One year ago, Barack Obama was elected captain of the Titanic — er, I mean, president of the United States. It’s an understandable slip. Last year, the waters seemed to be rising on all sides. The U.S. economy was in a mess, and the government was rolling in debt. We were involved in quagmires in… Continue reading Obama’s Avatar Moment
By one estimate at least, Barack Obama has had the most successful first year of any president in recent history. According to Congressional Quarterly, Obama scored a 96.7 percent success rate in getting his agenda through Congress. Only Lyndon Johnson came close, with 93 percent in his first year. Although Republican opposition to the president… Continue reading Year One
In his first year in office, Barack Obama gave several exceptional speeches on foreign policy. In Prague, he endorsed nuclear disarmament. In Cairo, he called for a new engagement with the Islamic world. In Oslo, he repudiated torture. At these moments, the new president firmly broke with the policies of his predecessor and provided a… Continue reading Obama’s First Year Foreign Policy: C-
Without sufficient street-heat, according to the new conventional wisdom, President Obama is not going to implement progressive policies. His health care package reeks of insurance company influence. His bailouts favor Wall Street. Climate-change legislation rewards polluters through the shell game of “cap-and-trade.” Without strong social movements pulling Obama to the left, the new administration’s reforms… Continue reading Street Heat and Foreign Policy
Hillary Clinton is a commie symp. That’s a familiar line from the rabid right, which hasn’t yet gotten the news that the Cold War is over. Google the secretary of state’s name and “communist,” and you’ll get over a million links, some of them to neo-Nazi websites. Folks say the craziest things on the Internet.… Continue reading The New New Anti-Communism
“An Arms Race in Northeast Asia?” Asian Perspective, Winter 2009 “China’s Military Spending: Soft Rise or Hard Threat?” Asian Perspective, Winter 2009 Landlords, Peasants, and Intellectuals in Modern Korea (Review), Korean Quarterly, Winter 2009 “Bye Bye Dubai,” Providence Journal, December 31, 2009 “The Art of Extraction,” Foreign Policy In Focus, December 23, 2009 “A New START?” World Beat, December… Continue reading 2009 Archives
Asia is in the midst of its most peaceful period of the 20th century,” The Economist editorialized in 1993, “yet its nations are continuing to arm themselves at an alarming rate.” A similar assessment came from Newsweek: “East Asia’s arms race already makes it one of the few places where defense budgets are rising—and the… Continue reading An Arms Race in Northeast Asia
Introduction The rapid growth of China’s economy and its increasingly vigorous diplomatic engagement with regional and international institutions have given rise to much discussion of China’s “peaceful rise” to great-power status. At the same time, the Pentagon has identified China as the only potential hegemon on the horizon that stands a chance of challenging the… Continue reading Chinese Military Spending: Soft Rise or Hard Threat
Review of Ray Takeyh, Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 310 pages. Of all the relationships between the United States and its adversaries, the rift with Iran appears to be particularly long, deep, and difficult to repair. Iran’s seizure of U.S.… Continue reading Guardians of the Revolution (Review)
Review of Sergio Fabbrini, America and Its Critics: Virtues and Vices of the Democratic Hyperpower (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008); Sergio Fabbrini, Compound Democracies: Why the United States and Europe Are Becoming Similar (New York: Oxford, 2007); Sergio Fabbrini, ed., The United States Contested: American Unilateralism and European Discontent (New York: Routledge, 2006). During… Continue reading Transatlantic Clash of Civilizations (Review)
The teacher assembles a collection of chocolate-chip cookies and toothpicks. This is how the elementary school children are supposed to learn about the costs associated with coal mining. Each cookie is a mining property. The students each receive $19 in play money, which they use to buy these properties. They examine the cookies closely to… Continue reading The Art of Extraction
Richard Nixon was the greatest peacemaker in U.S. history. He orchestrated the historic opening with Beijing. And he presided over the most significant arms control treaties of the détente period: the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the ABM treaty. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. Let’s start over. Richard Nixon was the greatest warmonger in U.S.… Continue reading A New START
In the Maldives, the cabinet strapped on scuba gear and met under water to emphasize the risk of global warming to their island nation. In Nepal, the ministers put on oxygen tanks and conducted their business high up on Mt. Everest to focus attention on the impact of climate change on the world’s highest peak.… Continue reading Crapshoot in Copenhagen
Here’s the premise: an entire region is up for auction. “Mark your calendars for an opportunity of a lifetime,” reads the ad copy. “In a bold step towards the future of global real estate, Nayruz invites you to bid for the ultimate luxury: the Middle East.” In her “corporate intervention,” entitled The Equity Is in… Continue reading Why Dubai?
It’s bad enough when a person drowns in debt. Shockwaves multiply when a corporation teeters on the verge of failure. The economy becomes even more agitated when a country declares bankruptcy, as Iceland did in 2008 and Hungary and Latvia almost did in 2009. But Dubai? The global economy is obviously still in bad shape… Continue reading Bye-Bye Dubai
Back in 2003, when Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) put together the collection of essays Power Trip on the emerging foreign policy of the Bush administration, our big debate was over continuity versus change. Was the aggressive unilateralism of George W. Bush and his cohort a wholly new creation? Or was it simply business as… Continue reading Exceptional or Exceptionalism
Imagine finding yourself in the driver’s seat of a car heading directly at a brick wall. You panic: What to do? Fortunately, there are three people in the car with you, and they all have very firm advice. The person in the passenger seat tells you to push the pedal to the metal. Right behind… Continue reading Hitting the Brakes on Afghanistan
Critics of the Obama administration were delighted at the images from the president’s recent trip to Asia. There was the deep bow before Emperor Akihito. There was the group photo with the head of the Burmese junta. There was the deferential press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao. “There is no reason for an American… Continue reading Obama Takes a Bow
The traffic circles in Tirana, the capital of Albania, are a free-for-all. There are no lanes. There are no signs. There are no rules. On a visit to Tirana several days ago, I drove into the swirling chaos with all my senses alert, relieved that the rental car came with insurance. If driving was a… Continue reading Europe’s Wild East
No, it’s not a joke. Albanians think highly enough of George W. Bush to name a café after him. There’s even a George W. Bush Street in the capital of Tirana, albeit a rather short, crooked one. Bush received a warm welcome when he became the first U.S. president to visit the country in 2007.… Continue reading Postcard from Tirana
President Obama has talked a lot about ridding the world of nuclear weapons. He won a Nobel Peace prize largely on the strength of those words. Now, he needs to translate words into actions and vindicate the Nobel committee’s decision. When he goes to Japan this month, the president should make an unprecedented visit to… Continue reading Obama: Visit Hiroshima
Russia is disappearing. So is Japan. Europe is next to go. It’s not the rising waters of global warming that threaten these parts of the world. The problem is more basic. The Russians and Japanese, as well as large numbers of Europeans, are not having enough children to replace themselves. The birth rates across a… Continue reading New Neighbors, New Economy
At the recent off-the-record meeting between U.S. and North Korean representatives at a conference in California, journalists were eager for any crumb of information about what the two interlocutors said to each other. The dialogue was “useful,” according to the North Korean representative. The U.S. side remarked that the mood was “better than we’ve seen… Continue reading North Korea: Journalists vs. Diplomats
This year in Istanbul, the flags on Republic Day seemed extra large. It wasn’t a special anniversary year. Turkey was celebrating its 86th year as a modern secular state. Nevertheless, the sheer number of flags – 60,000 hanging from government buildings, draped across skyscrapers, dominating squares – was unprecedented. The display of 48,000 fireworks over… Continue reading Reading Ramadan in Istanbul
The bottle looks beautiful. It sports an old-fashioned spring-top stopper. The red, diamond-shaped label features an elegant font. From a distance, the silhouetted landscape on the label looks exotic. It is, like all fine gourmet water, “bottled at source.” Even the French name of the water suggests elegance: B’eau Pal. But wait: B’eau Pal? That… Continue reading Lords of Misrule
In the game of geopolitics, South Asia is the big swing region. It commands the very center of the vast Eurasian heartland, which the founders of geopolitics identified as pivotal to control of the globe. This preoccupation with the world’s most populous region — which brings together India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and several… Continue reading Swing Region
We’re close to our spending limit on the nation’s credit card. The bank bailout, the stimulus package, the Iraq War and the overall military budget: each is costing more than $500 billion. Now the Obama administration is looking at two more hefty charges: a national health care plan and a surge in Afghanistan. It’s time… Continue reading Obama Must Pick Gurneys Over Guns
When I recently visited Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, a young girl on our tour of the house raised her hand tentatively during the docent’s remarks about the enslaved people who worked the plantation. “Did Jefferson treat his slaves better than other slave-owners?” she asked.The docent responded, wisely, that slavery is slavery, however brilliant or benevolent the… Continue reading Toward a More Perfect Nobel
A mixed metaphor lurks behind the Obama administration’s foreign policy. On the one hand, there’s Obama’s “open hand” approach that rewards the unclenched fist with a handshake. On the other hand there’s the other hand, the one that Obama keeps close to his chest. This “hand” is the set of cards that Obama the gambler… Continue reading The Hand of Obama
Celebrating its 60th birthday this year, NATO is looking peaked and significantly worse for wear. Aggressive and ineffectual, the organization shows signs of premature senility. Despite the smiles and reassuring rhetoric at its annual summits, its internal politics have become fractious to the point of dysfunction. Perhaps like any sexagenarian in this age of health-care… Continue reading Afghanistan: NATO’s Graveyard