U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

Some statements go down in history with such a painful belly flop that one can never again quote them without thoroughly soaking them in the deceptively soothing balm of irony. It’s not quite Chamberlain’s immortal “peace in our time,” but the words uttered by President George W. Bush on Sept. 5, 2001, little more than seven months into his first term, clearly fall in this category. That day, the Bush White House was hosting its first official state visit. President Bush stood next to Mexican president Vicente Fox on the South Lawn and earnestly declared, “The United States has no […]

With the advent of Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and the unfolding of the Lewis Libby perjury trial, the famous “16 words” are back and, in the most literal possible sense, with a vengeance. It is not only on MSNBC or in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly — which had a cover story on Presidential lying — that “Bush lied!” is again the order of the day. In Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Iraq last month, one Senator after another seized the opportunity to assail the administration’s credibility. “I have not been told the truth again […]

The mosque’s golden dome gleamed like a fallen sun, burning out the mud-colored city of Samarra with its broken shops and acres of cinderblock poverty. Two slender minarets framed the dome in regal style and a grid of delicate scaffolding wound around it, suggesting repairs planned and then stalled, probably because of the war. From the neighborhoods beyond, streams of black smoke bled into the winter sky above satellite dishes and slack electric wires. I watched the dome through the battered back window of a U.S. medevac helicopter as it descended to retrieve wounded soldiers at a makeshift landing zone. […]

On February 5, 2007, Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski accepted the resignation of Defense Minsiter Radoslaw Sikorski. Although Sikorski’s departure will have few short-term implications, over the long term it could weaken Poland’s support for several important American-led security initiatives. Sikorski indicated that he resigned out of frustration because the government would not provide him with sufficient resources to ensure the success of the country’s expanded role in the NATO-led post-conflict stability operation in Afghanistan. Characterizing the deployment as Poland’s “most dangerous mission since WWII,” Sikorski had unsuccessfully requested substantial funds to enable the Polish military to generate goodwill among […]

The conventional wisdom among neoconservatives who advocated an invasion of Iraq is that Bush administration incompetence explains what has gone wrong. The problem, they say, lies in the execution of what they still maintain was a noble idea: that invading Iraq would put anti-American forces in the Middle East on the defensive and initiate the spread of democracy through the enhancement of U.S. dominance of the region. This collective washing of hands culminated in a series of interviews with well-known neoconservatives in the January 2007 issue of Vanity Fair. Those interviewed pointed towards the Bush administration’s operational mistakes and bureaucratic […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — U.S aid to Colombia, the largest recipient of U.S aid in the Western Hemisphere, is set to pour in at the same levels as in previous years. But with a Democratic majority in the U.S. Congress, the focus of that aid may shift more toward social spending and away from military spending. In the 2008 budget request, the Bush administration asked for $586 million for Colombia, a slight decrease from $587 million in 2006. The bulk of aid is earmarked for the Colombian armed forces, with 76 percent allocated to counterinsurgency and anti-narcotics operations and the remainder […]

WASHINGTON — “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” may have prompted Americans to run and find Kazakhstan on a map. But another recent development appears to have a growing number of Washington insiders talking seriously about political discord in the massive former Soviet republic. A rising young Kazakh politician visited Washington recently trying drum up support from U.S. policy makers and journalists for his newly established and reform-minded Kazakh political party — the official registration of which he claims is being obstructed by his country’s “draconian law on political parties.” The second largest of […]

U.S. authorities are pushing forward with a newly designed system of special military tribunals to try suspected terrorists detained at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay. With the first cases expected to be announced this month, it remains to be seen whether such high-level suspects as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the accused mastermind behind the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, will be on the docket. Congress passed legislation calling for the new system in September, after President George W. Bush announced the transfer of KSM to Guantanamo, and after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed an earlier tribunal system set up […]