Foreign Policy
Politico recently christened all the conservative think tanks, nonprofits, and publications Bill Kristol is involved with “Kristol World.” But “world” doesn’t do it justice: Kristol’s résumé occupies its own universe. His influence ranges from conservative media to foreign policy to academia to economics. To help untangle Kristol’s myriad activities, both past and present, we mapped the influence of the neoconservative mastermind. READ MORE >>
Israel has once again demonstrated that when it sets a red line with its neighbors, it means it. Having declared that they will prevent qualitatively new arms from being transferred from Syria to Hezbollah, the Israelis, without openly admitting it, acted to enforce this threshold. READ MORE >>
Obama Crosses His Own Red Line
The president turns a blind eye to Syria's use of chemical weapons
There is almost nothing worth saying that is not worth saying again. Sense may be conveyed efficiently, in a single utterance of sufficient clarity; but meaning amasses and accrues, it is not stated but mined, and this requires a return to what was said, and then another return, and then another. It requires repetition. Kierkegaard remarked, premonitorily, that “one becomes weary only of what is new.” Epiphanies, our secular mysticism, are barren freaks of experience unless they are made to serve as beginnings, and raptures are succeeded by chores. READ MORE >>
The year is 2050. The president is making the case for the next Secretary of Defense. A two-term senator from Maryland and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the nominee also happens to be a decorated combat veteran of the wars fought at the beginning of the century. Twice deployed to Afghanistan as a member of a Cultural Support Team supporting special-operations combat forces, she earned a Combat Action Badge and received a Bronze Star for her actions during an ambush by insurgents in Kandahar Province. READ MORE >>
Chill Out, John Kerry
Advice for the new secretary of state about Israeli-Palestinian relations
Here we go again. A recently minted American secretary of state eager to burnish his foreign policy credentials barely a day after his confirmation has already called both the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian president to discuss the importance of trying to resume the peace process and to express America’s commitment to Arab-Israeli peace. READ MORE >>
The "light footprint" that is Barack Obama's doctrine in foreign policy originated as Donald Rumsfeld's doctrine in military policy. Rumsfeld was undone by the contradiction between his ends and his means: in Iraq, he sought to attain big ends with small means, disastrously insisting that after "shock and awe" a light, nimble American force advantaged by technology would suffice for assisting the Iraqis in the political transformation of their country. READ MORE >>
A Victory for Democratic Foreign Policy
Standardizing
Consider three recent items from the awful universe of human rights violations. READ MORE >>
