Grading Obama’s Foreign Policy
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 of a B-: five As, nine ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 3, 2009 08:01
Quitters
In the space of less than 24 hours, three major races have been impacted by candidates deciding to quit. In Afghanistan, challenger Abdullah Abdullah has reportedly decided not to participate in the run-off election with Hamid Karzai for president. This makes the U.S. attempt to pretend Karzai is a legitimate, democratic leader somewhat more difficult. In the California governor's race, San Francisco ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 31, 2009 11:42
Obama’s Europe Neglect Could Bring Bush Nostalgia
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 paying little attention to Europe. [...] It would ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 30, 2009 06:10
Minor FSO Resigns, Panic Ensues
An incredibly junior foreign service officer has resigned over disagreement with our AfPak policy, prompting a high level scramble within the administration and a long feature in the Washington Post. As I wrote in "While Obama Dithers," a piece for New Atlanticist, They've brought this on themselves. Granted, President Obama inherited this war and his people may have fought it differently had ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 27, 2009 09:04
Peter Galbraith Afghanistan Elections Podcast
My colleague Sarwar Kashmeri, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's International Security Program, has inaugurated the New Atlanticist Podcast series with an interview with Ambassador Peter Galbraith on the Afghanistan election crisis. Galbraith believes Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been permanently tainted by the fraud in the initial contest and argues that the issue of Karzai's legitimacy must ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 20, 2009 10:22
Afghanistan Run-off Ordered
Well, the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has said that a third of the counted votes in the Afghanistan election were fraudulent and ordered a run-off between Hamid Karzai and second place finisher Abdullah Abdullah. Karzai looks unlikely to comply and nobody really wants a run-off, anyway. So, as I write in my New Atlanticist essay, "Afghanistan Election: Now What?" we're left ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 19, 2009 16:21
Biden Right on AfPak
Ariana Huffington has generated quite a bit of buzz for her unlikely-to-be-taken suggestion that Vice President Biden resign in protest if President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan. The cuteness of the suggestion has unfortunately overshadowed the opening paragraph in Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas' Newsweek piece on "A Day in the Life of Joe Biden" (HTML title: "Joe Biden, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 15, 2009 16:24
War and Peace Prizes
Continuing the delayed reaction to news that is the permanent fate of columnists in an instant analysis world, both Tom Friedman and David Von Drehle have similar and counterintuitive ideas on who the Nobel Peace Prize should have gone to, instead of a United States president with two weeks in office. The former suggests Obama accept the award "on behalf of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 12, 2009 10:45
Fighting the Taliban by Lowering Taxes
Matthew Yglesias suggests that one thing that could aid the fight in Afghanistan would be to lower tariffs against Afghan goods and motivate our allies to do the same.If I’m reading these slides right then textile products made in Afghanistan are not eligible for duty-free sale in the United States. Changing that rule might encourage some factory-building in Afghanistan. Similarly ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 5, 2009 09:23
European Left Down But Not Dead
The magnitude of the win of Angela Merkel's coalition, coming on the heels of a center-right romp in the recent European Parliament elections and the ouster of several conservative governments in recent months, has spawned much hand-wringing about the decline of Europe's Left. I round up and analyze some of this commentary in my New Atlanticist essay, "Whither Europe's Left?" Ultimately, I ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 2, 2009 15:40
Peter Galbraith Fired for Speaking Out on Afghan Election Fraud
The UN's number two official in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, has been fired after a clash with head of mission Kai Eide over how to handle fraud in the recent presidential elections. Galbraith alleges that Eide is covering up massive corruption for reasons of expediency. My New Atlanticist essay, "Galbraith Fired, Refused to Hide Afghanistan Election Fraud" rounds up the reporting on ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 1, 2009 13:09
EU Georgia Report False Equivalency
As widely anticipated, an EU report on last year's Russian invasion of Georgia finds plenty of blame to go around, finding that Tblisi "triggered" the conflict but that Moscow violated international law by its invasion and with numerous atrocities thereafter. This leads John Cole to quip, "Was the McCain/Palin campaign right about anything?" As I detail in my New Atlanticist post, "EU: ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 30, 2009 14:03
Britain Seeks Ban On Pint Glasses
As part of their ongoing effort to cement George Orwell's reputation by making him the most accurate prophet in history, the British Home Office is now investigating the possiblity of forcing every Pub in Britain to replace pint glasses with plastic pint cups: The BBC reported recently that the British Home Office is seeking a new design for pint glasses that ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 30, 2009 10:25
Child Rape in Afghanistan and Hollywood
Joshua Foust continues to call attention to widespread and institutionalized child rape -- mostly man-on-boy -- in Afghanistan, this time with a report that Canadian soldiers had been quietly told to ignore the practice because we needed the cooperation of the leaders doing the raping. Steve Hynd, naturally, wonders why this isn't widely reported and why senior U.S. officials aren't ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 30, 2009 09:50
NATO’s Future
I've been busy at the Atlantic Council today covering two huge events. First, Senator Richard Lugar delivered a speech on the Future of NATO. In addition to the usual niceties about the important of transatlantic cooperation, Lugar argued that we need "boots on the ground" in Eastern Europe to assuage their fears about Alliance commitment and that NATO should consider unconventional ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 28, 2009 16:49
