The Iran dilemma(s) are perplexing for their multidimensionality: The ‘Iran’ item on the foreign policy agenda encompasses, inter alia the nuclear/nuclear weapons programs: regional security in the Gulf; Iran’s current and prospective roles in Iraq and Afghanistan; a terrorism(s) connection; and strategic energy interests. Their delineation is complicated by the opacity of the regime’s decision-making, [...]
Trying to discern in Obama’s address at Oslo the contours of a coherent foreign policy is likely to prove futile. For the elucidation of a strategic design was not the purpose. The aim was political – in two senses. The first, primary consideration was to create favorable impressions among the American public - especially the [...]
There is something rotten in the current state of Washington’s Afghan policy making. The White House, we are told, is in the midst of an intense review of our strategy with nothing having been decided. Yet the NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels on Thursday gave their seal of approval to the ‘surge’ being actively [...]
The White House is upset by the Afghan election. Celebrated at first by Obama on the White House lawn as a signal success marking the country’s progress on the road to democracy, it now looks like a monkey wrench thrown into the already stuttering engine of our mission there. The turn-out in Taliban intimidated areas [...]
We warmed ourselves before the fire late of a July evening in this the chilliest summer Georgetown had known since Coolidge’s day. My companion lay sprawled in the wicker chair puffing on his favorite Calabash pipe. The distinctive aroma of organic, shade grown Sobranie wafted through the salon. I knew from long acquaintance, though, that [...]
Dennis Ross’ redeployment from the State Department to a more prominent position at the NSC in the White House raises two sets of interrelated questions. Why, and with what consequences? Competing answers to the former include the following. (1) Ross was relieved of his Iran policy coordinator brief so as to remove a possible obstacle [...]
Rooted dogma is tenacious – especially when well fertilized by fear. America’s ‘War on Terror’ is going at full throttle after briefly pausing in neutral during the presidential transition. For all the talk of ‘change’ there is nothing different about how the Obama administration either defines the country’s interests or its audacious global strategy for [...]
Home run? Boundary 6? Dazzled them! some of them? I submit that these are not the most appropriate metaphors. Let us begin by distinguishing between Obama the celebrity and Obama the statesman - something that we ourselves have difficulty doing. The celebrity realm has its own logic (more accurately, non-logic) that has to do with image [...]
American actions in the ‘war on terror’ have been driven by fear – at home and abroad. Fear that it may happen again, fear of the unknown, fear of the alien. It explains not only the radical thrust of Washington’s actions in the Greater Middle East but also the dulling of critical faculties. That pertains [...]
