The next president must discard two longstanding but problematic pillars of U.S. policy in the Middle East and chart a new course that reflects both regional realities and the dynamic changes that are underway there. For decades, presidents have sought to maintain regional stability by propping up pro-Western autocrats and to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict …
The recent launch of talks between Iranian and Argentine officials over how to improve relations between their countries is troubling enough from a moral standpoint – but the strategic implications are even worse. Buenos Aires long ago concluded that Tehran directed Hezbollah’s 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in the Argentine capital that killed …
Now that Gov. Mitt Romney has skillfully presented himself in three presidential debates as a reasonable alternative to President Obama, undercutting the latter’s months-long effort to paint him as a scary extremist, Obama is struggling to hold his lead in the few swing states that will decide the election. Will Obama hang on, re-energizing his …
Continue reading “Will Obama hang on? Three factors to watch”
Though President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney are clashing mightily over United States policy toward the Greater Middle East — Iran and the bomb, the terror in Benghazi, and so on — neither one is addressing the need for a new, visionary framework that serves U.S. interests in the region. For most of the …
Continue reading “We Need a New Vision for the Greater Middle East”
Gov. Mitt Romney’s post-debate surge, turning what looked like an impending rout into a close race, says something that’s profoundly reassuring but also something that’s deeply disturbing about American politics. Romney is surging because, in tone and substance, he’s now personifying the essential moderation of American voters – a moderation that ensures the continuity and …
As the world evolves, presenting new challenges to U.S. national security, the patterns of U.S. foreign aid should evolve with it. Nowhere is this truer than in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous and historically most influential state, which is gradually transforming itself from a Western-leaning secular autocracy into an increasingly Islamic state that’s run …
Continue reading “U.S. Must Rethink Egyptian Foreign Aid Strategy”
The troubling travails of Rimsha Masih, a Christian teenager who lives near Islamabad and is facing blasphemy charges for allegedly burning pages of the Koran to cook, reflects the growing intolerance toward religious minorities that amounts to what one expert calls a “gradual genocide” in Pakistan. The latest twist in this sordid tale came this …