If you try to address controversial foreign policy issues these days without chest-pounding belligerence you can expect to be denounced by a well-funded cottage industry of “human rights activists” and “citizen journalists,” a phenomenon that Ann Wright confronted when crossing from South to North Korea.
Category: Foreign Policy
The Path Ahead for Palestine
Israel under Prime Minister Netanyahu is showing no inclination to resolve the long-festering conflict with the Palestinians who remain harshly repressed in an apartheid-like system as Jewish expansion continues into Palestinian lands, a crisis that PLO leader Mustafa Barghouti describes…
The World Rebukes Netanyahu
Exclusive: Led by President Obama, six world powers ignored Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s harangues against Iran and agreed to a plan for limiting not bombing Iran’s nuclear program. But Netanyahu wields more sway with Congress and the mainstream media, which parrot his…
The Iran-Nuclear Choice
Many Republicans will oppose the Iran-nuclear deal to discredit President Obama and some Democrats will succumb to pressure from Israel, but the ultimate choice is whether politics and pressure will overrule the world’s interest in constraining Iran’s nuclear program, writes…
The Mess that Nuland Made
Exclusive: Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s “regime change” in early 2014 without weighing the likely chaos and consequences. Now, as neo-Nazis turn their guns on the government, it’s hard to see how anyone can clean up the mess that Nuland…
Touchy Issue: Talking with ‘Terrorists’
Official Washington often exacerbates foreign conflicts by shoving them into misshapen narratives or treating them as good-guy-vs.-bad-guy morality plays, rather than political disputes that require mediation. The problem is particularly tricky with “terrorist” groups, writes ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.
‘Secret’ History of the Greek Crisis
The past may be prologue, but it is first necessary to know what that past is, a growing problem in a modern age when so much is miswritten, misunderstood or forgotten. This dilemma of “secret” history is now a factor in…
Fallout from Reagan’s Afghan War
In the 1980s, President Reagan funded and armed Islamic fundamentalists to defeat a Soviet-backed secular regime in Afghanistan. Now, one of those ex-U.S. clients is throwing his support behind the brutal Islamic State, a lesson about geopolitical expediency, writes ex-CIA analyst…
Obama’s Posturing Risks Iran-Nuke Deal
The Obama administration is risking the success of the Iran nuclear negotiations by playing some political theater to appear tough to its Republican and neocon critics in Official Washington, write Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett.
Obama’s Deadly Cold War Legacy
Exclusive: President Obama is endangering his legacy by letting neoconservatives still set his foreign policy, including the creation of a new and costly Cold War with Russia that could have been easily avoided and that now risks spinning off into…