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…
Category: US Foreign Policy
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…
TCS Daily January 30, 2006 As President Bush prepares to give his annual address on the State of the Union (I predict it will be “strong”) it is time to reflect on the state of our enemy. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon argue in a New York Times op-ed that al Qaeda is still quite strong, mostly because…
TCS Daily January 20, 2006 At noon on January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as President of the United States. Minutes later, the remaining hostages who had been held captive for 444 days at the American embassy in Teheran were freed. The Iran hostage crisis, which began on November 4, 1979, gripped…