United States Archive

Some members of the United States Congress are working hard to short-circuit President Barack Obama’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Many legislators, particularly Republicans, have opposed the talks from the beginning—with some advocating a military attack on Iran and others apparently believing that sanctions will compel Tehran to give up its nuclear aspirations. With the great Republican gains in the 2014 midterm elections, this group expanded and moved beyond simply critiquing Obama’s policy. Congressional opponents of a deal with Iran are attempting to pass a new slate of sanctions deliberately designed to torpedo the negotiation process. In a […]

Several weeks ago, in assessing what steps U.S. President Barack Obama might take to secure his administration’s foreign policy legacy, I raised the question of whether a “reset” of U.S.-India relations might help. Obama’s just-concluded trip to New Delhi and his meetings with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have provided us with an answer in the affirmative. Modi’s gesture of greeting Obama effusively at the airport upon his arrival, which was a break with traditional protocol, and his invitation for Obama to attend and review the annual Republic Day parade, which was a first for an American leader, clearly indicated […]

In contrast to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s five-day visit to the United States in September, which appeared to be something of an anticlimax for yielding few concrete results, U.S. President Barack Obama’s quick trip to India this week has seen progress in many important areas. In retrospect, it appears that Modi’s visit helped create a warm bond between the two leaders, evident when Modi broke protocol to personally greet Obama at the airport upon his arrival. The two leaders’ personal rapport has clearly facilitated dialogue to overcome past grievances in the bilateral relationship. From being primarily a short-term transactional […]

In the past year, Russian aggressiveness has led the United States to augment its military presence in Europe. Even though declining oil prices and a paralyzing degree of corruption and inefficiency have, for the time being, put a brake on Moscow’s ambitions, hostility will persist so long as Russian President Vladimir Putin is in charge. As a result, bolstering European security will remain a central component of America’s global strategy. But what happens after Putin? While there are no serious challenges to his rule now, he is mortal. At some point, he will leave the scene. Historically, the departure of […]

Last week’s dramatic recommendation for U.S. President Barack Obama to fire his entire national security team, delivered by Les Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, was eagerly disseminated among Washington’s foreign policy denizens. But while there is continued interest in determining who’s up and who’s down in the president’s inner circle, personnel changes alone would not address all of the concerns Gelb raised. Instead, his criticisms point to some fundamental problems with the U.S. national security class as a whole. The first is that U.S. policymakers who came of age during the brief unipolar moment at […]

If the changes to the 53-year-old embargo on Cuba announced by U.S. President Barack Obama last month were contentious, implementing them will not be smooth either. To be sure, U.S. public opinion, even among younger Cuban-Americans, has shifted against the embargo, and private sector groups, especially agribusinesses that have lost market share in Cuba to Brazilian competitors, has become more organized and vocal in urging the president to exercise his authority to change the embargo. But there is still the shrill, organized contingent of hardline, pro-embargo Cuban Americans who continue to denounce the actions, led in Congress by two senators, […]

The war on drugs has been subjected to unprecedented criticism over the past few years. For the first time since the inception of the international drug regime in the 1960s, world leaders are calling for the regulated legalization of all drugs, and not just marijuana. Politicians, businessmen and activists from across North, Central and South America are leading the charge. Several Latin American presidents are at the forefront of this drug policy revolution, insisting on the legalization of cannabis, opium poppies and coca. Some Western European leaders are also demanding that punitive drug laws be replaced with updated measures putting […]

U.S. President Barack Obama will most likely devote less attention to foreign policy issues in tonight’s State of the Union speech than to his domestic priorities, including continuing the U.S. economic recovery while reducing income and wealth inequalities and addressing the special concerns of African-Americans and other U.S. minorities. What time the president does allocate to foreign policy issues will as usual probably focus on the Middle East, although Russia, climate change and the resumption of diplomatic relations with Cuba will also likely be highlighted. Although these are undeniably important issues, hopefully Obama appreciates that his ability to leave behind […]

Even before the smoke cleared from last week’s horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, people were struggling to make sense of them. Because the initial victims were associated with Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine known to deride Islam, attention fell on questions of free speech and whether it should be limited when religion is involved. But even if the belief that Islam is being insulted influenced the killers at a personal level, the al-Qaida strategists who claim to have directed the Charlie Hebdo attack had other goals. For them, the notion of blasphemy is useful propaganda, but their objectives are much […]

As the new year opens, and the dust has begun to settle from the release of a report last month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the CIA’s use of torture in the war on terror, it is time to ask what changes, if any, the report’s revelations will bring about for the agency in the coming years. Quite a few are necessary, but whether they will implemented is, of course, uncertain. To begin with perhaps the most concrete potential outcome, the report opens the way for an overhaul of how U.S. drone strikes are conducted in the […]

The failure of U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration to send a high-level representative to the Paris unity march, convened in the wake of the terrorist attack on the editorial offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, is being described by some as the first foreign policy gaffe of 2015. Given the Obama team’s laser-like focus on domestic issues in the run-up to the State of the Union address, however, it is not surprising. Moreover, given that one of the administration’s goals seems to be to halt further deterioration in the critical U.S.-India relationship, it is very understandable why the president […]

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was in Washington last week for talks with U.S. President Barack Obama. The visit came in the wake of Obama’s executive order protecting millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and his decision to loosen the decades-old embargo on Cuba, both of which won him favor in Mexico and across Latin America. Meanwhile, Pena Nieto has faced a difficult six months, following the massacre of 43 students in the southern city of Iguala and a series of scandals relating to railway contracts and his wife’s mansion. Immigration was at the top of the agenda, with Pena […]

With combat operations in Afghanistan fading in the rearview mirror, the United States is turning its attention to finding ways to stem Russian aggression. U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration supports the creation of a new NATO rapid reaction force and is sending more troops and tanks to Europe. These steps are intended to revive deterrence of Russia. They may do so given the nature of the challenge that Russia poses, but they also underscore the limitations of the old Cold War notion of deterrence in today’s security environment. When the Soviet Union fielded nuclear weapons during the opening years of […]

U.S. President Barack Obama has returned from his holiday vacation in Hawaii to start a “barnstorming” tour across the United States to make the case for his domestic policy agenda in the run-up to the State of the Union address on Jan. 20. Faced with a new Republican-controlled Congress that will not be particularly hospitable to his proposals, Obama is likely to emphasize his core domestic priorities. When he does return to foreign policy matters after the address, Obama, like other “fourth quarter” presidents before him, will likely begin to sort the issues facing him in his last two years […]

When diplomats want to explore a way out of a crisis, they like to talk about striking a “grand bargain” and try to avoid the word “climb-down,” which tends to imply an acknowledgement of failure or defeat. Nevertheless, Russia and the United States, trapped in costly confrontations over Syria and Ukraine, may need to agree to a sort of “grand climb-down” that allows the two powers to get out of unsustainable positions as painlessly as possible. Moscow and Washington both begin 2015 stuck with the consequences of poor strategic bets. Russia’s intervention in Ukraine now looks like a truly disastrous […]