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When Barack Obama announced a year ago that he was running for president, I scoffed. How could a black man whose middle name is Hussein and who looks like he is 25 years old win the White House? To be sure, he was a U.S. senator, but he had been elected largely on a fluke when his toughest Democratic and Republican opponents were felled by scandals. "He'll fade by December," I assured anyone who would listen.
The February IAEA safeguards report on Iran indicates that the answers provided by Iran on all but two issues are "consistent" or "not inconsistent" with its information and on schedule with the agreed-upon work plan. However, the final outstanding issues are those most closely associated with weaponization.
The 2008 presidential primaries are being avidly followed, both at home and abroad. With all the rules for picking a party nominee, including the much-discussed Democratic superdelegates, some U.S. voters have begun questioning the extent to which the process is democratic.
Bill Buckley, who died yesterday, will, of course, be remembered as the man who was most singly responsible for the modern conservative movement.
About a year ago Fidel Castro started blogging. Every week or so he posted his “Reflections of the Commander in Chief”. While not strictly a blog, in his internet musings “El Comandante” does what bloggers do: he comments on the news, chastises enemies (Bush, Aznar), extols friends (Hugo!) or rambles on subjects he cares about (sport and politics).
When the U.S. launched a missile to destroy a dead satellite that would have otherwise re-entered the atmosphere and possibly threatened populated areas with a toxic load of hydrazine fuel, it resurrected fears about the so-called weaponization of space. Carnegie Associate Ashley J. Tellis comments in the Wall Street Journal on the ongoing “space weapon” debate and praises the Bush administration for rejecting a joint Russian-Chinese arms treaty aimed at banning such weapons.
Monday's elections in Pakistan were -- to use a timeworn cliché -- a political earthquake. Although the poll numbers were clear, very few Pakistan watchers expected that President Pervez Musharraf would allow the opposition to win in such a decisive fashion. In the end, South Asia expert Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told me, "There was a depth of resentment that not even the government's manifold efforts at shaping the outcome could prevent."
The clamor over illegal immigration can be expected to grow over this year and to play a large role in this fall's election debate, as it already has in the congressional by-elections that have taken place since November 2006. Which party will benefit is unclear. What is certain is that the United States, which has grown and prospered as a nation of immigrants, will suffer from this acrimony.
Bernard Gwertzman from the Council on Foreign Relations interviews Carnegie Endowment's senior associate, Ashley J. Tellis.
In early 2003, Carnegie President Jessica Tuchman Mathews and her colleagues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace were among the few foreign policy experts in Washington trying to stem the rising tide in favor of invading Iraq. The Washington Examiner profiled Mathews about Iraq, U.S. foreign policy, and her work at the Endowment over the past ten years. Since her arrival, the Endowment has transformed itself from a think tank on international issues to the first truly multinational — ultimately global — think tank.
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