The Hill February 10, 2015 The Obama administration has released its long-awaited update to the “National Security Strategy.” While ostensibly a report to Congress on the president’s priorities for safeguarding U.S. interests globally, around which to base funding and procurement discussions, a fair amount of the domestic political agenda inevitably creeps in. This go-around, though,…
Category: US Foreign Policy
The National Interest February 10 , 2015 The Obama administration’s long-overdue update to the National Security Strategy hit the streets Friday morning. It is in many ways a remarkable document, lucidly describing the foreign (and domestic) policy vision of the only global power, nodding to an enormous number of allies, partners and stakeholders. It is, however, only…
The National Interest January 15, 2015 One hesitates to pile on to the criticism coming from the usual suspects about the Obama administration’s decision not to send a high-level representative to march in Paris to express solidarity in the wake of the outrageous attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices, but the White House itself now admits that…
The National Interest December 11, 2014 Despite more than a decade of reports that the U.S. government had tortured high-level terrorist suspects, including a frank, if detached, admission from President Obama that the nation had “tortured some folks,” Tuesday’s release of the Senate study of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program was chilling. We learned…
The National Interest September 12, 2014 Two weeks after declaring that he had no strategy for dealing with ISIS, President Obama declared his existing policy a strategy. Given that he came to national prominence and won the presidency almost solely on the basis of having been alone among the serious Democratic aspirants to have opposed…
Christian Science Monitor September 5, 2014 Dan Froomkin has returned to blogging at Glenn Greenwald’s Intercept. His debut posting is a doozy: In a lot of ways, we’re worse off today than we were under George W. Bush. Back then, Bush’s extremist assault on civil liberties, human rights and other core American values in the name of…
The Hill August 13, 2014 The Hill has a report titled “Obama seeks Iraq regime change.” The Daily Beast has a similar report titled, “Exclusive: Inside Obama’s Push for Regime Change in Iraq.” Other outlets are using similar language. But the headlines are belied by the stories they herald. Essentially, the United States government has grown frustrated with the incompetence of…
The National Interest May 30, 2014 In December 2009, not quite a year into office, President Barack Obama addressed the cadets at West Point to announce the Afghan surge. Faced with political goals that were unachievable given the time and resources available as well as strong pressure from his hand-selected field commander, General Stanley McCrystal, and congressional…
The Hill March 6, 2014 Coming of political age during the Reagan era, I was predisposed to view the Kremlin as the seat of the Evil Empire. Despite the heady days of perestroika and glasnost kicking off while I was an undergraduate, I remained distrustful. As a young Army officer stationed in Germany at the tail…
The National Interest September 11, 2013 In a speech to the nation, President Obama warned that if the United States does not launch a punitive strike against Syria, Iran will pursue nuclear weapons, Al Qaeda will try to kill Americans, and bad men will do bad things. Despite “a brutal civil war” in which more…