via LobeLog
by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more disconcerting developments in foreign policy discussions in the 21st century is that political satirists seem to be offering keener and more prescient assessments of the dilemmas involved than pundits and policy makers. Put somewhat less charitably, the cliches and conventions of foreign policy have [...]
via LobeLog
by Farideh Farhi
Following declarations that the Obama administration could soon strike Syria, very little has been left unsaid. The fact that President Barack Obama has been a reluctant warrior lends weight to the justification of his attack, we are told. Surely a reluctant warrior would not use a humanitarian [...]
via LobeLog
by Jasmin Ramsey
Related to my earlier post on surprising statements from what’s believed to be Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s English Twitter account is Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s condemnation of foreign military intervention Syria, which Omid Memarian suggests I should have emphasized more. The Iranian Student News [...]
via LobeLog
by Mark N. Katz
“Obama weighing limited strike on Syria,” reads the main headline of an August 27 Washington Post article. We still don’t know exactly what this will entail, but as this piece — and many other news reports — indicate, the operative word definitely appears to be: limited.
As authors [...]
by Jim Lobe
via IPS News
While some kind of U.S. military action against Syria in the coming days appears increasingly inevitable, the debate over the why and how of such an attack has grown white hot here.
On one side, hawks, who span the political spectrum, argue that President Barack Obama’s credibility [...]
via Lobe Log
by Jim Lobe
Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor at the Washington Post who also writes a weekly foreign affairs column, generally stands at the intersection of neo-conservatism and liberal interventionism and, in my view, holds a lot of the responsibility for the paper’s neo-conservative editorial drift over the [...]
via Lobe Log
by Wayne White
Sen. John McCain’s berating of former Sen. Chuck Hagel for “yes or no” answers as to whether the latter would support intervention in Syria or providing arms to anti-regime fighters reveals just how little McCain understands about how agonizingly complex these issues have been — and remain — [...]
via Lobe Log
Jimmy Carter’s former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, who now serves on a the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, writes that the US should work with regional allies to unite Syrian opposition movements that are in line with Western priorities and arm them:
So, what should be done? In my view, [...]
via Lobe Log
Michele Flournoy, who served from 2009 to 2012 as the first female Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, was described as one of “the new realists” by the New York Observer, distinguishing her from Clinton Administration “liberal interventionists”, though like them she argued for “forward engagement” by the US abroad, especially in [...]
via Lobe Log
Turkish-Iranian relations have been rocky since the deepening of the Syrian imbroglio. But the latest row suggests a new low. In no uncertain terms both the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, expressed displeasure with recent harsh statements coming out of Tehran regarding Turkish culpability in [...]
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