President Obama has never summarized the Obama Doctrine with such clarity, but here is what it would look like: 'I will undertake any military attack against our enemies, regardless of the risks and collateral damage, so long as it is over by the time I have to announce it.'
— Elliott Abrams
When freedom of the press is threatened, the United States should be leading efforts to protect it.
The Obama administration appears to regard intelligence leaks and briefings more or less like briefings by the Democratic National Committee or White House flack Jay Carney. You use any information at hand, classified or not, and you spin it any way you like, fairly or not.
The presence of jihadis in Syria should be no surprise.
For 22 years, Bandar bin Sultan was Saudi Arabia's influential, irrepressible ambassador in Washington.
While Israelis do not care too much about Europeans moral judgments, the E.U. is an important market for them, and European sanctions of any kind would be harmful to Israel.
The Obama administration has vastly expanded the use of armed drones and concentrated a great deal of diplomatic effort on building and maintaining alliances that share information about terrorists, provide access to get near them, and then strike against them.
In 2007, early in the improbable presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, the young first-term senator began a series of foreign-policy speeches that seemed too general to provide a guide to what he might do if elected.
The story of the Jews in the Bible is replete with incidents of their ingratitude to God for His gifts to them: incidents that just as repeatedly merit and receive punishment.
Bahai Iranians are barred from holding government jobs, their children are excluded from the nation's university system, their marriages are not recognized and their cemeteries and holy places have been desecrated. It is government policy to incite hatred of Bahais in the official media.
The United States and its Gulf allies, some of who are actively funding rebel groups in Syria, should undertake a serious joint review of Jordan's needs and then act together to meet them.
Mass killing has very clearly not been eliminated, nor has the 'international community' developed a response that will avert it or bring it to a quick end.
Opponents of U.S. sanctions have made 'unilateral sanctions' their special target. They argue that sanctions observed by many nations would be much more effective. True enough. Far better for trade with an outlaw regime to be restricted by many nations than by just one.
In public, an admission of technological inadequacy would be too embarrassing.
While Argentina, Brazil, and Chile - what in textbooks used to be called the ABC countries - seem settled into democratic politics and free market economics, the Andean countries are in disarray.
If the president of the United States says that attacks on civilians, starvation, and denial of religious freedom in Sudan are important international issues, they become so.
The United States already has in place comprehensive trade sanctions against Sudan, imposed because of the regime's support for terrorism. While we maintain diplomatic relations, we do not staff our embassy there.
Pundits are used to analyzing the gap between what our ideals suggest and what our security interests require.
Tunisian liberals say that the U.S. Embassy in Tunis is unengaged with their efforts to make sure the Tunisian model remains one of expanding freedom.
On June 19, 1981, a vigorously healthy Justice Potter Stewart resigned from the Supreme Court at the age of 66.
Does anyone believe that Kofi Annan scares Bashar Assad?
Scandinavia is boring. People living there apparently have little to do. And as European history teaches, when there is nothing much to do, you may as well amuse yourself by attacking the Jews.
Denmark has long been regarded as one of the world's most attractive nations, for citizens and tourists alike. My own visits there, years ago as a student, were delightful.
On the human rights side, administration policy has been marked by indifference. When the people of Iran flooded the streets to protest the theft of their presidential election in June 2009, President Obama was silent for 11 days.
Egypt needs law and order in Sinai to save the tourist industry in Sharm el-Sheik and prevent the area from becoming a base for terrorists that will target Egypt itself, as well as Jordan and Israel.
Four years is a long time in politics.
The United States should encourage Israel to take further steps to improve the Palestinian economy.
The Middle East that Obama inherited in 2009 was largely at peace, for the surge in Iraq had beaten down the al Qaeda-linked groups. U.S. relations with traditional allies in the Gulf, Jordan, Israel and Egypt were very good. Iran was contained, its Revolutionary Guard forces at home.
The logic of collective security is flawless, provided it can be made to work under the conditions prevailing on the international scene... The odds, however, are strongly against such a possibility.
While foreign competitors, French or Japanese or German, merrily bid for contracts abroad, American companies find themselves tangled in a web of legislation designed to express disapproval, block trade in certain commodities, or perhaps deny resources to disfavored or hostile regimes.
I don't see kids with Palm Pilots. They are not common on college campuses, except among professors. Gen Xers don't need them. They are a phenomenon of the 50-something who can't remember if his broker's number ends in 1137 or 3317.
Henry M. Jackson, congressman and senator from 1941 until his death in 1983, achieved far greater renown than most legislators, ran for president in 1972 and 1976, and was for much of the 1970s and 1980s one of the most powerful men in America.
The United States should help strengthen nongovernmental humanitarian agencies working in Sudan so that they can handle an increased flow of aid.
A Palestinian state will never be created by terror.
What does 'politicizing intelligence' mean? Using intel, or more often, partial intel, to produce an effect in line with White House policies rather than giving a full picture of a particular situation.
The Egyptian military and the government of Israel have long had a common interest in maintaining order and fighting terrorism in Sinai.
Nineteen-seventy-nine had been a year of American setbacks around the globe. Before the year began, Cuban troops were already roaming Angola, and a pro-Communist regime ruled Ethiopia.
Can Israelis be wistful? It is not the characteristic we usually associate with them; more typically they are said to be tough, sweet, angry, thoughtful, demanding - not wistful.
The devastation of the ancient Christian community in Iraq is well known.
Pinochet took power in a 1973 military coup that the United States supported.
Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.
One good way of measuring the mood in Israel is just how alert or relaxed the guards at every restaurant entrance appear to be.
In Iran, there is no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no independent judiciary, no free elections. There is no freedom of religion - not even for Shiites, who are forced by Iran's theocracy to adhere to one narrow set of official rules.
Reagan did not wait out the Soviets; he beat them.
There's always Tunisia. Amid the smoking ruins of the Middle East, there is that one encouraging success story.
Like all forms of collective security, multilateral sanctions require a unanimity rarely achieved in international politics.
The notion that public service requires men and women of good character now seems quaint.
The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country.
Thousands of members of Congress have come and gone over the years, their individual achievements hidden in committee reports, private compromises, amendments pushed through or blocked, and innumerable, unnoticed meetings.
An effective U.S. policy toward Sudan - one capable of changing the situation in the south and affecting the lives of its people - will require top-level attention and a great deal of energy. It should have three elements: aid, diplomacy, and financial disclosure.
