The New Republic

It seems clear that Barack Obama doesn't consider Darfur a priority. Then again, with so many domestic and foreign policy crises looming, one might ask: Why should he care? READ MORE >>

One interesting wrinkle in the story of Baitullah Mehsud's assassination-by-drone is that Mehsud has long been a higher-priority target for Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, than he has been for the United States. This may have been for personal reasons. READ MORE >>

There was something surreal about General Scott Gration's testimony at Thursday's congressional hearings on Darfur. "We are aiming high and we are thinking big. Failure cannot be an option," the broad-faced Air Force general intoned, his tinny voice making him sound like a distant air-traffic controller. "We must proceed with boldness, with hard work to make this proactive and preventative approach work." READ MORE >>

At today's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Sudan, questions came up about an open disagreement between General Scott Gration, Obama's Darfur envoy, and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, over whether Sudan is currently committing genocide. READ MORE >>

There was a time during the presidential primaries that I thought Mitt Romney might make a good foreign-policy president. READ MORE >>

Today's Wall Street Journal contains an op-ed by someone named Ted Van Dyk, a disillusioned Democrat that has fallen out of love with Barack Obama. "The first warning signals for me came with your acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention," Van Dyk writes. "In it, you stressed domestic initiatives that clearly were nonstarters in the already shrinking economy. ... Cut back both your proposals and expectations." READ MORE >>

While conservatives have raised all kinds of objections to last week's vanilla arms-control agreement, it's interesting that the emotional core of their critique has been an attack on something called the "offense-defense linkage"--a wonky way of saying that that Barack Obama migh READ MORE >>

I'm always skeptical when someone criticizes an Obama official for "naively favoring carrots over sticks" in our dealings with another country. Too often, such complaints are cover for demagogues who consider any negotiation appeasement. Yet it's becoming harder and harder to deny that this is a more or less undistorted description of the approach being taken by Barack Obama's Darfur envoy, Major General Scott Gration. READ MORE >>

READ MORE >>

I'm always skeptical when someone criticizes an Obama official for "naively favoring carrots over sticks" in our dealings with another country. Too often, such complaints are cover for demagogues who consider any negotiation appeasement. Yet it's becoming harder and harder to deny that this is a more or less undistorted description of the approach being taken by Barack Obama's Darfur envoy, Major General Scott Gration. READ MORE >>