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The Media's National Security Double Standard
Tweet Share on Facebook November 12, 2012 CommentDaniel Gallington is the senior policy and program adviser at the George C. Marshall Institute in Arlington, Va. He served in senior national security policy positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Justice, and as general counsel for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
In the "old days" of the Cold War, the Republicans were generally believed to put more capable people in senior national security jobs than did the Democrats.
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Second Obama Term Will Bring More Dynamic Policy Towards Africa
Tweet Share on Facebook November 9, 2012 CommentStephen Hayes is president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa.
As the election ended and the results were in, the next day in Washington two games began. The first has garnered the publicity: Who really lost the election? Self-proclaimed pundits will make their various assessments with their usual certainty and pomposity, and for the next week much of the media will debate the reasons Barack Obama was re-elected and Mitt Romney wasn't. In the end, however, the people voted and made the decision of which candidate they wanted to lead the nation.
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What to Expect of Barack Obama's Second Term Defense Policy
Tweet Share on Facebook November 9, 2012 CommentMackenzie Eaglen is a resident fellow at the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
As the lame duck prepares to get to work next week, many members of Congress are wondering what a second Obama term will entail for defense policy. In this case, the past is prologue.
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Obama’s Re-Election Means Fourth Term of Bush Terrorism Policies
Tweet Share on Facebook November 9, 2012 CommentMalou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. Follow her on Twitter @malouinnocent.
For all his talk about spreading democracy and liberty, President George W. Bush has come to be associated with policies of indefinite detention, coercive interrogation, and warrantless wiretapping. But unlike President Bush, it is doubtful that President Barack Obama will be remembered for his assertions of unchecked executive power. That's dangerous. Here's why.
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5 Foreign Policy Challenges Obama Can Tackle From Home
Tweet Share on Facebook November 8, 2012 CommentRobert Nolan is an editor at the Foreign Policy Association and producer of the Great Decisions in Foreign Policy television series on PBS.
While foreign policy had a brief moment in the sun during this past election cycle, Americans are still clearly, and rightly, preoccupied with the challenges we face here at home. A CBS poll taken just before President Barack Obama was re-elected found that just 5 percent of Americans said foreign policy was an "issue of importance" before heading to the voting booth, and Americans across the political spectrum have indicated a distaste for military intervention, democracy promotion, and a number of other goals that have driven U.S. foreign policy in recent years.
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The Defense Budget Challenges Obama Faces
Tweet Share on Facebook November 7, 2012 CommentMichael P. Noonan is the director of the program on national security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The results of last night's election ensure that there will not be radical departures from recent discussions surrounding the size of the Defense Department's budget moving forward. What remains to be seen, of course, is whether some form of principled compromise can be reached before sequestration will kick in and remove another roughly $500 billion in defense spending over the next decade. (And right now any such compromise seems to be far from certain.) Regardless, serious thought and planning needs to go into preparing for current and future security threats, challenges, and opportunities because other state and nonstate actors internationally have designs and strategies that they are working to implement whether we like it or not, and we will have less resources to counter them.
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Fact Checking President Barack Obama’s Defense Claims
Tweet Share on Facebook November 6, 2012 CommentRobert Zarate is policy director of the Foreign Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C.
In recent weeks, President Barack Obama has repeatedly—and incorrectly—claimed that Mitt Romney's plans for defense will increase Pentagon spending by $2 trillion more than military leaders actually prefer over the next decade. As the Foreign Policy Initiative has explained, Obama's claim is wildly misleading, and obscures the looming budgetary crisis that will endanger the future of U.S. national defense if not averted.
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Blacklist the United Arab Emirates
Tweet Share on Facebook November 6, 2012 CommentAvi Jorisch, a former Treasury Department official, is senior fellow for counterterrorism at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.
The security of many countries is being endangered by the United Arab Emirates, a confederation of seven small states located in the Arabian Peninsula. Usually considered a Western ally, this false friend also serves as a regional financial hub for mob figures, arms dealers, drug traffickers, jihadis, and rogue regimes. The White House and the Financial Action Task Force—set up by the G7 to combat money laundering and terrorism financing—have so far failed to take action to stop this emerging threat.
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Turkey Could Lead the Post-Arab Spring Muslim World
Tweet Share on Facebook November 6, 2012 CommentScheherazade S. Rehman is a professor of international finance/business and international affairs at The George Washington University. You can visit her homepage here and follow her on Twitter @Prof_Rehman.
In the past, Turkey was unusual because it was one of the very few Muslim democratic states. After the Arab Spring in 2011 that is no longer true—however, it is unique in being a secular democracy. Turkey is also unusual as a key Muslim ally of the United States because it hosts the Incirlik Air Base, which is vital to the logistical air support for Iraq and Afghanistan—much like Bahrain hosts the 5th Fleet (Navy) in Jaffair. However it is entirely unique in being the only Muslim member of NATO.
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Obama or Romney, Expect More Engagment With Africa
Tweet Share on Facebook November 5, 2012 CommentStephen Hayes is president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa.
A former member of the Congressional Black Caucus rather cynically said to me, "Steve, there are no votes in Africa." He was right. Africa is never a campaign issue, with the exception of those events, such as the killing of an ambassador, that affect our psyches and sense of nation. All politics are local and for the voters Africa is a long way from the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, I do not recall a single discussion on Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, during this entire campaign. The exploration of Mars and the fate of our space program were in the discussions far more than was any words related to our relations with the 54 countries of Africa.
