U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

The first official visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Washington last week offers a convenient opportunity to assess the current Russian-U.S. relationship. Since assuming office, one of the priorities of U.S. President Barack Obama and his foreign policy team has been to improve ties with Russia and other foreign governments that had become alienated from the United States. Relations between Washington and Moscow became especially strained in 2007 and 2008 following the acute confrontations that arose over the planned U.S. missile defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia’s August 2008 War with Georgia, and other issues. Despite […]

In the early 18th century, King Vakhtang VI of the ancient Georgian kingdom of Karlti watched as his land was overcome with chaos and warfare. Having traded his vassalage to Persian overlords for allegiance to Peter the Great, the Georgian king was unexpectedly abandoned by his new allies and saw his kingdom brought to ruin by the onslaught of Persians, Ottomans, Afghans, and Russians. Vakhtang’s submission would eventually lead to Georgia’s total capitulation to Russian domination in the 19th century and Soviet rule in the 20th. Today, the dynamics that marked the tumult of the 18th century are no less […]

Watching a president dismiss a senior general inevitably calls to mind Abraham Lincoln, who during the Civil War sacked generals left and right until he found one who served his purposes, and Harry Truman, who famously fired Gen. Douglas Macarthur during the Korean War. Unlike his predecessors, who removed generals either for their performance or due to disagreements over policy and strategy, President Barack Obama let Gen. Stanley McChrystal go because McChrystal had permitted a command environment that led some of his staff to crudely dismiss the president’s advisers. As if to underscore the continuity in policy and strategy, Obama […]

A recent headline in Britain’s Sunday Times must have sent blood pressure readings soaring on both sides of the gulf known on one side as the Persian Gulf and on the other as the Arabian Gulf: “Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites.” Had Riyadh really struck a deal with the Jewish state, making it easier for Israeli jets to pound Iranian targets? The Times quoted anonymous “defense sources in the Gulf” who maintained that the kingdom had gone as far as to conduct practice drills in which its air defenses would stand down, allowing flights […]

On Feb. 11, 2008, gunfire erupted across Dili, the capital of East Timor, as rebels under disgruntled former army officer Alfredo Reinado unleashed separate attacks against the country’s president and prime minister. President Jose Ramos-Horta, who a year earlier had won the country’s first presidential election since gaining independence in 2002, was shot and wounded. Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao escaped injury. Reinado and another rebel died when government guards fired back on the attackers. The government of East Timor, also known as Timor Leste, declared a state of emergency after the attack. Two years later, it’s clear that the assassination […]

Will the Deepwater Horizon disaster, already 2010’s best candidate for the most significant “black swan” event, have a similar, long-lasting geopolitical impact as the Three Mile Island accident 30 years ago? If that mishap had not occurred, it’s very likely that the United States would have a vastly different, and superior, position vis-à-vis energy independence today. The U.S. could have moved down a similar path to that of France, which generates most of its electricity — some 78 percent — from nuclear power plants. Some of the side benefits the French enjoy as a result include much cleaner skies, since […]

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — China’s continued military expansion has placed Vietnam squarely on the back foot, prompting Hanoi to engage in a delicate balancing act meant to shore up its own regional influence and allay the fears of an anti-Beijing faction at home. To achieve that, Hanoi has sought to appease its own generals and enhance national defense through a series of major arms deals with Russia worth billions of dollars. The most notable weapons purchases are six Kilo-class submarines and up to 20 Su-30 fighter-bombers. Hanoi is also busy enticing Russia into its oil and gas industry. […]

Judging by the atmospherics on display during last week’s inaugural U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue, the bilateral relationship between the two countries appears to be on solid footing. U.S. Under Secretary for Public Affairs William Burns called the relationship “one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century,” while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of a joint responsibility to “determine the course of the world.” U.S. President Barack Obama even made a surprise visit at the dialogue’s reception, and announced that he would visit New Delhi in November. Yet this flowery rhetoric masks the complex realities of what has been […]

A lot of national security experts would like a lot more fire — and firepower — from our president. Op-ed columnists across America worry that our friends no longer trust us and that our enemies no longer fear us. President Barack Obama’s quest for more-equitable burden-sharing among great powers seems to be getting us nowhere, so why bother with more-equitable benefit-sharing? But before attacking the Obama administration’s coolly rational — dare I say “lawyerly” — take on great-power politics, let’s first remember what got us to this point. Bush-Cheney’s “It’s better to be feared than respected” tear nearly tore up […]

BEIJING — The sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan has lent further weight to the argument that Washington’s current North Korea strategy is having little success in controlling the errant communist state. President Barack Obama’s recent National Security Strategy was surprisingly vague on the issue, and the predictable U.S.-South Korean displays of naval strength in the aftermath of the sinking suggest no imminent policy reorientation from the White House. This continued faith in a strategy that has shown no tangible results — described by one analyst as the “definition of insanity” — has been further challenged by recent indications […]

The new Iran sanctions resolution cleared the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday by a vote of 12-2, with all five permanent members voting in favor. Does its passage represent a “diplomatic victory” for the Obama administration, as some have claimed? Or have the measures been so “watered down,” as others argue, that they are not likely to be effective in changing Iran’s course of action? And how significant is Russia’s apparent change of heart, ultimately supporting a fourth round of sanctions that it initially opposed? To answer those questions, the vote at Turtle Bay needs to be put into a […]

RIO DE JANEIRO — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to the 40th Organization of American States General Assembly meeting on Sunday with two priorities, neither of which were published in the meeting’s agenda: to shore up support for Honduras’ re-entry to the OAS, and to gather momentum behind the Obama administration’s drive to impose sanctions on Iran through the U.N. Security Council. It was a program designed to confront, without naming, the country that has become the greatest challenge to the Obama administration in Latin America — Brazil. To be sure, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has stood out as […]

Asia-Pacific nations must renew their efforts to form a coherent and collaborative response to the region’s complex security risks and its inherent potential for instability, senior delegates at a high-level regional forum say. Food and energy security, ethnic conflicts, insurgencies and rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula were key issues discussed at the 9th International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore last weekend. Some 320 delegates from 28 nations — including defense ministers, military and intelligence chiefs, and prominent figures from the private sector — attended the summit. North Korea’s unprovoked torpedoing of the Cheonan, a South […]

After Mexican President Felipe Calderon won a highly controversial election by a razor-thin margin in 2006, he kicked off his presidency by declaring war on his country’s increasingly powerful and brutal drug cartels, deploying tens of thousands of troops across the country. Since Calderon’s much-publicized crackdown began however, the death toll from drug violence in Mexico has exploded, claiming roughly 23,000 lives — including cartel members, innocent civilians, police officers and soldiers — with 4,000 of those deaths coming in the first five months of this year alone. Over the past four years, Ciudad Juárez, a sprawling city of 1.3 […]

Over the past week, the Obama administration’s position on Israel exhibited what, in U.S. domestic political terms, amount to tectonic shifts. First, at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference last week, the United States chose not to block language that identified Israel’s undeclared nuclear program as a barrier to stemming proliferation in the Middle East. Then, earlier this week, Washington permitted a U.N. Security Council presidential statement condemning the Gaza flotilla incident to go forward. When combined with public and direct criticism a few months back of Israel’s settlements policy, it adds up, in the eyes of many U.S. politicians […]

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds itself, yet again, in the midst of a major diplomatic crisis. In the wake of the disastrous May 31 raid on the Mavi Marmara — part of the flotilla that sought to break the blockade of Hamas-run Gaza — the country has unsurprisingly come under furious diplomatic fire. So far, though, personal criticism of Netanyahu’s leadership has not become the primary focus of the attacks, as international charges have targeted the country, rather than its leader. The diplomatic disaster, however, presents Israeli opposition politicians with an opportunity, and a most delicate […]

As U.S. President Barack Obama prepares for his visit to Asia in June — one of three potential roundtrips to the region this year — it is worth exploring what Washington’s future policy options are with respect to Asian regionalism. The alphabet soup of the so-called “regional architecture” includes the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the ASEAN Plus Three (APT), and APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation), to name just a few groupings. The main question now facing the United States is whether to join the East Asia Summit, a five-year-old body that groups the 10 countries of Southeast Asia […]