran’s considered verdict was simple: American foreign policy is not conducted in the national interest, and it is an insult to the intelligence of its people.

The Message of Tokyo’s Kowtow

The Chinese have just made a serious strategic blunder. They dropped the mask and showed their scowling face to Asia, exposing how the Middle Kingdom intends to deal with smaller powers, now that she is the largest military and economic force in Asia and second largest on earth.

Engaging Syria, Undermining Iran

In his comment on my latest on the Israeli-Palestinian saga, WGN host Milt Rosenberg notes that we are now dealing with Iran as much as with the PLO government: behind Hamas and Hizbollah, and alongside Syria and Lebanon, lurks the government in Teheran. “That elephant in the room must be named, confronted and undermined,” he says.

Is Democracy Overrated?

With the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union, and Beijing’s abandonment of Maoism, anti-communism necessarily ceased to be the polestar of U.S. foreign policy.

For many, our triumph fairly cried out for a bottom-up review of all the alliances created to fight that Cold War and a return to a policy of non-intervention in foreign quarrels where no vital U.S. interest was imperiled.