I still haven’t decided whether WikiLeaks is a net good or bad, but I thought this was an interesting perspective:
Anyone who has worked in international affairs would understand (and this goes for Americans and non-Americans) secrecy is an essential element of diplomatic relations. Henry Farrell makes the smart point here that effective […]
Archive for the 'Foreign Policy' Category
Dec1st2010
Nov29th2010
I haven’t verified this, but I thought this sequence of tweets from David Frum interesting:
What do we learn from Wikileaks re Iran?
1) Many more govts than you might think back a US military strike.
2) It’s now public knowledge that Iran and North Korea are exchanging deadly military technology.
3) Whole world can see that US has […]
Oct4th2010
A well thought out article by former IDF guard Jeffrey Goldberg on whether Israel will bomb Iran in an attempt to thwart their nuclear ambitions:
Israeli policy makers do not necessarily believe that Iran, should it acquire a nuclear device, would immediately launch it by missile at Tel Aviv. “On the one hand, they […]
Jul13th2010
I am admittedly weak on foreign policy and as of late I have been trying to catch up. I just finished Noam Chomsky’s book, Failed States and have tried to get my hands on as many debates as possible. So you can imagine my excitement when I found out that two of my favorite bloggers, […]
Jun28th2010
“In numerous cases of apparently ethno-nationalist conflict, the deepest hatreds are manifested between people who—to most outward appearances—exhibit very few significant distinctions. It is one of the great contradictions of civilization and one of the great sources of its discontents, and Sigmund Freud even found a term for it: “the narcissism of the small difference.” […]
Jun25th2010
“I’m going to break a longstanding practice of never writing about foreign policy, a subject on which I have no competitive advantage, because it looks to me like this one is such a complete no-brainer: As things stand, there is no possible outcome but national humiliation in Afghanistan. The counter-insurgency doctrine that Petraeus executed so […]
Jun22nd2010
He is making the news today and everybody knows him as the man in charge of Afghanistan, but I am reminded of an article I read weeks back describing just how disciplined and respected this general is:
The Special Operations forces that McChrystal led in Iraq were not so afflicted, despite a home front—especially a […]
Feb5th2010
“As has been voluminously documented here, one of the most notable aspects of the first year of the Obama presidency has been how many previously controversial Bush/Cheney policies in the terrorism and civil liberties realms have been embraced. Even Obama’s most loyal defenders often acknowledge that, as Micheal Tomasky recently put it, “the civil liberties […]
Nov23rd2009
“True, not everybody agrees that we need to use wartime measures against terrorists. But the Obama administration does. They’ve stepped up Predator strikes. They’re still allowing rendition. They’ve endorsed holding detainees near-indefinitely without putting them on trial. They’re treating Al Qaeda terrorists, in other words, as enemy combatants. And enemy combatants shouldn’t receive criminal trials. […]
Sep17th2009
“Maybe I have a biased selection, but it seems like every sensible economist, political scientist, development worker, and journalist that I know thinks our current course in Afghanistan can have only one outcome — disaster. Disaster for Americans, for our NATO allies, AND for Afghans.” — William Easterly
Sep15th2009
Obama Supports Extending Patriot Act Provisions
Published by in Foreign Policy and ModernPolitics. 0 CommentsYahoo News reports:
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday.
Lawmakers and civil rights groups had been pressing the Democratic administration to say whether it wants to preserve […]
Aug31st2009
Question: Why Are We Still In Afghanistan?
Published by in Foreign Policy and ModernPolitics. 4 CommentsAside from Obama trying to show the world he is “tough” on foreign policy, what other reason could there be for us sending even more troops there?
Whenever you are ready President Obama: You have my support in a speedy exit out of Afghanistan.
Aug31st2007
“I’ve long believed in what I call “the Jimmy Carter test.” The process consists simply in discovering Carter’s opinions on politics and foreign policy and taking the opposite position. Carter was one of our worst Chief Executives, and he surely ranks as the worst ex-president in our history. He has an uncanny ability to say […]
Aug10th2007
Gary Becker, Nobel Laureate in economics, writes:
Incidentally, since I believe private security usually performs very well, I never was convinced by the arguments to federalize employees who search baggage at airports. Private companies would do the job better than a single (monopoly) government employer if the standards of performance were clearly set by the government […]
May16th2007
Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, writes:
Was Osama Right?
Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won’t change their view.
BY BERNARD LEWIS
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival […]
Feb22nd2007
“Let’s spend a moment or two defining what we mean by freedom and democracy. There is a view sometimes expressed that “democracy” means the system of government evolved by the English-speaking peoples. Any departure from that is either a crime to be punished or a disease to be cured. I beg to differ from that […]
