Here is the recurring problematic of U.S. policy toward North Korea: Policy starts out principled and long-term, with a clarion call for irreversible denuclearization, the promise of a transformed relationship with Pyongyang and the requisite assurances of close coordination with allies. Invariably, this policy ends up becoming incremental, tactical and reactive, as sterile debates over […]

It is axiomatic that successful Presidents must focus their political capital on just a few priorities. Barack Obama has had no such luxury. Just on the international front, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, the deepening Israeli-Palestinian conflict, near-term deadlines requiring policy reversals on nuclear proliferation and climate change, a broken relationship with Russia, and a global financial […]

President Obama inherited the most daunting and intractable tangle of foreign policy challenges of any American leader since the early years of the Cold War. The new Administration found itself saddled with crises and festering problems complex in character and long in the making: unfinished and unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, stalled peace talks […]

Kenya, two years after the bleeding.

A friend as troubled as I am at President Obama’s mounting misadventures in foreign and security policy said, “I hope he knows what he’s doing.” I hope he doesn’t.I hope he doesn’t because I prefer the alternative explanation: that he has spent nearly a year getting it wrong out of inexperience, naivety, the distraction of […]

A year ago, with the election of Barack Obama, it seemed to many that America and its role in the world might be transformed. A powerful post-ethnic, post-Cold War coalition had been created by a man who seemed able not only to transcend cultural differences and economic barriers, but also to exert American leadership in […]

Perhaps the satirists at the Onion were not joking when they reported in November 2008 that Barack Obama had just been given the worst job in the country. Look what he inherited: a global economic crisis, two difficult wars, erosion of the non-proliferation regime by North Korea and Iran, deterioration of the Middle East peace […]

Following the money reveals the growing dangers of an unlikely partnership.

The servers at the humming headquarters of The American Interest collapsed for about 12 hours yesterday, perhaps overcome with excitement that as Christine Russell points out today, New Year’s Eve this year falls on a blue moon.However, not to worry.  The-American-Interest.com is on top of the problem; we’ve reviewed the literature and are handling this […]

Now it gets tough.  That little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying so cutely in the manger is the biggest trouble maker in world history, and the shocking claims that Christianity makes about who he is and what he means divide Christians not only from atheists and agnostics, but also splits Christians off from […]