New America on Foreign Policy

Does Osama bin Laden matter anymore? You could be forgiven for thinking he doesn't. In recent months, an impressive cast of terrorism experts and counterterrorism officials around the world has coalesced around the notion that al-Qaeda's leader is no longer an active threat to the West. They point out that he has not been able to strike on U.S. soil since 9/11 or in Europe since the London bombings three summers ago. In Iraq, his most successful franchise operation is… more

Even on their best days, the world’s failed states are difficult to mistake for anything but tragic examples of countries gone wrong. A few routinely make the headlines -- Somalia, Iraq, Congo. But alongside their brand of extreme state dysfunction exists an entirely separate, easily missed class of states teetering on the edge. In dozens of countries, corrupt or feeble governments are proving themselves dangerously incapable of carrying out the most basic responsibilities of statehood. These countries -- nations such… more

As Congress prepares to consider the annual Department of Defense authorization bill and other military spending legislation totaling more than $700 billion, the need for more aggressive scrutiny is abundantly clear. At a time when we have a $9.3 trillion national debt and large unmet social needs, oversight of these enormous and ever-increasing sums has failed to keep up.

The Pentagon’s procurement and budgeting processes are rife with problems. For example, the Government Accountability Office has identified $295 billion in cost… more

The United States stands at a historic crossroads; essential to the world yet unappreciated. America’s decline in popularity over the last eight years has been nothing short of astonishing. With wit, brilliance, and deep affection, Ted Widmer, a scholar and a former presidential speechwriter, reminds everyone why this great nation had so far to fall. In a sweeping history of centuries, Ark of the Liberties recounts America’s ambition to be the world’s guarantor of liberty. It is a… more

Of all the countries to emerge from the wreckage of the Second World War, perhaps none overcame post-war adversity quite as successfully as Japan. By the time the country surrendered in 1945, it was in dire straits. It had lost some 2.8 million people during the war, 3.8% of its 1939 population. Thousands more were so severely maimed or ill that they would never resume productive… more

This past week saw not only the Irish rejection of the Lisbon treaty, forcing a crisis summit this week to chart an alternative path to EU continuity, but also the annual EU-American summit in Slovenia, aiming to forge a common transatlantic agenda on Middle East peace, climate change and trade. The Irish vote is likely to fuel rumours of the EU's demise, yet it is the latter summit that will prove more revealing about its future. While mending transatlantic divides… more

The most important long-term strategic challenge facing the Gulf Cooperation Council is not the threat of Islamic extremism or the rise of Iran -- it is the continuing economic decline of the United States.

Ever since 1980, when Jimmy Carter, then president, first publicly committed the United States to use military force to defend the free flow of oil from the Middle East, the United States has been the region’s unquestioned hegemon. And ever since the GCC was formed in 1981,… more

A few weeks ago, I went into a Barnes & Noble and noticed a prominent new display -- the "BRIC" table, piled high with books detailing the irresistible rise of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Nearby, another shelf sagged under the weight of more than half a dozen depressing new books about the failures of American foreign policy, each painting a more lurid picture than the last of the coming era of U.S. impotence.

The implication, it seemed clear, was that… more

When Roger Winter’s single-engine Cessna Caravan touched down near the Sudanese town of Abyei on Easter morning, a crowd of desperate men swamped the plane. Some came running over the rough red airstrip. Others crammed into a microbus that barreled toward the 65-year-old Winter as he climbed down the plane’s silver ladder. Some Sudanese call Winter “uncle”; others call him “commander.” On this day, angry and anxious, the people of Abyei wanted Winter’s help in averting a return to civil… more

In a great journalistic coup, Michael Ware and the CNN team in Iraq have unearthed the largest collection of al Qaeda in Iraq material outside the hands of the US military. What they found in this collection of videos and memos underlines a key aspect of the al Qaeda organization in Iraq; it is highly organized, and not simply a loosely-knit collection of jihadists.

A debate has recently erupted in the pages of Foreign Affairs, the leading American journal of international… more

Shaul Mofaz is Israel's minister of transportation. He formerly served as the IDF chief of staff and as defence minister. He is hardly considered to have been one of the greats to occupy either post. Another position he currently holds is that of minister in charge of the strategic dialogue with the US. The very existence of this position is emblematic of the dysfunctionality of Israel's political system right now (ordinarily the role would be part of the… more

“Where are you from, my friend?” the merchant in Sharm Al-Sheikh asks me. I have been in enough bazaars in the Middle East to know the routine: I state my nationality (American), he makes a light joke about Rambo or Hollywood (avoiding politics), and then proceeds to hawk his goods to me at triple the going price.

But this time I took a different tack: “Iranian,” I said, citing my other nationality. “Iran?” the merchant responded, somewhat confused and pleasantly surprised.… more

From Taba to Tony, from the Rose Garden to Riyadh, from Geneva to Gaza -- in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no American president has been presented with more opportunities for reaching a true and lasting peace than George W. Bush. But with just a half a year to go before he leaves the White House and little indication of a breakthrough, it is all but certain that Bush will leave behind a conflict more intractable than ever, not… more

In public, defeat in Afghanistan is unthinkable for western governments. In private, for many it already seems inevitable -- at least if the western definition of “victory” remains the vastly overblown goals set since the overthrow of the Taliban, within any timeframe that is likely to be acceptable to western electorates.

In recent meetings involving Nato officials I have been struck by the combination of public acknowledgment that, to achieve real and stable progress in Afghanistan, western forces will probably have… more

The Pentagon is in crisis: The war in Iraq is entering its fifth hot summer. And while U.S. troop casualties are down, the light at the end of the occupation tunnel is no closer and no brighter.

Headaches mount on the home front as well. The head of the Air Force was recently embarrassed and forced from the cockpit. Billions of dollars have been misplaced or misspent. Huge cost overruns bedevil weapons contractors. And, private contractors have… more

Within a few minutes of Noman Benotman's arrival at the Kandahar guest house, Osama bin Laden came to welcome him. The journey from Kabul had been hard, 17 hours in a Toyota pickup truck bumping along what passed as the main highway to southern Afghanistan. It was the summer of 2000, and Benotman, then a leader of a group trying to overthrow the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, had been invited by bin Laden to a conference of jihadists from around the Arab world, the first of its… more

Five years after a war allegedly launched to liberate Iraq’s Shiite majority, American forces have been bombing Shiite neighbourhoods in Basra and Baghdad while their snipers and tanks remain on the ground in places like Sadr City.

Iraq seems to have emerged from the worst phase of its civil war, but the victorious Shiite factions have turned their arms on one another in a fight over the spoils, battling for political power in advance of the upcoming provincial elections.

But as the… more

Earlier this month Prof. Shlomo Avineri argued on these pages that the real Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) did not occur at the hands of Israel in 1948, or even after 1967, but rather was a result of "the inability of the Palestinian national movement to create the political and social institutional framework that is the necessary foundation for nation-building."

Avineri's piece ("The real Nakba," May 9) is important: It recognizes the reality of Palestinian national consciousness and the legitimacy of their claim… more

Even those in America who call for a more humble American foreign policy and recognize the need to listen to foreign populations and global public opinion persist in deploying at every possible moment the most patronizing of monikers in describing their preferred allies: "moderate."

Over the past eight years, the condescending label of moderate has been applied to a variety of potential interlocutors in regional conflicts -- with never a positive result. Negotiations with so-called "moderate Taliban" proved a failure; Taliban… more

If what is shaping up to be the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history has an upside, it is that the current war in Iraq should definitively, permanently settle a handful of critical questions about American conduct in the world. This book provides a list of those questions and even ventures some answers in the form of key lessons from Iraq.

The idea of assembling lessons as tools for avoiding the next war is less of a stretch than it… more