State of Foreign Policy: Not a Sharp Picture
The blogs and newspapers tell us President Obama will be firing on all cylinders when he delivers his State of the Union speech Tuesday. He plans to push the reset button, reassert command and drive an agenda, and declare a…
Why Iran Is Now Obama’s Best Middle East Bet
“What are we supposed to do now?” pundits and policymakers ask these days. The full question being, “What now that the Middle East spins like a dervish and the Obama administration has lost its grip on every major issue in…
Why the Global Economy Could Go Off the Rails in 2014
You do not have to go far to hear that financial hard times are over in 2014. But no one looking around the global economy could possibly miss the work still undone. Some see potholes deep enough to send the…
Why Baucus Is the Wrong Man as China’s Ambassador
There are several reasons President Obama just named Max Baucus, the long-serving senator from Montana, as his next ambassador to China. There are also several reasons to judge Baucus the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time…
China Grows Impatient with the Barbarian of North Korea
North Korea’s leader has a baby face and a weird haircut and exhibits the whims of an unsupervised kid at Disneyland. He’s thrown tantrums before, threatening to fire nuclear missiles at the United States, executing a female musical group, and…
As Democracy Grows So Does Global Corruption
It is hard to miss the democratic longings of so many of the world’s citizens as their voices rise these days. In number and diversity, these are surely among the distinct sounds of 2013. It is, however, impossible to miss…
Is China Trading a Fly Zone for a Growing Economy?
There is a simple way to look at the complicated crisis that arises as China pressesnew claims to jurisdiction over air space above the Pacific. Beijing’s recent announcement that it will assert rights over a newly declared “air defense identification…
Why Kerry’s Iran Deal Will Hold Up
Secretary of State Kerry pulled off a hat trick in Sunday’s pre-dawn hours, when six world powers and Iran announced an interim deal in Geneva on the latter’s nuclear program. Kerry was all over the Sunday morning talk shows, soft-pedaling…
How Secret How Secret Global Trade Talks Can Destroy the InternetGlobal Trade Talks Can Destroy the Internet
Talks on the two biggest trade agreements in history are reaching critical stages, and none of us knows anything about them. Like it or not, this is ignorance by design: Months of negotiations across both oceans have proceeded in secret,…
Why a Deal with Iran on Nukes Remains Elusive
It was a wild ride last week in Geneva, where the foreign ministers of six world powers assembled with Iranian negotiators for a second round of talks on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program. A deal could come, a deal is…
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