U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

Even those in America who call for a more humble American foreign policy and recognize the need to listen to foreign populations and global public opinion persist in deploying at every possible moment the most patronizing of monikers in describing their preferred allies: “moderate.” Over the past eight years, the condescending label of moderate has been applied to a variety of potential interlocutors in regional conflicts — with never a positive result. Negotiations with so-called “moderate Taliban” proved a failure; Taliban interests and unity certainly outweighed any incentives the U.S.-backed Karzai regime could muster. The much lauded effort in Iraq’s […]

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan — As the United States prepares for its presidential election, many Afghans are anxiously watching the race that will bring an end to the administration that triggered the 2001 U.S. intervention in their country and that has designed much of the continued military and development strategy there. Given that Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, has become almost completely dependent on the foreign assistance the U.S. intervention has brought, Afghans perhaps have good reason for their anxiety. “The important issues to Afghans are Afghanistan — and Pakistan,” said 29 year-old Roya Aziz, an Afghan-American filmmaker […]

The sniping between Barack Obama and the GOP over negotiating with rogue state leaders and other unsavory characters is even more removed from reality than the usual campaign rhetoric. The question of whether a President Obama would sit down with Iranian leaders grabs attention, but is largely irrelevant. Far more relevant is the fact that in Iraq — the highest-stakes arena of U.S. foreign policy — Americans already routinely negotiate with their enemies. From American soldiers and Marines meeting with Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen, to American diplomats meeting with their Iranian counterparts, negotiation has been at the heart of […]

David Ignatius’s May 15 Washington Post column, “The Squeeze on the Middle East’s Moderates,” is yet another manifestation of American elites’ fallacious and increasingly dangerous tendency to blame Iran for all of the troubling developments in the Middle East. The moderate “center” of Arab politics is portrayed as “under siege” in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories by forces variously described as “Iran’s proxies,” “Tehran’s friends,“ and “Iranian-backed extremists.” This overgeneralization of the many complex problems the United States must confront in the region is a recipe for Middle East policies that ignore important local factors driving upheaval in the […]

In the typically polarized debate on Iraq, the significance of the “Sons of Iraq” — the predominantly Sunni militias now allied with the U.S. military against insurgents and terrorists — can easily be lost. Depending on one’s point of view, the U.S. military’s new Sunni friends are either “concerned local citizens” or “opportunist insurgents” — with pro- and anti-war camps each using the phenomenon to support pre-existing political positions. As Iraq approaches provincial elections in October, however, and the United States nears its own presidential vote, it is high time to abandon easy slogans and to examine the fresh challenges […]

It has become impossible to credibly argue that the Bush Administration’s Middle East policies have advanced the national interests of the United States. After shifting enormous resources toward addressing the problems of the region following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and after cautioning patience through the “birth pangs of democracy,” the results have become clear. On every issue that the administration has prioritized — promoting Arab-Israeli peace, liberating Lebanon from Syrian and Iranian influence, democratizing Egypt, stabilizing Iraq, and containing Iran — America’s foes have grown stronger and its allies have grown weaker. Even more troublingly, virtually all of […]

President George W. Bush has been dismissed as a lame duck, but it appears that significant elements of the doctrine that bears his name will endure long after he leaves the White House. Although we haven't heard much about the Bush Doctrine in recent years, its impact on American foreign policy—both positive and negative—is as significant as it is misunderstood. The doctrine is generally associated with the preventive war against Iraq, but it has more than one component. The first was unveiled during Bush's address to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, long before the U.S. swept […]