The riskiest gamble of the Obama Presidency, the nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, was basically won today. A rancorous congressional debate is still to come, but thirty-four senators have now vowed to support the deal, effectively blocking efforts on the Hill to eventually kill it. The diplomacy will almost certainly be the […]
With Chinese President Xi Jinping scheduled to visit the United States late this month, U.S. commentators and presidential hopefuls are debating whether Xi’s planned state visit should be downgraded or even cancelled. Organizers of the visit settled on the September timing knowing full well the presidential campaign would likely produce a toxic media environment. Read […]
The feng shui for this meeting is not propitious. Almost every significant interest group in the United States, and many political forces in China, have been offended by recent developments in the bilateral relationship. Read Here – The Diplomat
It was a brilliant stroke in 1971, when Nixon and Kissinger took advantage of China’s fears of the USSR with the historic U.S. opening to China. That chess move created a strategic triangle with the United States in the catbird seat and turned ideology on its head, dividing the two communist regimes. Now amid a […]
When Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s president in June 2013 on a campaign platform of engaging with the West to reach a nuclear deal and improve Iran’s economy, he apparently didn’t know that Iran and the United States had already opened a secret diplomatic channel and held bilateral talks in Oman on the nuclear issue […]
The legend of the surge has become this era’s equivalent of the legend that America was winning in Vietnam until, in the words of Richard Nixon’s former defense secretary Melvin Laird, “Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975.” In the late 1970s, the legend of […]
Foreign policy was hardly the centerpiece of the Republican candidates’ first debate, but when the topic came up, their answers revealed that none of these White House hopefuls have given the world and its problems an hour of serious thought. Read Here – Slate
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda targeted at audiences outside Russia doesn’t work, but neither will any Western counter-efforts directed at Russians. A new report from the Pew Research Center explains why. Read Here – Bloomberg The Pew Research Report
Perhaps no one in the world would relish a general election campaign between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush—apart from the two candidates themselves—more than the mandarins in Beijing. Already, official Chinese news coverage of the 2016 primary season is highlighting the back-and-forth baton exchange between the Clinton and Bush families. Other U.S. presidential candidates are often […]
Defenders of Barack Obama’s Iran deal ask a seemingly practical question of its critics: What would you do instead? But that question is only seemingly practical, not actually practical. The deal won’t go into effect only if two-thirds of both houses of Congress vote to override a presidential veto of a joint resolution of disapproval. Ten […]
looking beyond borders 