This commentary is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has staked out a foreign policy position quite distinct from his opponent, Hillary Clinton. It is not, however, "isolationist" (contra...
The recent attacks on Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are just the most recent examples of the horrific terrorist acts taking place around the world. The Islamic State’s recent bombing in Baghdad killed 250 people and wounded hundreds. The uptick of ISIS...
Some Yiddish words will live forever, and chutzpah is one of them. What better word could describe Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand for more U.S. aid after he tried to obstruct President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran with a personal appeal to...
The average Westerner can be forgiven for wondering what Russia sees in the Assad regime. We wonder why, along with China, it vetoes UN Security Council resolutions holding the Syrian government accountable for its crimes. We wonder why it bombs all the rebel groups,...
Green Climate Fund — now there are three words guaranteed to raise the hackles of Republican members of Congress. The fund is little known outside the world of climate skeptics and policy wonks. Yet the $10.3 billion fund, to which the United States has pledged $3...
In the last six months, two different incidents of the smuggling of nuclear material have been intercepted in Georgia. In the most recent, a group of three Georgians and three Armenians attempted to sell a small amount of uranium, estimated at $27 a pound for the...
This is my third and final post about a paper written March 2015 titled Failure to Protect: Syria and the UN Security Council by Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, a project of the Ralph Bunche Institute for...
Recent attacks by Islamist extremists in Istanbul, Iraq, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia have been staggering: over 300 dead. Westerners always complain that Muslims don’t speak out enough about atrocities that impact the West. We forget, though, that the vast majority of...
I have twice posted about a paper I am reading from March 2015 titled Failure to Protect: Syria and the UN Security Council by Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, a project of the Ralph Bunche Institute for...
It is easy to impute the worst motives to those advising increased intervention in Syria, such as the 51 diplomats who called for “a more muscular military posture” against Syria in a State Department memorandum shared with the New York Times. Sure, they may be trying...