During last week’s presidential debate on foreign policy, Republican nominee Mitt Romney missed an opportunity to criticize one aspect of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy that has gone largely unnoticed: the shift away from U.S. international radio broadcasting in favor of more high-tech media outlets. The dangers of the shift were underscored by a new law spearheaded by Russian President Vladimir Putin that will ban radio broadcasting in Russia starting Nov. 10 by companies that are more than 48 percent foreign-owned. Without protest, the American station Radio Liberty — Radio Svoboda in Russian — has decided to comply with the [...]
No matter who wins the U.S. presidential election next week, the man who governs from January 2013 to January 2017 will face several challenges during his term in office. While we don’t know who the next American president will be, we do know what items will be appearing on his agenda. In 2014, Scottish voters will go to the polls to determine whether they wish to remain part of the United Kingdom or secede as an independent nation. With separatist sentiment also on display in other key regions of Europe, especially in Flanders (in Belgium) and Catalonia (in Spain), the [...]
Rarely a week passes without a grim new article, op-ed or newspaper story warning us that al-Qaida is mounting a comeback. Retired U.S. Army Gen. Jack Keane, for instance, recently declared that al-Qaida is “seeking to take advantage of the opportunities posed by revolutionary change throughout the Middle East” and is “on the rise.” Writing for the Wall Street Journal, the RAND Corporation’s Seth Jones argued that, with the Obama administration turning its attention to the Asia-Pacific region, al-Qaida is pushing into the political vacuum created by the Arab Spring and “riding a resurgent wave as its affiliates engage in [...]
