Foreign Policy

Last chance! On Monday, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney square off on foreign policy. It will be the final debate and President Obama's last major opportunity to convince American voters to give him four more years.

On October 11, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave a speech on cyber threats -- "an issue at the very nexus of business and national security," he said. "Ultimately, no one has a greater interest in cybersecurity than the businesses that depend on a safe, secure, and resilient global digital infrastructure." He's right: Businesses are interested and engaged -- but some in a different way he meant.A new front is emerging in cyber-warfare: Multinational corporations are standing up to governments that use the Internet for military purposes.

In the video below, Douglas Rediker explains why many members of the IMF were frustrated with the U.S. ahead of this week's meeting. He dives into more detail in an article for Foreign Policy, reprinted below.

The conventional wisdom holds that the future of American conflict will be dominated by drones, SEALs, and a massive combined naval/air team in the Pacific. This scenario envisions little purpose for land power outside the limited but potent capabilities inherent in Special Operations. But there is an alternative view that believes the conventional wisdom to be utopian and unwilling to consider the most likely conflicts to occur in the future.

Military demographics change over time. Sixty-five years ago, the United States had a segregated military, but today people of every race, color, and creed train and fight side by side. Twenty-five years ago, women were excluded from half the occupational specialties in the Army and 80 percent of Marine Corps jobs; today, women can serve in all but a few combat-related occupational specialties. Just two years ago, gay and lesbian service members risked discharge; today, they can serve openly.

It has been a rough couple of weeks for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. The Obama administration's reconciliation and transition efforts and parallel attempts to repair U.S.-Pakistan relations faced fresh challenges as the Pakistan-based Haqqani network was implicated in major attacks against the United States, NATO, and Afghanistan.  

When the United States led the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the mission was clear: retaliation against the Taliban government for offering safe haven to the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks.

Ten years later, the mission is no longer clear -- not to the American people, not to the Taliban, not to regional stakeholders, and unfortunately, not even to the nearly 100,000 American troops struggling to maintain a sense of purpose in some of the most forbidding terrain in the world. And the criticism and challenges to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan abound. What happened?

I first met Husain Haqqani in 2007 when I served on the Pakistan Desk at the Department of State.

The truth is out there -- but it doesn't really matter what it is. This seems to be the mantra for politics in Pakistan these days, and none of us are immune from it. The Pakistani press was quick to judge President Asif Ali Zardari's last-minute trip to Dubai for medical treatment as a form of political exile in disguise at the behest of the military. His departure instantly confirmed the prevailing view that Zardari is increasingly on the ropes with the military and that the "Memogate" scandal -- in which Zardari allegedly drafted a cable to the U.S.

The Obama administration has embarked on a fresh effort to get allies back on board with the goal of talks leading to Taliban reconciliation, following the Taliban's public acknowledgment of its willingness to negotiate. In a Jan. 3 statement, the Taliban indicated they would establish a political office in Qatar that will be used "to come to an understanding with other nations." Does this mark one of the most historic developments since the beginning of the war: the Taliban shedding its status as an insurgency and beginning its transformation into a state? In another statement issued Jan.