Foreign Policy

There's a reason no one has ever accused Israeli leaders of being shy. When U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Sen. George Mitchell as his envoy on Middle East peace, he made a point of saying that a two-state solution was the best way to safeguard U.S. interests and secure Israel's future. And yesterday in Jerusalem, as the new Israeli government took office, the new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, began making his counterpoints.

After eight years of a White House that often seemed blinkered by the threats posed by Pakistan, the Obama administration seems to grasp the severity of the myriad crises affecting the South Asian state. The media has followed suit and increased its presence and reporting, a trend confirmed by CNN’s decision to set up a bureau in Islamabad last year.

Kerry's committee has also hired international financial expert Heidi Crebo-Rediker from the New America Foundation to head up a new SFRC focus on ...

The diplomatic and military surge into South-Central Asia that will define the Obama administration's early years has already begun. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Centcom head Gen. David Petraeus have become regular visitors to Islamabad and Kabul. Vice President Joe Biden recently came through for huddled conversations, and veteran Balkan negotiator Richard Holbrooke has just embarked on his first trip as special envoy to the region. Enough congressional delegations are passing through that the Pakistani media

In Hillary Clinton’s Senate confirmation hearing today, one person pounded the table and pushed the secretary-of-state-designate hard on discrepancies between her foreign policy views and those of Barack Obama, on her seeming softness now on Iran and Syria, and on conflicts of interest with her husband’s financial web of global deal-making and do-gooding.

When a federal judge ordered the release of 17 Guantánamo Bay detainees earlier this month, it was the first real chance in the seven-year history of the prison camp that any of the prisoners might be transferred to the United States. In making his ruling, the judge categorically rejected the Bush administration's claim that any of the released prisoners, who are all Chinese Muslims, were "enemy combatants" or posed a risk to U.S. security. The decision was temporarily suspended by the appeals court, but the judge was… more

Foreign Policy: What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of each of the candidates in foreign policy? Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Both have strengths. I’m not quite sure what I would describe as Obama’s weaknesses, not because I’m trying to say that he’s perfect but because he’s so unflappable and so far his pronouncements have been so solid. I’m not happy with his reluctance to be more forward on U.S.-Cuba policy. I’m not happy with the need to… more

Even on their best days, the world’s failed states are difficult to mistake for anything but tragic examples of countries gone wrong. A few routinely make the headlines -- Somalia, Iraq, Congo. But alongside their brand of extreme state dysfunction exists an entirely separate, easily missed class of states teetering on the edge. In dozens of countries, corrupt or feeble governments are proving themselves dangerously incapable of carrying out the most basic responsibilities of statehood. These countries -- nations such… more

What if Qaddafi proclaimed that President Bush is right? The Middle East needs more democracy. And Libya should work with Europe and America to promote human rights. Or what if Mubarak, in a secret visit to the White House, defended crackdowns on Egypt’s dissidents to a crowd that included George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Stephen Hadley? Qaddafi and Mubarak did just that -- that is, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi and Gamal Mubarak, the sons groomed to follow in… more

Christina is a modern, multitasking, American 15-year-old -- fiddling with her new iPod, sassing the tall boy slouched beside her, and getting an impromptu lesson in Filipino culture at an after-school program in Oakland, California. "I speak Tagalog and Filipino," says the group's counselor, Michelle Ferrer, "two languages from the island where my family comes from." Christina is puzzled. "The Philippines is an island?" she asks skeptically. Ferrer nods and Christina frowns. "I thought it was in China," she says.… more