U.s. Foreign Policy Archives - Foreign Policy In Focus

The Undead Chicken

by John Feffer | Apr 26, 2011

Muammar Gaddafi is the undead chicken. Bashar al-Assad of Syria and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain are the unscared monkeys. The United States has shaped its policy toward the evolving situation in the Middle East according to the Chinese proverb of “killing the chicken to scare the monkey.” The Obama administration has intervened in the conflict in Libya with the apparent goal of punishing Gaddafi for cracking down on the emerging protest movement back in February. This intervention was designed to send a message to other autocrats in the region: don’t fire on your unarmed opposition — or else. But the United States and its allies are having problems with the “or else” part of the equation.

U.S. Denies It Is Trying to Undermine Assad

by Samer Araabi, Jim Lobe | Apr 22, 2011

As anti-government protests in Syria showed no sign of abating, the U.S. State Department Monday denied that it was seeking the regime’s ouster.

Sleepwalking into the Imperial Dark: What it Feels Like When a Superpower Runs Off the Tracks

by Tom Engelhardt | Apr 22, 2011

Facing the challenges of a world at the edge — from Japan to the Greater Middle East, from a shaky global economic system to weather that has become anything but entertainment — the United States looks increasingly incapable of coping.

Attack on Libya May Unleash a Long War

by Phyllis Bennis | Mar 28, 2011

The United States and its allies launched the war against Libya on the eighth anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. President Barack Obama says the U.S. will transfer command authority very soon, that military action should be over in “days, not weeks,” and that he wants no boots on the ground. But the parallels with other U.S. wars in the Middle East don’t bode well.

Interview with Raed Jarrar and Niki Akhavan

by John Feffer | Mar 4, 2011

Raed Jarrar is an Iraqi-American blogger and political analyst based in Washington, DC. Niki Akhavan is an Iranian-American professor of media studies at Catholic University. They talked with FPIF about the roots of Islamophobia, how anti-Islamic sentiment has shaped U.S. foreign policy, and the relationship between faith and violence.

Washington Voices Impatience with Regime

by Jim Lobe | Feb 16, 2011

Amid the continuing stand-off between protestors and the Egyptian government, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama appeared Wednesday to be losing patience with both President Hosni Mubarak and his new vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman.

Pox Americana

by Tom Engelhardt | Feb 15, 2011

In the name of its War on Terror, Washington had for years backed most of the thuggish governments now under siege or anxious that they may be next in line to hear from their people. When it came to Egypt in particular, there was initially much polite (and hypocritical) discussion in the media about how our “interests” and our “values” were in conflict, about how far the U.S. should back off its support for the Mubarak regime, and about what a “tightrope” the Obama administration was walking.

Mubarak’s Defiance

by Phyllis Bennis | Feb 11, 2011

After deliberately raising the hopes of millions of Egyptians and millions more around the world, U.S.-backed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak defied the rising demand of the millions of protesters who have taken to Egypt’s streets, to announce he will remain in office. Claiming he wouldn’t bow to “foreign pressure,” Mubarak, he said he had “laid down a vision…to exit the current crisis, and to realize the demands voiced by the youth and citizens…without violating the Constitution.”

What You Will Not Hear About Iraq

by Adil E. Shamoo | Aug 20, 2010

Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the United States has wreaked in Iraq.

Beating Swords Into Ploughshares

by Hannah Gurman | Aug 16, 2010

In last month’s blitzkrieg tour of Central and Southeast Asia, two of the four stops Secretary Clinton made share the unfortunate bond of enduring an invasion by U.S. air and ground forces. In the space of a few days, Clinton visited both Vietnam and Afghanistan, thus physically linking what had once been, and then what has now become the United States’ longest war. One of the more insidious links that tie these conflicts together was highlighted in a few of the news stories about Clinton’s trip. That link, in a word, is agribusiness.