U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will be seeking an unprecedented third 6-year term when voters go to the polls on Oct. 7. But this time, the challenge from opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski is expected to be credible, in what many analysts believe will be Chávez’s closest contest since his initial election in 1998. Capriles was able to unite a historically divided political opposition by winning the February 2012 primary in decisive fashion, taking 62 percent of the popular vote. His victory galvanized a wide spectrum of political parties behind a single opposition candidate for the first time since Chávez took […]

Writing 10 years ago in Orbis magazine (.pdf), Ray Takeyh and I argued that, if a wave of democratization were to topple formerly pro-American autocrats in the Middle East, the new Arab democracies “would seek what they perceived to be equitable and fair relations with the United States, but object to . . . cumbersome American . . . demands, especially regarding Israel.” The speech delivered this week by Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, at the United Nations General Assembly has confirmed this analysis. Unlike Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose pronouncements before the international community regularly conform to […]

Yesterday marked the 16th anniversary of the opening for signature of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Although it has not become a campaign issue, ratification of the treaty will be a question facing the next U.S. presidential administration, with important implications for a wide range of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation goals. The CTBT prohibits all nuclear explosions, whether for military or other purposes, in any environment. As of today, 183 national governments out of 196 possible signatories have signed the CTBT, and 157 countries have ratified it. The treaty specifies, however, that it will only enter into force 180 days […]

President Barack Obama heads to the U.N. tomorrow to address the new session of the General Assembly. His visit will be brief — he is not even expected to stay for lunch — and his speech is likely to be sharply worded. In what will probably be his last major international engagement before November’s elections, he has a chance to scold Russia for its behavior over Syria, warn Iran over its nuclear program and reassert America’s primacy on the international stage. This won’t be an entirely easy exercise for the president in terms of his domestic audience. Whatever he ends […]

U.S. pundits commenting on the wave of protests that have swept across the Middle East this past week have tended to focus on “finger-pointing and partisan sniping,” as Greg Scoblete notes, with conservatives vaguely calling for Washington to show more “strength” and liberals advocating more “outreach.” Few have wanted to deal with a far more unpleasant reality: The de facto coalition of Turkey, Israel and “moderate” Sunni Arab states that for decades worked to advance U.S. interests in the region is disintegrating. The aftermath of the Iraq War and the outbreak of the Arab Spring were just the first tremors […]

U.S. strategy in the Islamic world is teetering on collapse. Angry, often violent crowds from Morocco to Afghanistan attacked anything associated with the United States or the West during the past week, from embassies and schools to fast food restaurants. All indications are that the protests accurately reflect a deep and persistent anger toward the United States, one that can be easily manipulated for nefarious purposes. For decades, the United States was concerned with little but stability in the Islamic world, building partnerships with a sordid cast of monarchs, civilian dictators and military despots. While this approach continues to be […]

Cyberspace is often credited with having helped end decades of authoritarian rule in the Middle East. Some dubbed the Arab Spring the “Twitter Revolution” after protesters, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt, used the micro-blogging platform to coordinate action and broadcast reports, both among themselves and to the world. Just 18 months later, content posted to another social media platform has ostensibly driven large crowds into the streets throughout the Muslim world, this time to protest a movie depicting the Prophet Muhammad and Islam in an insulting light. In some cases, protesters formed into violent mobs, directing their ire at the […]

The past year has witnessed a high-profile disagreement between Moscow and Washington over the civil war in Syria and the broader direction of political change in the Arab world. Some Russians have even revealed a degree of schadenfreude over the latest anti-U.S. violence in Libya, where Russian President Vladimir Putin likened last year’s NATO intervention to a medieval crusade. But though Washington and Moscow differ on rhetoric and tactics, when it comes to core U.S. interests in the Middle East, such as managing the rise of political Islam, constraining Iran’s nuclear program and ensuring the welfare of the state of […]

While in Japan on Monday to start off a three-nation tour of Asia, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the United States and Japan had reached an agreement to deploy a second missile defense radar installation on Japanese soil. Panetta, who continued on to Beijing, China, following his stopover in Tokyo, said the agreement would enhance the Japanese-American alliance, improve Japanese defense and protect the U.S. from the threat of North Korea’s ballistic missile program. While Panetta insisted that the move does not target China, Beijing responded angrily to the announcement, which came amid heightened tensions between China and […]

Days after demonstrators stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, a wave of anti-American protests has swept through the region. For now, the demonstrations targeting U.S. embassies remain limited in size and scope, and if previous episodes of similar reactions to perceived slights against Islam are any indication, they are likely to fade relatively quickly. Nevertheless, as expressions of the anti-American sentiment that pervades the region, the protests highlight the challenges facing Washington as it tries to navigate the changing political landscape of the Middle East. Before examining those challenges further, however, it […]

Three separate incidents this week have all highlighted how the growing distraction in Washington over the upcoming U.S. presidential election is undermining U.S. diplomacy. The first has to do with the territorial dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands, possession of which confers exploitation rights to the lucrative fishing grounds and vast offshore hydrocarbon fields in the exclusive economic zone that surrounds them. The Japanese government earlier this week announced that it would buy the islands from the family that holds the deed to the property, raising tensions with China, which also claims the islands as the Diaoyou. […]

Anti-American demonstrations turned violent Tuesday at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where attacks killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others. With similar protests now spreading throughout the region, the Defense Department, State Department and White House are working to step up security at embassies in the Middle East and around the world. While the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations holds the host country responsible for embassy security, the U.S. has established its own complex security bureaucracy to respond to ongoing threats. But in light of this week’s security breaches, diplomatic posts […]

This October, U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney will debate defense policy. That debate has the potential to be path-breaking: The national security strategy crafted immediately after Sept. 11, which led the United States into Iraq and Afghanistan, has now run its course, creating the opportunity to re-examine the very foundation of American strategy, including the reasons why the United States uses military power as well as the ways that it does so. More likely, though, the presidential debate will avoid big questions and gravitate toward immediate problems like Iran, Syria, North Korea and the size of […]

At last week’s Moscow Nonproliferation Conference, organized by the Center for Energy and Security Studies, some 200 people, including a number of prominent Russian and Western experts, gathered to discuss a wide range of nonproliferation issues. Given the statements of the Russian speakers at the conference, Moscow is laying down some tough, albeit often understandable, conditions for making further progress in nuclear arms control. Sergey Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister who keynoted the conference, stressed the importance of strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Ryabkov insisted that what he called the treaty’s three core principles — nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament […]

On Sept. 11, 1990, U.S. President George H. W. Bush, in an address before a joint session of Congress, outlined his vision of a “new world order,” arguing that the end of the Cold War and the imminent launching of a multilateral military operation to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi forces offered the nations of the world “a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation.” Events over the next several years seemed to validate his prediction: The ensuing First Gulf War offered a model for rules-based multilateral military interventions; the Madrid Peace conference raised the tantalizing hope that […]

It is common wisdom that foreign policy does not decide U.S. presidential elections, and few issues inspire less enthusiasm these days than a Europe stuck in a currency crisis that it seems unable to fix. Europeans are also very familiar with the growing American belief that Europe no longer matters at all in the global arena. As a result, few were expecting any emphasis on Europe or the European Union as one of America’s most steadfast strategic partners in President Barack Obama’s keynote speech at the Democratic Party convention last week. Still, Obama’s only reference to Europe came as a […]

President Barack Obama accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party to stand for a second term last night in Charlotte, N.C. But by adhering to the traditional schedule for the party’s convention, he excluded the possibility of attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vladivostok, Russia. Obama declined the invitation to attend this year’s APEC conclave because he would not have been able to deliver his keynote address in time to fly out to Russia’s Far East for the meetings. But, ironically, a key reason for speaking in Charlotte — to personally address tens of thousands of party activists […]