U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

LONDON — Advocates of a global overhaul of efforts to meet the needs of the world’s 850 million chronically hungry people have received a boost with the decision by CARE, a top U.S. aid organization, to walk away from tens of millions of dollars in annual U.S. federal financing. In opting out of the mechanism by which donated U.S. food aid is transported overseas and sold in local markets to fund anti-poverty programs — a decades-old process known as monetization — CARE joins a growing number of international non-governmental and governmental groups demanding an end to a policy they say […]

For several years, Iranian officials have sought to strengthen their ties with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Iran became a formal observer nation at the July 2005 SCO summit, but the country’s leaders have continued to pursue full membership. In April 2007, the Iranian Foreign Ministry submitted an official application to this effect. Even before the seventh annual SCO summit convened in Bishkek on Aug. 16, however, the existing SCO full members announced that they would indefinitely postpone accepting new members. In the case of the SCO, a primary Iranian objective has been to keep other Eurasian countries from aligning […]

WASHINGTON — Recent changes in the leadership of two of the closest allies of the United States are altering the dynamic of the trans-Atlantic relationship in ways that would have seemed highly improbable a year ago. The election in early May of the pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy as president of the French Republic has rekindled relations between Paris and Washington, previously soured by differences over Iraq. At the same time, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who succeeded Tony Blair in late June, used a U.S. trip to put new distance between his government and the Bush administration. The traditional close ties between […]

Before the United States and India can consummate their nuclear pact, a major hurdle remains: The guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) prohibit nuclear export to countries that, like India, lack full-scope safeguards. Many expected that, at Washington’s behest, the NSG would rubber stamp an exception for India — until Beijing hinted again this week that it might block such a rules change. The Nuclear Suppliers Group, a cartel of 45 nuclear fuel producing countries that coordinate export controls to non-nuclear-weapon states, is little known outside of nonproliferation circles but plays a critical role in limiting access to uranium […]

According to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, the dismal decline of America’s public image is not a sufficient reason for the State Department to take public diplomacy as seriously as it deserves. Well, to be precise, the report, titled “U.S. Public Diplomacy: Actions Needed to Improve Strategic Use and Coordination of Research” (pdf file), doesn’t use exactly those words. But here’s what it does say: The State Department’s “commitment to the development of a defined approach to thematic communications, centered on program-specific research, has been absent.” This is GAO-speak for the plain assessment that the U.S. government […]

On August 9, the Bush Administration issued its revised U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan. The main innovation is the explicit use of enhanced “sticks and carrots” to change Afghans’ behavior. Protracted infighting within the administration in recent weeks about timing and tactics had twice delayed the new strategy’s publication. Despite the extra editing time, senior Democrats and Republicans in Congress called the revisions inadequate given the magnitude of the problem. Preliminary assessments of the data the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime plans to release next month indicate that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by 15 percent during […]

DIPLOMATIC LUNCH — The French were elated by the success of the Bush-Sarkozy lunch at Kennebunkport, which Paris regards as the first in a sequence of meetings designed to establish a personal relationship between the two leaders. Sarkozy certainly, and Bush presumably, will be in New York for the opening of the U.N. National Assembly on Sept. 23, when U.N. ritual prescribes that they will sit together at lunch. An official visit to Washington by the French president will follow shortly afterwards, possibly by the end of that same month. The warming of U.S.-French relations is all the more satisfactory […]

On Monday, Presidents Bush and Karzai concluded their Camp David meeting with a press conference at which they stood united on every major issue. By Thursday, the bloom was off the rose: In a snub to both Bush and Karzai, Pakistan’s President Musharraf backed out of a tribal assembly that the United States had orchestrated, and a British commander made headlines when he said America’s counterinsurgency operations are undermining NATO’s efforts. Not once during their eight meetings over five years have the two presidents faced such challenges at home. Karzai finds his once-meteoric popularity waning in the face of his […]

In the long list of ominously difficult foreign policy choices facing America, the question of how to deal with Pakistan ranks near the top. As in the case of Iraq — the undisputed first item on that grim list — all the choices look bad. And, also as in Iraq, taking the wrong path could help unleash dangers that make today’s threats look tame by comparison. In all matters related to Pakistan, one fact looms large: Pakistan has nuclear weapons. With instability increasing there, policymakers cannot ignore the risk of a takeover by Islamic extremists. We don’t know how likely […]

NEW YORK — Traveling across Southeast Asia, one regularly hears that the United States is losing its foothold in Southeast Asia, and squandering away the goodwill it has enjoyed for decades in most of the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The U.S. administration, say many in the region, is consumed with diplomatic and military fights in the Middle East, and has neither the time nor the interest to look at Southeast Asia. At the same time, thanks to its growing economic power, China is steadily expanding its sphere of influence by providing all manner […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — When the Cuban government in 2005 selected Andres to treat the sick in Venezuela’s barrios, the chance to help poor Venezuelans was less important for the Cuban doctor than the opportunity to escape his communist homeland. “I didn’t arrive in Venezuela to work, I arrived and deserted right away,” he recalled in a recent interview in Bogotá while awaiting a hoped-for United States visa. Like other Cuban defectors, Andres asked that his full name not be used in order to prevent possible retaliation against relatives in Cuba. Cuba, whose socialized medical system is admired by many, has […]