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In recent years, as foreign policymaking power has shifted from the State Department to the White House, giving the president even more control over the national security process. President-elect Obama’s choices of national security and foreign policy advisers—and the amount of power that he gives each of them—will determine how decisions are made within his administration.
The incoming Obama administration faces a variety of challenges and opportunities in China and Asia more broadly. Many in Asia have assessed Barack Obama's presidential victory as a mandate for a more thoughtful, engaging American foreign policy.
Carlo D'Este looks at the life of Winston Churchill as a solider and a political leader who spent the better part of his life fending off increasingly dire threats to Britain’s place in the world, and then to its very existence as an independent nation.
The burst of diplomatic activity that the Middle East has witnessed in recent months frequently deviated from Washington's policy guidelines, underscoring the decline in American influence in the region.The new U.S. administration will need a new and more constructive approach to handling the various issues of the Middle East.
Despite critics who claim that America’s power is fading fast, both presidential candidates know that the U.S. remains the key player on the international scene. Even in the throes of the financial crisis, America maintains unmatched economic and military power; and the challenges to U.S. power today are in fact no greater than challenges that the country has faced in past decades.
Stability in Afghanistan and the future of its government depend on the United States and its Afghan and other allies providing security for the Afghan people. Calls for an Iraq-style “troop surge” ignore the immediate need for a comprehensive political strategy to fix Afghanistan’s fragile security structure, dysfunctional system of government, and unstable borders.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cautioned that the U.S. cannot maintain a credible nuclear deterrent without testing or modernizing its aging stockpile. Gates urged the next U.S. president to engage Russia in new arsenal reduction talks and pointed to the loss of top talent in U.S. weapons laboratories as a major source of concern.
Nuclear disarmament is not an end in itself. Rather, it should be a means to global security. Some argue that nuclear deterrence provides the best form of security. But the fact that we worry so much about proliferation suggests awareness that deterrence in a complex multi-polar order is not fail-safe. The only long-term answer is to reduce the number of nuclear weapons to zero.
Efforts to re-invigorate a movement to abolish nuclear weapons are rising on the international agenda. The next U.S. president should emphasize the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons in an effort to: prevent proliferation, prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce the threat of nuclear annihilation, and foster new optimism for U.S. global leadership.
Iran continues to be a critical national security challenge for the United States, despite decades of effort to change Tehran’s behavior by isolating the country politically and economically. The relevant question is not whether to talk to Iran but how. Engagement should focus on six critical issues: Iraq, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, the Arab–Israeli conflict, energy, and terrorism.
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