Obama has leverage to salvage U.S.'s reputation

by Noah Feldman

The Obama administration should take some of the legal ingenuity it has applied in justifying indefinite detention and apply it instead to closing Guantanamo.

Commentary Mar 24, 2012

China must rein in N. Korea

Now what? Just when we thought things were getting better, North Korea pulled the rug out from under everyone, including itself, by announcing a planned satellite launch to commemorate Great Leader Kim Il Sung’s 100th birthday celebration. Pyongyang (pretends to) believe that there is ...

Global-related Mar 20, 2012

Mistaken presumptions about Assad's Syria

by Roger Owen

Syria’s uprising against President Bashar Assad, which began peacefully in Damascus a year ago, has become increasingly brutal and splintered. As the death toll nears 9,000, calls for international intervention have increased — but what worked in places like Libya won’t necessarily succeed in ...

Global-related Mar 14, 2012

Sending the wrong message to North Korea

by Andrew Natsios

Another food crisis has spread across North Korea, caused by yet another poor harvest and Pyongyang’s disastrous currency manipulation scheme, which wiped out the savings many people had used to feed themselves. We do not know how many people are dying, but it is ...

Commentary Mar 9, 2012

Breakthrough is close, again

by Ralph Cossa

The recent “food for freeze” agreement between the United States and North Korea has been described accurately by the State Department as reflecting “important, if limited, progress” and inaccurately by the media as constituting a “breakthrough” in the seemingly endless march toward Korean Peninsula ...

Editorial Mar 4, 2012

Small step in the right direction

The United States and North Korea have found common ground. Washington and Pyongyang announced on Wednesday that the North would stop nuclear and missile provocations as the U.S. would proceed with the provision of food aid. This seeming consensus should open the door to ...

Global-related Feb 29, 2012

U.S. needs to renew ties to Baghdad

by Danielle Pletka and Gary Schmitt

This month, Obama administration officials revealed plans to dramatically reduce embassy staff in Baghdad, the largest U.S. diplomatic mission abroad. Along with the announcement in December of the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq — the message President Barack Obama is sending is ...

Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Feb 27, 2012

American safety tab in terms of drone deaths

by Hiroaki Sato

Sometimes people make a startlingly mindless argument. One recent example is “Drones for Human Rights” (New York Times, Jan. 31). “Drones are not just for firing missiles in Pakistan,” began Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Mark Hanis, who co-wrote the op-ed. “In Iraq, the State ...

Commentary Feb 24, 2012

China's next president does his turn on catwalk

by Frank Ching

As expected, the visit to the United States by China’s leader-in-waiting, Xi Jinping, did not result in any policy breakthroughs. He is, after all, only the crown prince and has not yet been anointed No. 1. The trip continued a practice begun 10 years ...

Global-related Feb 17, 2012

America's pivot to Asia is not just about countering China

by Ralph A. Cossa and Brad Glosserman

“All right China, come out with your hands up; we’ve got you surrounded!” When one reads about the U.S. “pivot” to Asia, it is almost always cast in terms of countering China’s rise, as if it — and everything else that Washington does in ...

Global-related Feb 2, 2012

What does Egypt's military leadership want?

by Omar Ashour

“Whatever the majority in the People’s Assembly, they are very welcome, because they won’t have the ability to impose anything that the people don’t want.” Thus declared Gen. Mukhtar al-Mulla, a member of Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Al-Mulla’s message ...

Global-related Jan 25, 2012

Debunking five myths about Barack Obama

by Jonathan Alter

The president is a socialist. This myth began with a 2008 campaign stop in Ohio, when then-Sen. Barack Obama was caught on tape telling Joe Wurzelbacher (“Joe the Plumber”) that we needed to “spread the wealth around.” His Republican opponent John McCain said that ...