Foreign Policy

On May 25, gangs of primarily government-affiliated gunmen killed more than 100 people – including 49 children- in the Syrian town of Houla, The massacre ignited global outrage: Diplomats this week have demanded that Syrian President Bashar al Assad halt the violence that has plagued the country since last spring, and pressed him to implement the U.N. Security Council cease-fire plan that was supposed to take effect on April 12.

The main fault line in Lebanese politics is the division between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Years in the making, this divide must be overcome soon or it could plunge Lebanon into another civil war.

Recent sectarian clashes in north Lebanon and Beirut are but a symptom of this growing divide. At the political-leadership level, Hezbollah’s Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the Future Movement’s Saad Hariri — the Shiite and Sunni de facto leaders — are not on speaking terms. At the grassroots level, a wall of fear and mistrust separates Lebanon’s two largest communities.

Every time I hear about a massacre like last Friday’s in Houla, Syria, I think back to Srebrenica, the July 1995 Bosnian massacre that helped turn me—and many other post-Vietnam era journalists and policy types—into liberal hawks. Since then, humanitarian intervention has become a recurring feature of American foreign policy debates. After the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan (no, they weren’t humanitarian interventions but they have sapped America’s capacity and stomach for war), I’d have thought discussions of humanitarian intervention might go the way of the dodo bird. They haven’t.

The massacre in al-Houla, where Syrian military forces and allied militiamen massacred more than 100 civilians in cold blood, leaves no doubt about the intentions of President Bashar al-Assad's regime: survival at any cost and through any means. Assad does not have a Plan B.

It’s a question richer people have about their poorer neighbors: Why are they poor? Is it circumstances, or is it some kind of moral or intellectual failing? Is it that they never had a chance to cross from the wrong side to the right side of the tracks, or that they never had the motivation to cross? The subject colors thinking about international development as well. Is poverty in Africa and Asia the result of something about individual Kenyans or Pakistanis, or is it instead something about Kenya or Pakistan? Is it about the people, or the place?

There’s a feel-good myth that governs much American punditry: that good policy and good politics go hand in hand. Often, sadly, it’s not true. Take President Obama and Afghanistan: On no other major issue has Obama been so cynical. And on no other issue has his cynicism proved so politically shrewd.

Since September 11, 2001, more than 300 U.S. residents have been prosecuted for crimes related to homegrown terrorism. About half were targeted by law enforcement using infiltration techniques – confidential informants, undercover operations, or, in some cases, both.[i]

The strategic partnership agreement between the United States and Afghanistan that was signed by Presidents Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai on May 1, 2012 did not address several critical questions, the most important of which is whether, and to what degree, the international community will continue to fund the Afghan government after 2014. Addressing the Afghan government’s budget needs is to be a major focus of the upcoming Chicago summit.

On this week's episode of The Sidebar podcast (available below) Leila Hilal discusses Egypt's first ever presidential debate and the emerging democratic process in the Middle East. Jeff Vanke talks about France's new president and the future of the Eurozone. Elizabeth Weingarten hosts.

Also, Leila Hilal spoke with us on camera to preview Egypt's upcoming elections: