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How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Frederick Kaufman - Apr. 30 (Opinion) - It took the brilliant minds of Goldman Sachs to realize the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there's value, there's money to be made.

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Think Again: The Afghan Drug Trade

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Jonathan Caulkins, Jonathan Kulick, Mark Kleinman - Apr. 01 (News Analysis) -

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Libya is not Rwanda

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Paul D. Miller - Mar. 31 (Opinion) - Historical analogies are sloppy thinking. U.S. policymakers went to war in Korea and Vietnam because they wanted to avoid another Munich. Liberals believe that Iraq is another Vietnam. Paleoconservatives worry that Libya is another Iraq, while liberals fear it is another Rwanda. These are rhetorical shortcuts that partisans use to excuse themselves from having to think very carefully or learn the details of each new case. One hopes the strategists in the White House will resist that temptation, but judging from Obama's speech, they aren't.

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Game over: The chance for democracy in Egypt is lost

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Robert Springborg - Feb. 02 (Opinion) - While much of American media has termed the events unfolding in Egypt today as "clashes between pro-government and opposition groups," this is not in fact what's happening on the street. The so-called "pro-government" forces are actually Mubarak's cleverly orchestrated goon squads dressed up as pro-Mubarak demonstrators to attack the protesters in Midan Tahrir, with the Army appearing to be a neutral force.

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Unconventional Wisdom

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Thomas Homer-Dixon, Anne Applebaum, Joseph S. Nye Jr., Daniel W. Drezner, Aluf Benn, Leslie H. Gelb, James K. Galbraith, Carl Pope, Immanuel Wallerstein, Nina Hachigian, Morton H. Halperin, Stephen Sestanovich - Jan. 06 (Special Report) - A special anniversary report challenging the world's most dangerous thinking.

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Thank God It's Over: The Top 25 Moments of 2010

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - Dec. 28 (Editorial) - With earthquakes in Haiti and western China, floods in Pakistan, a volcanic eruption in Iceland, and wildfires in Russia, the Earth was intent on releasing a lot of pent-up anger in 2010. Tremors and eruptions -- along with the more basic elements of fire and water -- seemed to shape the past year's events even more than traditional foreign policy actors. Meanwhile, Europe struggled to regain its economic footing, China continued to rapidly grow its GDP, Middle East peace talks crumbled, and world leaders misbehaved (we're looking at you, Vladmir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi). But there were bright spots, too: A group of Chilean miners escaped after enduring two months trapped underground and long-suffering Burmese democratic activist Aung San Suu Kyi was released after spending nearly two decades in detention and under house arrest. Here are a few glimpses of 2010's international high- and lowlights.

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5 Ways to Win the War in Afghanistan

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Andrew Exum - Dec. 16 (Opinion) - Although the United States and its allies have scored important tactical gains over the past 12 months -- decimating insurgent networks and securing once-violent districts in southern Afghanistan -- they have no clear plan to either defeat insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan or address the corruption and predatory behavior of Afghanistan's political class, which threatens to undermine U.S. and allied military successes.

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How's That New World Order Working Out?

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Parag Khanna - Nov. 29 (Opinion) - What a difference a couple of decades makes. A little over 20 years ago, then U.S. President George H.W. Bush -- who had just witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and saw the Soviet Union disintegrating before his very eyes -- stood at the granite podium of the U.N. General Assembly in New York and proclaimed a "new world order," a U.S.-dominated international system "where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle." Two decades later, the "new new world order" we are in fact living looks almost nothing like what Bush -- and most Americans -- imagined or hoped.

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Global Aging: A gray tsunami is sweeping the planet

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Phillip Longman - Nov. 21 (News Analysis) - Those who predict a coming Asian Century have not come to terms with the region's approaching era of hyper-aging. Japan, whose "lost decade" began just as its labor force started to shrink in the late 1980s, now appears to be not an exception, but a vanguard of Asian demographics. South Korea and Taiwan, with some of the lowest birth rates of any major country, will be losing population within 15 years. ... China, for now, continues to enjoy the economic benefits associated with the early phase of birth-rate decline, when a society has fewer children to support and more available female labor for the workforce. But with its stringent one-child policy and exceptionally low birth rate, China is rapidly evolving into what demographers call a "4-2-1" society, in which one child becomes responsible for supporting two parents and four grandparents.

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The Transformer

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Fred Kaplan - Aug. 16 (Special Report) - Fred Kaplan / Foreign Policy: The Transformer? ?? Bob Gates never thought he'd be Barack Obama's defense secretary.? Now, in an exclusive interview, the most revolutionary Pentagon leader since Robert McNamara tells FP why he said yes, when he'll get out of Washington, and what legacy he hopes to leave behind.

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Mr. President, Don’t Pray for Anything You Really Don’t Want

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Aaron David Miller - Jul. 30 (Opinion) - Barack Obama's administration has been lobbying Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Arab governments hard to return to direct talks with Israel for the first time in several years. That decision could be made as early as Thursday, when the Arab League meets to discuss the matter. But Obama should very careful what he wishes for.

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What Hunger Looks Like

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Marcus Bleasdale - Jul. 06 (Special Report) - Marcus Bleasdale, a distinguished war photographer, has documented the scars of conflict in Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kashmir, and Nepal -- places where years or decades of war have left local populations taking shelter in bombed-out buildings or makeshift dwellings, with little food or safe water. What he found when he visited Djibouti, a small, little-known country on the Horn of Africa, felt eerily familiar. Only this time, the deprivation was not the result of war, but of poverty; as Bleasdale says: "The conditions make it almost feel like a conflict zone."

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Petraeus: Withdrawal timeline does not mean "switching off the lights"

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Josh Rogin - Jun. 29 (News) - When General David Petraeus testifies today on Capitol Hill, his main job will be to carefully define the timeline for the beginning of America's exit from Afghanistan, a timeline that has stakeholders in Washington and throughout the region confused and concerned. His job will also be to defend President Obama's decision to set a public date for the beginning of the withdrawal in the first place, by arguing that having a time line in the public discussion helps pressure the Afghans to move faster toward being able to govern and secure their country on their own.

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Al-Qaeda in the New National Security Strategy

Fri, 28 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Marc Lynch - May. 28 (Opinion) - The Obama administration's new National Security Strategy is about to be unveiled today. I got hold of an advance copy of it yesterday, and then joined about a dozen other people at the White House to talk about it with three senior administration officials (on background). It's an impressive document, and goes a long way towards providing a coherent framework for American foreign policy and national security which makes sense of what the administration has been doing and offers a roadmap to where it wants to go. From my perspective, the most interesting -- and strongest -- part of the NSS deals with the administration's new approach to al-Qaeda. The most problematic is the gap between its strong commitment to civil liberties and the rule of law and its practice thus far with regard to things like drone strikes.

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Back to Petroleum

Sat, 08 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Kate Sheppard - May. 08 (Opinion) - A decade ago, the company then known as British Petroleum launched a multimillion dollar advertising campaign to rebrand itself as the greenest of oil giants. Since then, it has gone only by the initials "BP" and has popularized a new slogan: "Beyond Petroleum." The campaign launched with a $200 million public relations and advertising budget and a new logo featuring the now-ubiquitous green-and-yellow sunburst. Ten years later, the company still spends big on advertising, dropping $76 million on radio and TV ads touting its image in the United States just last year.

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Attention Whole Foods Shoppers

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Robert Paarlberg - Apr. 30 (Special Report) - Stop obsessing about arugula. Your "sustainable" mantra -- organic, local, and slow -- is no recipe for saving the world's hungry millions.

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Think Again: The Internet

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Evgeny Morozov - Apr. 27 (Special Report) - They told us it would usher in a new era of freedom, political activism, and perpetual peace. They were wrong.

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Daily brief: Afghan Taliban names new deputies

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Katherine Tiedemann - Mar. 24 (News Report) - Mullah Omar has reportedly named two new deputies of his Taliban movement, after the recent arrest of his former number two commander, Mullah Baradar (BBC, Daily Times). Abdul Qayum Zakir, a former Guantanamo detainee, was a commander in southern Afghanistan, and Akhtar Muhammad Mansoor, the "portly and personable rear-echelon leader," was part of the original Taliban leadership before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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The State of the Union Speech: What I'd like to hear but won't

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Stephen M. Walt - Jan. 26 (Opinion) - The State of the Union Speech: What I'd like to hear but won't Posted By Stephen M. Walt Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 12:09 PM Share I don't expect President Obama to devote much time to foreign policy issues during his State of the Union address tomorrow, because other topics (health care, the economy, regulating Wall Street, etc.) are causing him the most trouble these days. Plus, if he was going to talk a lot about foreign policy, what exactly could he say?

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The Ghosts of Port-au-Prince

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Daniel P. Erikson - Jan. 14 (News Analysis) - Given the torrent of maladies that Haiti has suffered in recent years, it is tempting to conclude that the country lies beyond the edge of hope. Even before a massive earthquake transformed much of the capital city of Port-au-Prince into rubble, Haitians were already bound together by the shared trauma of collective memory. Ever since Haiti gained independence in 1804, the country has excelled in producing millions of refugees and at least 34 coup d'états, but it has failed to achieve even the most basic levels of economic and social development. Although much of the blame can be laid at the feet of generations of selfish Haitian leaders who cared for their power more than their people, Western countries played a crucial supporting role through battering Haiti with military interventions, unfair trade arrangements, and political isolation. During the Cold War, U.S. support for the staunchly anti-communist Duvalier regime provided succor for a noxious dictatorship.

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Things to remember about the Nigerian terror suspect

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Elizabeth Dickinson - Dec. 27 (News Analysis) - if the suspect does indeed come from a family of means, as his residence in London suggests (forgive a generalization, but anyone who is anyone in Nigeria has got a house in London), it says much about where the real terror "threat" is (and is not) coming from in Nigeria. Security analysts have been worrying about Nigeria since the Sept 11. attacks -- fearing that this about half-Muslim country of 140 million people would be a potential host to extremists. But at the end of the day, something that I've learned about Nigeria is that it takes money and connections to get things done. Just think back to the violence earlier this summer by the Boko Haram sect. The mostly-impoverished members of the group raised hell in the local context ... but that was it. Taking "jihad" international from Nigeria is still a long ways and a lot of financing off (if it is on the way at all).

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How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Stephen M. Walt - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - Vvirtually all of the Muslim deaths were the direct or indirect consequence of official U.S. government policy. By contrast, most of the Americans killed by Muslims were the victims of non-state terrorist groups such as al Qaeda or the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans should also bear in mind that the figures reported above omit the Arabs and Muslims killed by Israel in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. Given our generous and unconditional support for Israel's policy towards the Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular, Muslims rightly hold us partly responsible for those victims too.

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The Case for Humility in Afghanistan

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Steve Coll - Oct. 18 (News Analysis) - The United States has two compelling interests at issue in the Afghan conflict. One is the ongoing, increasingly successful but incomplete effort to reduce the threat posed by al Qaeda and related jihadi groups, and to finally eliminate the al Qaeda

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What are the odds that Obama's Iran talks will succeed?

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Peter Feaver - Oct. 01 (Opinion) - How should we measure success in the talks with Iran that begin today? I propose the following sliding scale.

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Think Again: Palestine

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Zahi Khouri - Sep. 25 (Opinion) - The idea of "economic peace" suggests an economic conflict, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is certainly not that. Although economic issues do figure into Palestinian concerns, they are not nearly as important as addressing the rights of Palestinian refugees, terminating Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, and establishing a viable, independent, and sovereign Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. To suggest that economics are what this is about would be to sideline history and to willfully ignore the reality of Israel's occupation. This conflict is political and it calls for a solution that is political.

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