foreign policy
947 pieces tagged “foreign policy”, newest first.
Rendezvous With Reality in 2016
Changes of administrations usually mark dicey times in American foreign policy. But transitional hazards will never be greater than in 2016. Over a span of just a few months in mid-1945, new president Harry Truman lost all trust in Soviet Union strongman Josef Stalin — in a way that Truman's predecessor, the ailing Franklin Delano Roosevelt, never had during nearly four years of World War II. Ensuing American foreign policy jerked from a pragmatic Lend-Lease alliance with a duplicitous communist superpower to a tense Cold War.
The Term 'Neocon' Has Run Its Course
In interviews and on the stump, Sen. Ted Cruz likes to attack President Obama, Hillary Clinton and "some of the more aggressive Washington neocons" for their support of regime change in the Middle East. Every time we topple a dictator, Cruz argues, we end up helping terrorists or extremists. He has a point. But what interests me is his use of the word "neocon." What does he really mean? Some see dark intentions. "He knows that the term in the usual far-left and far-right parlance means warmonger, if not warmongering Jewish advisers, so it is not something he should've done," former George W. Bush advisor Elliott Abrams told National Review. Another former Bush adviser calls the term "a dog whistle."
The 'Isolationist' Smear
After the latest Republican presidential debate, The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin argued that Ted Cruz had undone himself "courting" the "Trumpkin base," sinking "further into the far-right brew of isolationism and xenophobia." And to prove this contention, Rubin grabbed hold of two words Cruz used, "America" and "first," to claim that the senator from Texas was signaling support for 1930s/'40s-style isolationism.
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Narratives Over Facts
Much of the media and Democratic Party obsess about narratives. It is not enough for reporters to report facts, data, and events. They must all be shaped into story-telling elements to tell a larger story or narrative. This approach has become common among both the press and politicians. The Obama administration, in particular, has become obsessed with narratives at the expense of our national security.
How the Left Thinks About the War on Terror
Are you confused about how Barack Obama thinks about the War on Terror? How about Hillary Clinton? What about the editorial page of The New York Times? If you can't make sense of anything you hear or read, there is a reason for that. How they really think is rarely ever made explicit and never debated or publicly discussed. Until now. Here are ten bad ideas implicit in most left-wing commentary on this topic.
Obama's Phony War
Tell me: What's a suicide bomber doing with a passport? He's not going anywhere. And, though I'm not a religious scholar, I doubt that a passport is required in paradise for a martyr to access his 72 black-eyed virgins. A Syrian passport was found near the body of one of the terrorists. Why was it there? Undoubtedly, to back up the Islamic State boast that it is infiltrating operatives amid the refugees flooding Europe. The passport may have been fake, but the terrorist's fingerprints were not. They match those of a man who just a month earlier had come through Greece on his way to kill Frenchmen in Paris.
Obama's Strategic Bumbling Is Theater of the Absurd
"You're all suckers." That has to be what Barack Obama is thinking as the country falls for his head-fake. Let's recap. George W. Bush's surge reduced the Islamic State's precursor, al-Qaida in Iraq, to a paltry 700 members, according to CIA Director John Brennan. Its membership has grown by something close to 4,000 percent. As it metastasized, Obama yawned, calling it the "JV team." When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad violated Obama's "red line," Obama yawned again, and the refugee crisis was born.
Obama Stubbornly Sticks to Script on Islamic State
According to legend, if not actual historians, Harold Macmillan was once asked what he most feared could derail his agenda. The British prime minister allegedly said, "Events, my dear boy, events." Macmillan may never have actually said it, but the quote endures because it gets at a fundamental truth of politics (and life). Facts on the ground can deliver a fatal blow to one's most cherished plans.
Not Losing Is a Loser's Game
The Obama administration's weak and failing Middle East policy — the struggle against ISIS and the ultimate fate of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria — revolves around a non-strategy of avoiding a major foreign-policy debacle in the 15 months remaining before a new president takes office. But it's too late. Russia and Iran calling the shots in the Middle East is an American foreign-policy debacle.