Everything the critics say about the decision is right–and so is the decision.

My latest for The Atlantic: “For Europe, Some Fear a Conflict Between Union and Democracy”

Rush Limbaugh, who three years ago said Mitt Romney embodied all three legs of the conservative stool today declared that Romney is not a conservative. He was right both times.

My latest for The Atlantic, “Romney’s Realist Foreign Policy Is a Lot Like Obama’s,” has been posted.

My latest for The Atlantic, “The Thorniest Question: When Can a President Order an American Killed?” has been posted.

NATO is still seen as essential by 62 percent of both EU and U.S. respondents, demonstrating that the transatlantic military bond is still, despite a rough decade, firmly entrenched in American and European views of the world.

My first piece for CNN has been posted at Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square.

My latest for The National Interest is posted under the somewhat misleading headline “NATO Fails in Libya.”

The Atlantic has published an essay I wrote yesterday morning titled “Libya After Qaddafi: Lessons from Iraq 2003.”

My latest piece for The Atlantic, “Is the U.S.-European Relationship Really in Decline?” is posted.

Why the United States has found itself in a seemingly endless series of wars over the past two decades.

A version of a piece I wrote Wednesday, titled “NATO’s Death Greatly Exaggerated,” has finally been published at Foreign Policy under the title “Back in the Saddle: How Libya Helped NATO Get Its Groove Back.”

My first piece for The American Conservative, which they’ve titled “War Isn’t for Everyone–The military needs civilian control, not citizen soldiers,” is in the May issue.

World Politics Review has published a special issue on “NATO’s Identity Crisis” ahead of next month’s Lisbon summit and the unveiling of a new Strategic Concept. I contributed the lead essay, “NATO in an Age of Austerity.”

My latest for The National Interest, arguing that the talk of crisis in Europe is overblown, is up. Naturally, they’ve titled it “Crisis in the EU.”

NATO should resist preemptively declaring cyber attacks “an attack on all” members under Article 5.

My latest for The National Interest, “Turmoil in Kyrgyzstan,” is posted.  The key bits: There are no good options here. Neither Russia nor the United States would welcome the unilateral entry of the other. Nor would either welcome a regional domino reaction to tens of thousands of refugees flooding across the “stans” of the former [...]

In my latest for The National Interest, “NATO & Israel,” I argue that the flotilla crisis may force us to choose between Israel and our transatlantic Allies. Turkey, a founding member of the NATO alliance and heretofore Israel’s only friend in the region, is apoplectic. [...] All the major European powers have criticized Israel’s actions, [...]

E.D. Kain interviewed me via email yesterday for True/Slant on President Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy. Two short excerpts: Kain: Can a surge in Afghanistan work? Joyner: [I]t really depends on what we mean by “work.” And that’s not clear. If it’s defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban and creating competent, non-corrupt government and security forces [...]

My latest for Foreign Policy, “The Eurocrats Europe Needs,” is up.   It attempts to bring some perspective to the negative reactions — my own included! — that accompanied the selection of  Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton as president and high representative for foreign policy, respectively, of the EU. Many had hoped for a kind [...]

The editors at Foreign Policy magazine used the occasion of the first anniversary of Barack Obama’s election as president to ask a “a group of experts” to grade President Obama’s foreign policy performance.   I was honored to be among the graders. My B-minus was exactly in line with the consensus:  “Obama scored only an average [...]

My first piece for ForeignPolicy.com, “Europe’s Obama Fatigue,” is online. Despite George W. Bush’s defiant “you’re with us or you’re against us” public stance, he actively solicited advice and input from his NATO partners. Obama, by contrast, is saying all the right things in public about transatlantic relations and NATO but adopting a high-handed policy and [...]

Those of you in the DC area are invited to attend the first New Atlanticist Roundtable at the Atlantic Council today from 11-12:30. We’ll be discussing the big issues faced by the transatlantic alliance including: Is NATO expansion over? Can NATO survive losing Afghanistan? and What will French reintegration mean for the alliance? In addition [...]

My first piece for The National Interest, “Bush’s Third Term,” is now up.  It catalogs the remarkable continuity  between Barack Obama’s foreign policy and that of his predecessor. The closer: Through some combination of political calculation and genuine misunderstanding, Obama campaigned against a caricature of Bush’s foreign policy. Early in Bush’s second term, he began quietly [...]

The conservative media and blogs have been having a field day parsing the bow that President Obama gave before Saudi King Abdullah in London last week. Some see it as a sign that he is submitting in fealty to Saudi Arabia. Others find ‘coded messages’ about how the US will submit to Islam. His act [...]

Matthew Yglesias published Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats way back in April but some of the reviews are just now hitting the ‘net. Jim Henley‘s is in Reason and entitled, “Between Iraq and a Soft Place – Democrats counter with a kinder, [...]

Over at New Atlanticist, I argue in “American Elections and UK Relations,” against the notion that Americans or Europeans should expect much to change in our international relationship simply because there will soon be a new occupant in the White House.   Instead, as always, events and the perceived interests of the actors involved will dictate [...]

For those of you out there who enjoy the pleasures of a fine cigar, I thought I’d let you know that I’ve become a reviewer over at the cigar review site CigarJack.net. My first review, of the La Gloria Cubana Wavell Natural, can be found here. La Gloria Cubana is in General Cigar’s large brand [...]

OTB’s Campaign 2008 coverage will be featured on Newsweek.com’s new Ruckus group blog. Media Bloggers Association president Robert Cox has the details: Media Bloggers Association (MBA) and Newsweek have launched “The Ruckus,” a new group blog about politics for Newsweek.com. The blog will feature posts from nine MBA-member bloggers about the presidential campaign on a [...]

My latest for TCS Daily, “What the Experts Really Said About Iraq: As it Turns Out, Not Much,” is up. It looks at the recent blogospheric debate about the foreign policy Establishment’s role in the Iraq War debate. After an extensive review of the archives at Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and International Security from 2002 [...]

TCS Daily has published my full interview with Brave New War author John Robb as “New War and the Threat to Globalization.” One excerpt: Joyner: You say that the Global War on Terror could take down the United States as a Superpower in much the same way that the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1980s, [...]

My review of John Robb’s important new book, Brave New War, is up at The Examiner. John Robb has spent his career studying terrorism, computer systems and risk management. He has brought these experiences to bear in this vital study of global terrorism. The view is bleak. The terrorists are not only winning, they are [...]

John Burgess and I have written a piece for TCS Daily that has just been published under the title, “Armed Diplomats? When State and Stability Operations Collide.” It looks at the difficulties of integrating the enormous skills available within the State Department into hazardous national reconstruction missions such as that underway in Iraq.

My first piece for The Politico, co-authored with Adfero’s Jeff Mascott, is out. They’ve titled it, “Netiquette: How to befriend a blogger.” A better title would probably be, “7 Tips for Staying off Bloggers’ Spam Lists.”

My first article for The New Individualist, “Preparing for the Next War,” has finally gone online. It was written in February and published in the April issue, which hit the streets in late March. Here’s the intro: “Perhaps there is no great point in recalling all the tragic and idiotic blunders, all the false optimism, [...]

My latest for TCS Daily, “Depoliticizing Crime and Decriminalizing Politics,” is up. The intro: “The recent flap over the Bush Administration’s firing of eight U.S. attorneys has demonstrated the escalation of two related and unfortunate trends in American politics: the politicization of crime and the criminalization of politics.” Much more at the link.

AP’s John Milburn examines the use of active duty U.S. Army forces to help patrol our border with Mexico. I was interviewed for the piece to provide reaction to the argument that such use would help “train” the military. By providing extra eyes and ears for agents, helicopter crews from Fort Riley and Fort Carson, [...]

My latest for TCS Daily, “Following Al Gore’s Example for Energy Use,” is now up. It’s my reaction to the Al Gore’s Big Giant House meme that swept the blogosphere overnight. An excerpt: Regardless of what Al Gore preaches about these matters, the way he lives strikes me as reasonable. He was of the manor [...]

The Tuscaloosa News picked up my TCS Daily piece on the economics of college coaching pay, publishing a slightly longer version under the headline, “Saban’s pay is inconsequential” in today’s edition.

Senator Edward Kennedy yesterday outlined in a speech to the National Press Club and a column at the Huffington Post his arguments for a bill to “prohibit the use of funds for an escalation of United States Forces in Iraq above the numbers existing as of January 9, 2007— absent specific congressional authority to do [...]

My latest for TCS Daily, “Crimson with Envy: Why Nick Saban Makes More Than Your Kid’s Teacher,” is posted. It was sparked by the USA Today headline “Alabama: 45th in helping kids, No. 1 in paying coach” and other criticisms of the eight year, $32 million salary my alma mater paid to lure Saban away [...]

My first piece for the Washington Examiner, “Time for the commission to ban commissions” is out/up.

My latest for TCS Daily, “How About a Commission to End Commissions?” is up. Washington is eagerly awaiting the report from the Iraq Study Group, headed by former Bush 41 Secretary of State James Baker and Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, to point the way out of the war in Iraq. Sure, there are tens of [...]

My latest for Human Events, “How Republicans Can Get Back on Track,” is posted. It’s a slightly revised version of thoughts I posted here yesterday morning.

My latest for TCS Daily, “The Most Important Culture War,” is up. It discusses the new Army-Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual and argues that bureaucratic inertia, not lack of knowledge, is the real problem. The Army, especially, has a long historical memory. Too many times in its history, it has been sent off to fight wars [...]

My latest for TCS Daily, “An Intelligent Reading of the National Intelligence Estimate,” is up. It takes a look at the Key Findings from the controversial National Intelligence Estimate released earlier this week and finds a very mixed bag.

My latest for TCS Daily, “I Know You Are But What Am I?,” is up. It takes a look at the game of tit-for-tat character assassination being employed between George Allen and Jim Webb in their campaign for the Senate. The close: Instead of trying to tear the other man down, why not try instead [...]

David Perlmutter, Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies & Research at the University of Kansas’s School of Journalism & Mass Communications, and I have written an op-ed on peace in the Middle East. The piece appears in today’s Asharq Alawsat. David is author of VISIONS OF WAR, blogs at PolicyByBlog, and was the author [...]

My lastest for Human Events, “Combating Wal-Mart Asymmetrically,” is up. I argue that, rather than compete in the fabled “race to the bottom,” businesses should compete against Wal-Mart and other big box stores asymmetrically, emphasizing comparative advantages in niche markets. For various reasons, my wife and I buy books, coffee, pet food, wine, toiletries, and [...]

My latest for TCS Daily, “Risk-Terrorism Analysis,” has posted. It’s a response to a recent piece by Reason science correspondent Ron Bailey and a general line of reasoning that contends we are overreacting to terrorism given the statistical odds of dying in an attack. Unlike being struck by lightning or a meteor, terrorism and other [...]