The United States is on the brink of committing a cardinal sin in foreign policy: antagonizing two major powers simultaneously. There are frictions in bilateral ties with both Moscow and Beijing that have reached alarming levels over the past year or so. Read Here – The National Interest
America’s Gulf allies are unhappy with what they see as a milquetoast response to ongoing Iranian aggression and a betrayal of a commitment to remove Iran’s strongest ally—Bashar al Assad. Gulf leaders see a declining US military presence in the Gulf and feel there is a vacuum developing. These perceptions are incorrect, writes DB Des Roches Read […]
The former secretary of state’s comments on Russia and Crimea suggest she’s trying to create a foreign-policy buffer ahead of the 2016 campaign. Read Here – The Atlantic
Intelligence is the acquisition and processing of information that assists in formulating policy and guiding action. Classification has nothing to do with it; Beijing’s concerns do. Read Here – The National Interest
Faced with greater diplomatic pressure from Beijing and belt-tightening in Washington, U.S. allies like Japan have started to rearm in earnest. Asia is quickly becoming “the most militarized region in the world.” U.S. partners and allies in the region plan to spend 53 percent more between 2013 and 2018 than they did in the previous five-year period. […]
The more the United States turns out to be a fickle, unreliable ally of its longstanding friends in the Middle East—especially Saudi Arabia and Israel—the more the leaders of South Korea and Japan will worry whether they can rely on the United States’ defense umbrella. Read Here – The Diplomat
Missing from this “analysis” about how Obama should respond is why Barack Obama should respond. After all, the US has few strategic interests in the former Soviet Union and little ability to affect Russian decision-making. Read Here – The Guardian
By breaking convention to publish a critical memoir while a president he served remains in office, the former defense secretary will help shape the historical record. Read Here – The Atlantic
Plenty of pundits have jockeyed to be the top voice on the Middle East, but only one person’s ideas dominate the conversation Read Here – Tablet Magazine
In 2007, at the start of Obama’s Presidential campaign, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband, Richard Goodwin, who worked in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, visited him in his Senate office. “I have no desire to be one of those Presidents who are just on the list—you see their pictures lined up on […]
