I just got finished reading David Sanger’s NY Times article comparing the foreign policy positions of the two presidential candidates. Like David Shorr at Democracy Arsenal, I agree that it’s “probably the best stand-in we’ll get for the foreign policy debate that might’ve been,” and an illustration of how the much-derided written press can often confront candidates’ position more effectively than the presidential debate format, which veers towards the theatrical for obvious reasons. Like Shorr, too, I agree that John McCain’s late reversal on the acceptability of an NPT-compliant uranium enrichment program in Iran is probably closer to my own [...]
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING SUMMIT — The Bush administration’s announcement of an emergency financial summit on Nov. 15 in Washington ruffled some international feathers, notably in Spain and France, but in other countries as well. The meeting of global leaders to address the current crisis and bring a measure of control to the unruly financial world was originally proposed last week by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He pushed for the United Nations as the venue, and encouraged the widest possible participation. That’s not what the White House announced Wednesday. To the more or less private annoyance of the French, the White [...]
Hard to know what went on in that high-level timeout in Helsinki the other day between JCS Chief Adm. Mike Mullen and his Russian counterpart, but I’d be surprised if today’s declaration by Russian FM Sergey Lavrov that Russia will not veto a UNSC resolution extending American troop presence in Iraq in the absence of a deal between Baghdad and Washington is just a happy coincidence. Mullen went on talk tough in Lithuania about the need to better integrate Baltic defense into NATO’s architecture. But the Baltic is already a done deal. To my mind, Russia’s major strategic blunder in [...]
