What Ashraf Ghani Needs from the U.S.
Hamid Karzai was no George Washington or Konrad Adenauer or Kemal Mustafa Ataturk or David Ben-Gurion. He was not, in short, a great nation builder who will be remembered fondly by generations of his...
View ArticleObama’s Mistakes Come Back to Haunt Him
President Obama sounded much tougher when he spoke at the United Nations last week than he has in a long time. But for anyone expecting the president to become a born-again hawk and repent of his...
View ArticleHong Kong and the Dream of Chinese Democracy
Call me naïve, but I’m a sucker for pro-democracy demonstrations against dictators. Admittedly, whether in Tiananmen Square or Tahrir Square, they don’t always work out well. But there is something...
View ArticleThe Debate We’re Not Having About Syria
There is a stunning gap in the public conversation about the war that President Obama is now waging on ISIS. We have paid some attention to the political future of Iraq, on the correct assumption that...
View ArticleISIS Withstanding U.S. Counteroffensive
The limited bombing that President Obama has unleashed against ISIS is, predictably, having little impact. As one would expect, ISIS has adjusted its tactics to make itself a hard target to hit from...
View ArticleAshraf Ghani’s Good Week
Count me as among those who were skeptical about whether Ashraf Ghani–or for that matter any other mortal–would have what it takes to confront Afghanistan’s monumental problems. He’s been in office...
View ArticleWhy Kobani Might Fall
At one level it might seem curious that the town of Kobani in northern Syria–a Kurdish enclave–is in danger of falling to the black-clad fanatics of ISIS even though the U.S. is now bombing them. It is...
View ArticleDeserving Nobel Recipients
The Nobel Peace Prize was easy to lampoon even before Barack Obama won the award at the start of his presidency for doing essentially nothing beyond giving a few grandiose speeches. It has tended to...
View ArticleTurkey, Kobani, and American Excuses
American officials are in high dudgeon about Turkey’s inaction to prevent the imminent fall of Kobani, a Kurdish-populated town in northern Syria, to the black-clad fanatics of ISIS. Given that Kobani...
View ArticleGOP’s Hawkish Turn Rewarded in the Polls
Republicans can take heart from public opinion polling showing that when it comes to dealing with both the economy and national security they have taken a big lead over Democrats, erasing the deficit...
View ArticleSelective Memory and the CIA
Talk about politicized intelligence. At least that’s what it would be called if the president in office were a Republican. At the request of the White House, in 2012 or 2013, the CIA did a review of...
View ArticleObama’s Bad-Faith Iraq Withdrawal
The United States has made at least two disastrous foreign policy decisions in the past decade: first, invading Iraq in 2003 without a clear plan or the resources to establish order after Saddam...
View ArticleWhat Federalism Will and Won’t Do in Iraq
My old boss Les Gelb makes a good case for breaking up Iraq, more or less, into three autonomous areas: Sunni, Kurdish, and Shiite. I used to be skeptical that this was either practical or desirable...
View ArticleThe Anti-ISIS Campaign’s Long Road Ahead
In recent days there has been some incremental progress against ISIS. Turkey has finally given agreement to allow some Iraqi Kurdish fighters to cross its territory to help the embattled town of...
View ArticleAccountability for Military Contractors
That took long enough. Back in 2007 Blackwater contractors opened fired in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, claiming they were under attack from insurgents. But numerous eyewitnesses said the shooting, which...
View ArticleKorea’s Lesson for Afghanistan
One of the more controversial issues in recent years when it comes to South Korea’s close relationship with the U.S. has been the transfer of wartime “operational command” of Korea’s armed forces to,...
View ArticleIslamism’s Appeal to the Discontented
There are striking similarities between Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who killed a Canadian soldier in Ottawa, and Zale Thompson, who wounded two New York police officers with a hatchet. Both were loners...
View ArticleDemocracy in Tunisia
This was a busy weekend for elections–a presidential race in Brazil (which saw the reelection of Dilma Rousseff) and parliamentary elections in Ukraine (which saw a victory for pro-European candidates)...
View ArticleA Looming Disaster in Eastern Ukraine
Amid so many foreign-policy disasters–from the “chickenshit” insult to a major American ally to, in a more serious vein, the continuing gains of ISIS in Iraq–it is easy to lose sight of the disaster in...
View ArticleThe Faltering Operation Inherent Resolve
If you want a laugh, go to the Central Command website and click on their press releases. Every day there is a new dispatch about the anti-ISIS air campaign in Iraq and Syria known incongruously as...
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