War & Peace Archives - Page 351 of 729 - Foreign Policy In Focus

To Be or NATO Be

by John Feffer, Paul Hockenos | Apr 2, 2009

It hasn’t taken long at all for the Obama administration’s honeymoon with Europe to wear thin. The handling of the global economic crisis was the first breach. And directly on the heels of the G20 summit will come NATO’s 60th anniversary summit at a time when there is no consensus at all — even within Europe — about what should happen with the beaten-up Atlantic Alliance. Everyone seems to agree, though, that the alliance is in crisis — and maybe even in its death throes. But while the Europeans seem to be thinking about collective security with open minds, the Americans simply repeat the mantra that NATO must be and that more NATO is better than less.

The AfPak Paradox

by John Feffer, John Prados | Apr 1, 2009

There is a new acronym in the lexicon of Obama administration national security moguls. "AfPak" stands for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The term denotes the administration’s desire to take a unified approach to policy and strategy for these two countries. President Barack Obama correctly views them as the central front of the war on terrorism and — also accurately — sees so many aspects of the strategic problem of the Afghan war playing out in both countries that it is far more useful to consider them intertwined.

NATO’s Frayed Lifeline

by John Feffer, Mustafa Qadri | Apr 1, 2009

There was much fanfare as President Barack Obama announced the eagerly anticipated "AfPak" policy review, what the White House terms is "a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan." Many have argued, however, that the new AfPak policy is very much a continuation of the old policy with a few tactical grafts from the occupation of Iraq.

Empire Roundtable

by Christine Ahn, Sarah Anderson, Mark Engler, John Feffer, E. Ethelbert Miller, Adil E. Shamoo, Col. Daniel Smith (Ret.), Ian Williams, Stephen Zunes | Mar 26, 2009

We asked our senior analysts at Foreign Policy In Focus to weigh in on the future course of American foreign policy. This is the question they responded to: “The enormous challenges facing us — economic crisis, climate crisis, nuclear proliferation — require unprecedented global cooperation. Will President Barack Obama draw down the American empire in order to meet these challenges? Or will he do what he can to maintain empire in a different form?”

Progress on Cluster Bombs

by Frida Berrigan, John Feffer | Mar 25, 2009

Good news is in short supply. The economy remains bleak. The war in Iraq entered its seventh year last week, and violence reaches new pinnacles in Afghanistan. But there is one bright light amid all this gloom. Real progress is being made to ban

Naval Gazing

by John Feffer | Mar 24, 2009

Let’s say that China sends a ship 75 miles off San Diego to do a little surveillance. Those are international waters, after all, and Beijing is interested in the latest developments in our submarine warfare capabilities at Naval Base Point Loma. And it wants to do some reconnaissance for its own expanding fleet of subs. Want to bet that the United States dispatches a ship to tell the Chinese to back off?

Serb Demonization as Propaganda Coup

by Edward S. Herman, Emily Schwartz Greco | Mar 19, 2009

This is part of a strategic dialogue on Yugoslavia. See John Feffer’s opposing argument here, and their respective responses here. The successful demonization of the Serbs, making them largely responsible for the Yugoslav wars, and as unique and genocidal killers, was one of the great propaganda triumphs of our era. It was done so quickly, with such uniformity and uncritical zeal in the mainstream Western media, that disinformation had (and still has, after almost two decades) a field day.

Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa

by fpifadmin | Mar 13, 2009

At the end of President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony, civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery invoked the hope of a day “when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors.” No one expects such a utopian vision to materialize any time soon. But both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have spoken eloquently of the need to emphasize diplomacy over a narrow military agenda. In her confirmation hearing, Clinton stressed the need for “smart power,” perhaps inadvertently echoing Obama’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq as a “dumb war.” Even top U.S. military officials, such as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, have warned against overly militarizing U.S. foreign policy.

Fashioning Resistance to Militarism

by Christine Ahn, John Feffer, Gwyn Kirk | Mar 9, 2009

In the silver lining to the devastating economic crisis, critiques of excessive military spending are now beginning to echo around Capitol Hill and throughout mainstream media. Federal budget priorities — and the billions of dollars tied up in the military budget — are coming under much wider scrutiny. For years, the National Priorities Project, WAND (Women’s Action for New Directions), and War Resisters League have calculated the tradeoffs for military spending with readable pie charts, diagrams, and interactive websites to educate and empower ordinary people to take part in this policy debate.

Battle Over Bases

by Miriam Pemberton, David Vine | Mar 9, 2009

In 2003 and 2004, President George W. Bush announced his intention to initiate a major realignment and shrinkage of what his administration described as an economically wasteful and outdated U.S. overseas basing structure. The plan was to close more than a third of the nation’s Cold War-era bases in Europe, South Korea, and Japan. Troops were to be shifted east and south, to be closer to current and predicted conflict zones from the Andes to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Over a planned six to eight years, as many as 70,000 U.S. troops and 100,000 family members and civilians would return to bases in the United States.