The National Interest June 17, 2010 To put it mildly, the situation in Kyrgyzstan is a mess. Ethnic Uzbeks are being slaughtered in the streets and the government, itself there by virtue of an illegal power grab in April, is begging for Russian help. The humanitarian toll has been grim, with at least 170 dead and 1,500 […]
Foreign Policy November 2, 2009 (Invited symposium) Overall Grade: B- President Barack Obama inherited two unpopular wars and a global financial crisis. Despite mostly continuing President George W. Bush’s policies, he’s rebooted America’s image in the world and avoided most of the landmines. His top-level foreign policy staff — from Vice President Joe Biden to National […]
The National Interest September 10, 2009 The seemingly universal consensus that existed mere months ago that Afghanistan was a “necessary war” the West could not afford to lose has suddenly evaporated. Prominent liberals, centrists and conservatives are coming out in droves to proclaim our goals too lofty and the chances of success too low to […]
The National Interest February 29, 2008 Unless we immediately begin a coordinated effort to refocus NATO’s military and civil strategy in Afghanistan, there will be grave consequences for both the region and the alliance. That’s the consensus opinion as reflected in the Jan./Feb. 2008 issue of The National Interest (Ilana Bet-El and Rupert Smith, “The Bell Tolls […]
TCS Daily August 21, 2007 Media Matters economist Duncan Black set off a mini-firestorm among lefty bloggers three weeks ago when he asked, after a few choice expletives, “Why is there a foreign policy community?” The premise of that question is that, since so many of the experts, even on the left, argued passionately for intervening […]
James Joyner and John Burgess TCS Daily May 21, 2007 Army Lieutenant General Douglas E. Lute has been nominated by President Bush to serve as “war tsar” with the unenviable task of coordinating “often disjointed military and civilian operations” for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Aside from the abundant skepticism expressed by military analysts such as Phil Carter about whether […]
Human Events January 10, 2007 Senator Edward Kennedy yesterday outlined in a speech to the National Press Club and a column at the Huffington Post his arguments for a bill to “prohibit the use of funds for an escalation of United States Forces in Iraq above the numbers existing as of January 9, 2007″ absent specific congressional authority to […]
Washington Examiner December 6, 2006 Washington is eagerly awaiting the report from the Iraq Study Group to point the way out of the war in Iraq. Sure, there are tens of thousands of years of professional military experience at the Pentagon with every incentive in the world to get things right. But what do they know […]
Human Events June 7, 2006 To those who have been paying attention to such things for a while, this morning’s announcement of a U.S. offer to give Iran nuclear technology in exchange for a promise to stop enriching uranium sounds eerily similar to the Agreed Framework the Clinton administration negotiated with North Korea in 1994 under similar circumstances. It […]
TCS Daily February 27, 2006 Blogger and TCS contributor Stephen Green argues that civil war in Iraq might not be such a bad thing, noting that, “A civil war is the nastiest way to get a good result.” He cites several examples, notably the Thirty Years War, the English Civil War, and the American war between the […]