The recent 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq sparked a flurry of attention. Op-eds, blogs, conferences and panels of all sorts sprouted, most dealing with the “lessons” the United States should draw from its initial decision to invade and subsequent long involvement in the country. As the lesson fest subsides, attention is shifting to Iraq’s current security predicament and its relationship with the United States. Unfortunately, it is not a pretty picture. With war raging in neighboring Syria and the Shiite-dominated regime in Baghdad continuing to exclude Sunni Arabs as much as possible, al-Qaida is on the rebound [...]
This weekend’s visit by Xi Jinping to Moscow, his first trip abroad as China’s new president, resulted in no revolutionary agreements. The biggest “deliverable” to emerge from the summit — the major oil deal the two sides signed — was overshadowed by their continued failure to agree on a price for Chinese purchases of Russian natural gas. Yet expectations were low for the summit, so the lack of headline agreements came as little surprise. More surprising, however, was the extent to which Xi aligned Beijing’s foreign policy views with those of Russia in his public statements while in Moscow — [...]
Today marks the last day of President Barack Obama’s Middle East trip. In a speech yesterday in Jerusalem, he advocated restarting the Israel-Palestine peace process, saying that “just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.” Trend Lines spoke with Ghaith al-Omari, executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine, about the visit as well as the broader state of relations between Palestine and the United States. “It was an Israel-centric visit, but it showed continued U.S. commitment to a two-state solution and the Palestinian Authority,” [...]
