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Obama's Fiscal Cliff Stubbornness Dangerous for Military
Tweet Share on Facebook December 7, 2012 CommentMackenzie Eaglen is a resident fellow at the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
For nearly a year and a half, sequestration has been the law of the land. But few treated it that way, including the White House.
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An Economic NATO Would Strengthen the U.S. and Europe
Tweet Share on Facebook December 6, 2012 CommentRobert Nolan is an editor at the Foreign Policy Association and producer of the Great Decisions in Foreign Policy television series on PBS. You can follow him on Twitter @robert_nolan
As the European economy continues to tank, I'm often asked what the United States can do to help its friends across the Atlantic aside from the financial advice and moral support offered by our leaders in recent years. This week, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, one of the foremost thinkers on U.S. foreign policy, penned a column about the idea of an economic NATO that provides at least one concrete answer. Now is absolutely the time to begin discussion of renewing the transatlantic relationship with a greater focus on strengthening economies in both Europe and here at home. After all, the United States and Europe account for nearly half of the entire world's GDP, 40 percent of the world's trade, and together are still responsible for the security architecture that keeps the global economy moving.
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How Mexico’s New President Peña Nieto Can Make or Break Its Future
Tweet Share on Facebook December 6, 2012 CommentTed Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is the author of nine books and more than 500 articles and policy studies on international affairs. His latest book is The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America (2012).
As Enrique Peña Nieto takes the helm as Mexico's new president, there is a wide range of opinions about the probable future of the country. At one extreme are fears that Mexico could become a failed state wracked by pervasive violence at the hands of drug cartels. At the opposite pole is speculation that Mexico could join the ranks of rising economic powers such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China—the so-called BRICs.
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Replace the United Nations
Tweet Share on Facebook December 6, 2012 CommentDr. Lamont Colucci is an Associate Professor of Politics at Ripon College, recent Fulbright Scholar to the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, and author of The National Security Doctrines of the American Presidency: How they Shape our Present and Future, among other books. You can find out more at lamontcolucci.com.
Living in a city like Vienna, one feels as if one is in a living museum. Vienna was not only the final redoubt for European civilization in 1683, but was the heart of the system that governed international relations from 1815 to 1914, known as the Congress of Vienna. The Vienna of today, exemplifies much of what ails European foreign policy and trans-Atlantic relations: the lack of a dynamic goal and a failure to build upon roots that made the civilization great. The European Union is in disarray, and NATO is searching for a redefinition. This is happening while the United States has made no clear signal as to the future of Atlanticism, NATO, or leading the West.
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High Hopes for Philippine Peace Plan
Tweet Share on Facebook December 6, 2012 CommentMolly Dunigan is a political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.
A month after the announcement of a potentially historic peace deal between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the two sides continue to iron out the details, one of the negotiators has already picked up an award for his efforts, and, most importantly, peace still reigns.
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Defense Intelligence Agency Expansion Must Be Closely Monitored
Tweet Share on Facebook December 5, 2012 CommentMichael P. Noonan is the director of the Program on National Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In The Federalist No. 51, first published on Feb. 6, 1788, James Madison (writing under the nom de plume Publius) made a very well-reasoned argument for checks and balances when he stated,
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What Obama Should Do About Post-Mubarak Egypt
Tweet Share on Facebook December 5, 2012 CommentPatrick Christy and Evan Moore are senior policy analysts at the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Egypt in the post-Mubarak era poses serious challenges to the interests—and values—of the United States and its partners in the Middle East. The large-scale protests yesterday that forced controversial President Mohamed Morsi from his presidential compound vividly illustrate what is at stake as Cairo continues the long and difficult political process of moving away from a dictatorship.
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South Africa Faces Many Challenges in Its Economic Rise
Tweet Share on Facebook December 4, 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.
We are nearly at the end of the "potential future super power" series. It would be remiss of me to skip the African continent in any discussion about the future. Every time we make a new acronym now for emerging markets, we try to insert an "S" for South Africa (for example, the "CIVETS", which includes Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa). In fact, we even tried to insert an "S", after the fact, at the end of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China).
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National Security Agency Should Lead on U.S. Cybersecurity
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 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 bi-partisan general counsel for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
According to recent news reports, President Obama has signed a classified executive order governing U.S. cybersecurity—and more cyber-related executive orders may be in the works. This could be a good thing, depending on which agencies have primary responsibilities for assuring the cybersecurity for our nation's critical infrastructure.
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The Taliban, Pakistan, and India: Towards a New U.S. Policy
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2012 CommentAndrew S. Natsios is an executive professor at the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and the author of Sudan, South Sudan and Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know. Natsios served as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and as President George W. Bush's special envoy to Sudan.
A daring assault by Taliban forces this week in Afghanistan on Camp Bastion, a heavily fortified U.S. military base in Helmand Province, killed two Marines and destroyed six Marine AV-8B Harrier jets. The attack's remarkable sophistication suggests it was not the work of a few Afghan insurgents using homemade weapons, but of trained military tacticians. U.S. military sources revealed this week that one of the Taliban fighters, who survived the U.S. counterattack, admitted that his unit had organized, prepared, and trained for the attack over several months in Pakistan. The incident should focus Washington's attention on the failing U.S. policy in the region: not in Afghanistan where the attack took place, but in Pakistan where it appears to have been planned and organized.
