As US Clout in the Mideast Declines, Russia and Iran Muscle In
It has long been clear that the Obama administration will hand its successor a dangerous mess in the Middle East, centering on Syria and emanating outward. Is it now ceding so much initiative that it risks delivering the next president…
Disarray in NATO Completes Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy
As of Friday, when NATO concluded its most important gathering since the Cold War ended, the North Atlantic alliance has a full menu of new tasks. So does Barack Obama’s successor. With the Warsaw summit, Obama’s foreign policy legacy is…
The two Obamas: An assessment of our capable, but captive president
Obama’s obscuring of the truth about his drone program tarnishes otherwise strong legacy on human rights Not long ago I had the president of our great country down as a conundrum or an enigma or a Hamlet or a hypocrite—or…
The Syria dilemma: Dissecting the leaked diplomats memo calling for Obama to get tougher on Assad
Something smells fishy when a hawkish State Dept. memo “leaks” to the Times on the eve of Sec. Clinton’s nomination It has been clear for some time that the Syria conflict was bound to turn into some magnitude of Waterloo…
Why It’s Time to Rethink Our Pointless Standoff with Russia
The following column was filed June 5, 2016, and not published. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s widely respected foreign minister, dropped a big one here over the weekend. After an hourlong conversation with John Kerry Friday, Lavrov asserted in nationally televised remarks…
Can Obama’s Successor Sort Out His Middle East Mess?
Whoever goes to the White House in November will have one foreign policy challenge above all others: How to navigate transitions between two of America’s Middle East alliances that daily events are rendering inevitable. On one side of this question…
The Mideast Mess Obama Will Leave Behind
What a dismal week in the Middle East for the Obama administration. In the course of a couple of days, the partial ceasefire in Syria began to fray, the peace talks in Geneva turned stony, and the Saudis pointedly cold-shouldered…
What Donald Trump doesn’t know might save us: He’s unschooled, but at least he’s no American exceptionalist or neo-con ideologue
Forget his impractical foreign policy solutions. Trump scares elites because he is rethinking U.S. military might The Russians have long understood that words are actions. A linguist and literary critic prominent in the last century added to the thought by…
How the US and Russia Can Make the Syria Ceasefire Deal Last
We have a serious “cessation of hostilities” in Syria, finally, and it’s the best chance for peace since protests became violent four years ago. But there was no sliver of daylight between the joint announcement of the U.S.-Russian agreement last…
As Syria Talks Flop, Obama Is Painted Into a Corner
So much for the Syrian peace process. With the opening of talks in Geneva last Monday, their collapse two days later, and little hope their resumption February 25thwill bear much more fruit, the four-year war in Syria takes a new…
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