What are we to make of Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Academy (VMI)? In two words: not much. The speech breaks no new ground. Nor does it draw sharp substantive distinctions between Gov. Romney and President Obama when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. Continue Reading
Middle East expert Aaron Miller has a recent and thought-provoking piece up at the Foreign Policy magazine website called “The Politically Incorrect Guide to U.S. Interests in the Middle East.” (Full disclosure: I worked with Miller — in a capacity far junior to his — on the State Department policy planning staff in the early 1990s.) I am not sure that I buy the entirety of Miller’s argument. I think that he overplays the success of U.S. foreign policy in the region, giving short shrift, for instance, to the terrible costs — human, financial, and strategic — of our misadventure in Iraq. But Miller does bring a bracing dose of honesty to a subject — Washington’s policy towards the Middle East – that has been the source of hypocrisy under Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Continue Reading
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appears poised to win more than 50 percent of the vote in this weekend’s presidential election and thus avoid a run-off. Polling suggests that Putin will be the choice of about 60 percent of voters. This is well below the 71 percent he won in 2004 and the 70 percent his hand-picked successor, Dimitry Medvedev, garnered in 2008. Nonetheless, should Putin perform as polls suggest, it will mark a strong showing by a politician who seemed in trouble just a few months ago. Continue Reading
Did the attacks of September 11, 2001, change U.S. foreign policy?
Yes. And much for the worse.
In retrospect, declaring a “war on terror” — however explicable in the panic of the period — was an error of vast consequences. It elevated Al Qaeda into a rival of the United States, rather than reducing it to a criminal conspiracy. From the outset, we should have attempted to lower, not raise, the status of Al Qaeda and similar groups. Continue Reading
There’s a new poll out showing that Arab views of the United States have deteriorated over the last year. Zogby International’s survey of six Middle Eastern countries shows a decline in favorable views of the United States from five — Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — and no change in the sixth, Lebanon. President Obama is very unpopular. His favorability rating runs 10 percent or less in all six countries and even trails Iranian President Ahmedinejad. The uptick in favorability that followed Obama’s election and his 2008 Cairo speech has gone. We are back in George W. Bush territory.
Should we be concerned?
Yes. Continue Reading
Here are two numbers: 9.2% and 3.03%. The first is the June unemployment rate. The second is the interest rate of a 10-year U.S. treasury bond last Friday. You’d never know this from watching our political debate. Washington has whipped… Continue Reading
A confession: I rather like Hillary Clinton. She’s always seemed a shrewd, talented and ambitious individual, morally no better or worse than most public figures. I think she’s done, on balance, a creditable job as President Obama’s secretary of state.… Continue Reading