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America’s relationship with the world is in disrepair. Anger, resentment, and fear have replaced the respect the United States once enjoyed. The next U.S. president should improve relations with Syria, and the mullahs in Tehran may be willing to shelve their nuclear plans permanently in exchange for a little face time with the United States.
The killing today of Benazir Bhutto was tragic for many reasons. Most obviously, it was another senseless death, adding to the spiraling extremist violence that has spread in recent years from Pakistan's remote regions into the heart of its major cities, including the capital, Islamabad and the nearby military garrison, Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was murdered. But the killing also may push the country even farther from a return to real democracy, already a shaky prospect in a country with a checkered history of electoral politics. For while Bhutto was hardly a saint, she had served as the strongest, most credible opposition voice against the sham elections prepared for early January.
Many conservatives have insisted that the Democrats' wins in the 2006 midterm elections, as well as their recent pickups in some 2007 races, were mere blips. They wish. Political, ideological, demographic and economic trends are all leading toward durable Democratic majorities in Congress, control of most statehouses and, very possibly, the end of the decades-old GOP hammerlock on the electoral college.
Since global change accelerated a decade or so ago, mentioning globalisation has tended to upset many people in the Arab world. Was 2007 the year that the region moved closer -- and more comfortably -- to the rest of the globe?
But even if she fails to win any of the three critical early states, Hillary Clinton still has a chance to win the Democratic nomination. That's because of her strength among Hispanic voters.
Regardless of what one thinks about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusion that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 -- and there is much to question in the report -- its practical effects are indisputable. The Bush administration cannot take military action against Iran during its remaining time in office, or credibly threaten to do so, unless it is in response to an extremely provocative Iranian action.
Bush did not enter the White House with a mission to promote freedom around the world. As a presidential candidate, he put forward a modest foreign policy agenda that eschewed nation building. The events of September 11, 2001, however, radically jarred his thinking on the nature of international threats and triggered a fundamental reevaluation of his administration’s national security policy that elevated democracy promotion as a central objective of his foreign policy agenda.
Today, instead of Republicans trumpeting Kentucky as a realignment state, it is Democrats who see the state as indicative of their rising national fortunes. "I think that, in many ways, Kentucky's election will be a harbinger of movement across the country," Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear tells me while campaigning in Lexington last week.
This week, President Bush will be hosting representatives in Annapolis, MA for an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference. Carnegie's Mohammed Herzallah argues that the Palestinian leadership will be in a position to haggle in Annapolis without being held accountable by their own constituency. There must be a democratic connection between the Palestinian negotiators and the people they represent.
A major shift is taking place in the way decision-makers in the U.S. and major European countries view the political role of Islamic movements in the Arab world and also in the way they regard the perils such movements pose for Western interests.
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