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Obama Must Stand Up for Democracy in Post-Chavez Venezuela
Tweet Share on Facebook March 15, 2013 CommentPatrick Christy is a senior policy analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Venezuela's upcoming election to replace the late Hugo Chavez gives the country an important opportunity to break away from over a decade's worth of strongman rule—and move towards better governance, improved internal security and stability, a stronger and more vibrant economy, and a truly constructive role in regional and global affairs. It's critical that the United States do what it can to encourage Venezuela to seize that opportunity.
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If Africa Produces Enough Food to Feed Itself, Why Is It Hungry?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 15, 2013 CommentStephen Hayes is president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa.
I had been in Abuja, Nigeria, just a two days ago, and yesterday found myself on a train between Amsterdam and the Hague, en route to another meeting, this time with my European counterparts from 13 countries. Even though there was an intermittent snow and the weather was unusually cold, it was striking that nearly every inch of ground available along my train route was under tillage. There was no fallow ground. The Dutch clearly were utilizing all that nature had given it. I thought about what I had seen between the Abuja airport and the city center the day before. There, in Abuja, was mile after mile of unused land. I am not one in favor of using every bit of space on earth to grow food, but here clearly was land that could be utilized right away for food production. There were no forests to preserve. It was largely flat empty land used by no one and probably very little wildlife. No doubt it would eventually be part of an urban megapolis, but for now it was prime agriculture land totally unused in a time of hunger, or at least that is what we are told, and what I have come to believe.
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What the Election of Pope Francis Says About Global Politics
Tweet Share on Facebook March 15, 2013 CommentHannah Gais is assistant editor at the Foreign Policy Association and editor of ForeignPolicyBlogs.com. You can follow her on Twitter @axi0nestin.
The decline and fall of the West in general and Europe in particular may be hype, but emerging powers have made themselves heard in some surprising—and cautiously conservative—places, including the Roman Catholic Church. And with the election of the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit, Argentina's Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who will be taking the regnal name of Francis, change is in the air—change that isn't indicative of only the Roman Catholic Church but also wide ranging global dynamics. -
Don't Underestimate the al Qaeda Threat
Tweet Share on Facebook March 14, 2013 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.
There has been so much written about al Qaeda that yet another article is bound to generate a collective yawn. "The base" has become synonymous with terrorism in general, much to the detriment of counterterrorism efforts. It has become a catch-all term that fails to capture the shift created by this new form of terrorism. These Islamic fanatics were not like the terrorist organizations of the 19th and 20th century, primarily communist-inspired ethno national ventures such as the Irish Republican Army and Red Brigades. It was former CIA director Jim Woolsey's quotation that was able to crystalize the change in a single, salient sentence. "Al Qaeda does not want a seat at the table; they want to blow the table up." This was a movement that was even unlike other Islamic extremists groups, they were not merely content with attacking Israel. They wanted empire. They wanted, just as the Soviets did, a new man, Novus homo. This Islamo-Bolshevism wanted to remake the Middle East, and then the world.
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Perpetual War Makes Obama's Drone Abuses Possible
Tweet Share on Facebook March 14, 2013 CommentMalou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
The U.S. government's drone program is the latest example of how war threatens the rights of ordinary citizens and corrodes their constitutional republic.
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On Syria and Libya, U.S. Must Unlearn the Lessons of Iraq
Tweet Share on Facebook March 14, 2013 CommentChristopher Chivvis is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and author of "Toppling Qaddafi", a forthcoming book on NATO's intervention in Libya.
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, one of the most important events of the early 21st century. In nearly a decade of war, the United States learned painful lessons about the challenges of nation-building, the extraordinary costs intervention can incur, and the pros and cons of large scale deployments of boots on the ground, to name a few.
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Don't Write Off the Iraq War as a Loss Just Yet
Tweet Share on Facebook March 13, 2013 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.
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq (March 20, 2003-Dec. 31, 2011). 4,488 American service members and Department of Defense civilians made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and another 32,221 were wounded in action. Estimates vary on the number of Iraqi casualties incurred during the war—and it is important to note that those casualties were not just caused by the U.S. and coalition forces but also by al Qaeda in Iraq, indigenous internecine conflict, etc.
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Hugo Chavez's Death Is a Blow to Iran
Tweet Share on Facebook March 12, 2013 CommentIlan Berman is Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.
The passing of Hugo Chavez last week shouldn't have come as much of a surprise to most observers. The death watch for the long serving Venezuelan strongman had been in effect since at least mid-2011, when he confirmed longstanding rumors by publicly announcing that he was being treated for an aggressive form of cancer.
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Racial Politics and Hugo Chavez's Failed Socialist Legacy
Tweet Share on Facebook March 11, 2013 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.
Hugo Chavez's death this week has inspired a range of polarized commentary on his legacy after fourteen tumultuous years as president of Venezuela. Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil wrote a glowing column on Chavez's championing of social justice for the Latin American poor, while ignoring his suppression of human rights and press freedom, his broad and sustained attacks on civil society (including independent labor unions), the exponential rise in the murder rates and violence, and the long term damage his policies have done to the Venezuelan economy. His critics have pointed to the decline in macro-economic indicators: state debt has steeply risen, inflation is at 22 percent, private businesses have been expropriated, private property nationalized, and the Venezuelan currency has been devalued three times in 10 years.
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Diplomacy With Iran Over Nuclear Weapons Has Hurt More Than Helped
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2013 CommentPatrick Christy and Evan Moore are senior policy analysts at the Foreign Policy Initiative
For nearly a decade, the United States has tried to use both economic pressure and diplomatic engagement to persuade Iran to halt its drive to nuclear weapons-making capability. Yet, while Iran's ongoing refusal to honor its international obligations for nuclear transparency arguably calls for the imposition of harsher sanctions, the Obama administration appears to be doubling down on diplomacy. Here, the danger is that we'll be tempted to give up our end to obtain our means.
