Cutting government spending is now more than simply in fashion. It's the law. But there are intelligent ways to fulfill this requirement, and ones that are decidedly less so. Logic dictates that it makes sense not to cut (or to cut only minimally) programs that provide a greater return than the original outlay of funds or that invest successfully in human capital.
Commenting on the gullibility of the credulous American consumer nearly a century ago, the famous showman PT Barnum is said to have remarked that "there's a sucker born every minute." To see what this looks like in practice, you need only look at the deal that the Obama administration was on the verge of signing with Iran.
The New York Times didn’t know or didn’t care that one of its new high-profile “contributing opinion writers” has long displayed a relentless hostility to Israel and posited startling conspiracy theories about “
Bucolic regions in the south of France represent the newest frontier for law enforcement and intelligence officials searching for dirty funds. Since 2008, thousands of illicit actors have reportedly arrived in southwest France from Eastern Europe, Hong Kong and mainland China and snapped up vineyards to launder their money. European and Asian officials must take steps and curb this trend, including establishing Trade Transparency Units (TTUs) to combat trade fraud.
With civil war raging, Syria, a state sponsor of terror, has attacked its own people with chemical weapons and attempted to skirt international sanctions. The United States, the EU, Russia and the UN must identify the full extent of the threat and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons capacity
Yegor Shcherbakov probably didn’t expect to become Russia’s newest national figure. But on October 13, the 25-year-old ethnic Russian turned into just that after he was stabbed to death by an assailant from the Caucasus following a personal dispute in Russia’s capital, Moscow. A full-blown race riot followed, complete with chants of “Russia for the Russians” and “White Power” and the destruction of a shopping center. In all, Moscow police ended up arresting some 400 people, most of them far-right nationalists seeking revenge against foreigners in Russia, and launching a city-wide dragnet for the perpetrator.v
Next month, if all goes well, Ukraine will sign a "deep and comprehensive free-trade agreement" (DCFTA) and an "association agreement" with the European Union. Such accords do not represent applications for or endorsements of Ukrainian membership in the EU. Still, they would mark a milestone in cementing Ukraine's adhesion to European commercial and economic standards, which would immensely enhance Kiev's competitiveness and growth prospects. Most of all, if implemented, the accords would represent a first and decisive step toward real European integratio
The deal that re-opened America’s government and averted a national default should evoke little cheer, for the Washington spectacle of recent weeks has hurt America’s image and influence around the world.
The impacts to date are serious enough. They include a Chinese call to “de-Americanize” the world’s economy to lessen its dependence on the U.S. dollar and more threats from credit rating agencies of a U.S. debt downgrade that, were it to come, would rattle both the U.S. and global economies.
All this has left the Iranian regime battered, and eager for an easing of the economic pain. This is the motivation behind the charm offensive undertaken in recent weeks by Iran’s new, “moderate” president, Hassan Rouhani, as well as his calls for “constructive engagement” with the West.
In order to maintain its space superiority, the United States currently relies on Russian technology – so much so, in fact, that every once in a while American claims to space superiority seem rather hollow. This state of affairs has been brought into sharp focus in recent weeks.
Far from robust, the federation is facing implosion
Don’t let Russia’s recent attempts to play peacemaker on Syria fool you — U.S.-Russian relations are still on the rocks. A range of issues — from Russia’s stubborn support for the Iranian regime to the Kremlin’s very public snub of the White House in granting asylum to fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden — have cast a profound pall over bilateral ties. In the process, they have sounded the death knell for the vaunted “reset” of relations with Russia that President Obama made a centerpiece of his foreign-policy agenda during his first term in office.
Don’t let Vladimir Putin fool you. Russia’s president may be cutting an imposing figure on the world stage these days, but his country faces a daunting future
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s charm offensive has already changed the global dynamics over Iran’s nuclear pursuit to Tehran’s advantage, with the West easing its pressure and Israel now positioned as a stubborn outlier.
Also to Tehran’s benefit, Rouhani’s efforts have opened a clearer fissure between Washington and Jerusalem. Not only is U.S. President Barack Obama clearly banking on diplomatic success while a skeptical Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterates his threats of an Israeli military strike, but Obama also seems more likely to take a deal with Tehran that Netanyahu would find hard to swallow.
If you grew up any time in the last half-century, chances are you have fond memories of Charles Schulz’s iconic “Peanuts” comic strip and its hard-luck protagonist, Charlie Brown. Each week brought a new misfortune for the unhappy Charlie, but never more so than when his crafty friend Lucy offered to play football — a game that, no matter how many times it was attempted, invariably ended with Charlie flat on his back.
The British historian AJP Taylor believed that in Germany, classical liberalism always fails in the competition of political ideas. For over six decades, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) has tried to prove Taylor wrong. The FDP—which calls itself “Die Liberalen”—champions free-market economics and protection of civil liberties, while remaining the most “Atlanticist” of the German political parties.
The implications were chilling. In the summer of 2012, as murder and mayhem reigned on both sides of Syria’s civil war, someone—likely from the opposition—released a list of 32 names on Facebook. These weren’t people invited to a wedding; they weren’t members of the Syrian national soccer team; and they weren’t guests for a weekend jaunt to a fancy seaside resort in Latakia. These were people someone wanted dead.
On the surface, Russia seems to be a nation on the march. Last week, Russia's larger-than-life president, Vladimir Putin, strong-armed the United States into accepting his plan for dealing with Syria's chemical weapons. There are signs Putin is preparing to expand Russia's role in Iran and its nuclear program, which successive American administrations have failed to shut down.
India has launched a bold initiative to bolster its influence throughout Southeast and Central Asia. The Indian government is investing significant capital in Iran’s Chabahar free-trade zone and the surrounding infrastructure to secure its economic interests throughout the region, reduce Pakistan’s sphere of influence and compete with China. While this policy seems attractive in the short term, this course of action is fraught with unanticipated dangers. Investing in Chabahar not only allows Iran’s rogue regime to fill its coffers with the hard currency it needs to repress its people and facilitate terrorism, but may also harm India’s strategic relationship with one of its most important allies, the United States
Whatever happened to the war on terror? Unless you've been paying close attention, you could be forgiven for thinking that America's struggle against radical Islam is largely a thing of the past.
Barack Obama owes Vladimir Putin. Big time. That's the only conclusion one can draw from the president's nationally televised address on Syria on Tuesday evening. In it, Obama talked tough, highlighting the need to hold the Assad regime to account for its atrocities. But he also made clear that plans for U.S. military action have been deferred, perhaps even tabled, pending the results of Russia's plan to place Syria's chemical weapons under international control — a proposal that Damascus has hastily accepted.
As the White House considers taking military action against Syria for its use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians, the president has turned to Congress to authorize airstrikes. Lawmakers weighing their decision on the most consequential policy vote since the 2002 authorization for war in Iraq should encourage the President to also consider using an additional tool to force the Syrian regime to change course: stepping up economic warfare against Syrian banks and institutions that do business with them.
The ability to recognise and respond to threats just over the horizon is justifiably considered part of the collective job description of US defence planners and members of Congress. However, all too often US defence planning falls short of anticipating strategic trends, let alone crafting clear and comprehensive policies to address them.
The congressional debate over whether to support President Barack Obama's call for military action against Syria will revolve around the issue of "U.S. credibility," but here's the sobering fact: U.S. credibility around the world has already taken a huge hit due to White House actions of recent weeks.
You may have missed it, but on Aug. 14 Russia fired an economic shot across the bow of Ukraine. On that day, Russia’s customs office ordered intensive checks on all Ukrainian goods entering Russia, effectively imposing a de facto ban. This could have ended up costing Ukraine as much as $2.5 billion in lost trade by the end of the year.
Today, the U.S. and Moscow share few common interests
The fate of controversial National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was recently granted asylum by the Kremlin, is of little importance. His case, however, shines a revealing spotlight on the true state of U.S.-Russian relations, and on the sorry state of American policy toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Among long-time observers of Middle East politics, the sorry state of Israeli hasbara, as the country's foreign image-building is called in Hebrew, is something akin to the stuff of legend. Time and again over the years, Israeli messaging — on everything from its strategic intentions, to relations with the Palestinians, to foreign policy toward the Arab world — has fallen flat or received a cold shoulder from unsympathetic international audiences. This has been the case despite consistent, heavy investments from the Israeli government in the use of television, radio, print media and the Internet to win hearts and minds.
In 2012, amid the ongoing ferment of the so-called “Arab Spring,” officials throughout the Israeli government were expressing deep concern about their country's strategic position, and the potential for conflict on a multitude of fronts. Today, by contrast, Israel's security establishment can best be described as cautiously optimistic about its geopolitical situation, and with good reason.
Last summer, when the so-called “Arab Spring” was in full bloom, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey was riding high.
In his quest for a pure autocracy, Russian president Vladimir Putin and his government have improved upon Joseph Stalin's epic achievements.
In the March 23, 1983, address that formally unveiled the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), President Ronald Reagan famously outlined a vision that challenged the “balance of terror” that governed relations between the U.S. and USSR. Reagan proposed an alternative to continuing to live with the imminent threat of thermonuclear war: the development and deployment of defensive capabilities able to eliminate nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
German chancellor Merkel has proclaimed that Europe needs to find “redemption” from its economic sins through austerity. In Greece another round of austerity measures could push the already fragile economy toward collapse and the public toward desperate alternatives.
Late last month, the State Department submitted its long-awaited report to Congress on Iran's activities in Latin America. That study, mandated as part of the Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act signed into law by President Obama last year, was designed to provide an in-depth look at Iran's growing operations south of the U.S. border and to present a strategy to confront its growing influence.
The International Criminal Court (ICC), which began operating in 2002, is charged with focusing on "the most serious crimes of concern to the international community," listed in particular as "the crime of genocide," "crimes against humanity," "war crimes," and "the crime of aggression."
What is Russia up to in the Western Hemisphere? That's a question increasingly on the minds of Latin America watchers, who have noticed signs that Moscow is again setting up shop south of the U.S. border.
The Snowden and Manning cases invert the principle laid down by the late James “Scotty” Reston of the New York Times, who noted that “the ship of state is the only ship that leaks from the top.”
If you're reading the American press, you might think that the protests in Turkey have died down. Nothing could be further from the truth. Stranger still, if you are reading the Turkish press, you might conclude that you are in Egypt, because that seems to be the only topic of conversation.
Largely unnoticed among the acrimonious back-and-forth over Syria at the recent Group of Eight summit in Fermenagh, Ireland, the United States and Russia took a small but meaningful step forward in cyberspace. On the sidelines of the summit, the two nations signed a pact filled with “confidence-building measures” designed to prevent miscalculations and unwarranted escalations in the event of a cyberconflict.
June 30 marked the last day in office for Tara Sonenshine, the now-former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Although Sonenshine tendered her resignation back in April, the Obama administration has yet to nominate her replacement. For months now, the public diplomacy community has dreaded the leadership crisis that this high-level vacancy will create for U.S. soft power efforts abroad.
Is Egypt on the cusp of counterrevolution? Over the weekend, Egyptians took to the streets en masse throughout the country to protest the decline and political disorder that have come to define the rule of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government.
History, it is said, doesn't repeat itself, but occasionally it does rhyme. So it is with Western policy toward Iran, which is on the verge of returning to the costly rhythm of the past.
The Egyptian government is, quite literally, running out of gas.
So says the country's petroleum minister, who estimates that Egypt is on track to deplete key strategic energy reserves in the very near future. In a recent interview with Turkey's Anadolu News Agency, Petroleum Minister Sherif Haddara disclosed that the country's stocks of three strategic fuels -- diesel, butane and petrol --might run out by month's end, if not sooner, unless the government receives an infusion of cash from foreign donors.
The United States and Europe are failing to use a tool already in their possession that would deliver a knockout blow to Iran's nuclear program. It isn't a new piece of computer malware or a bomb. The group that would accomplish the mission isn't the Pentagon or the European Union—it's the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift.
Iranians closed the page on the tumultuous eight-year tenure of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when they went to the polls on June 14 to pick a new president. In a national election marked by tremendous fervor and massive turnout (some 75 percent of Iran’s roughly 50 million eligible voters are estimated to have participated), the victor was Hasan Rowhani, a soft-spoken cleric widely billed as a “moderate” among Iran’s field of presidential contenders.
Media coverage of the June 7-8 "shirt sleeves" summit between President Obama and new Chinese president Xi Jinping in Rancho Mirage, California has largely focused on the two issues that dominated the official agenda. The first was China's extensive intellectual property theft and hacking activities in cyberspace. The second was the threat posed by the regime of reckless "young leader" Kim Jong Un in North Korea.
Chinese Senior Col. Zhou Bo made headlines at the annual Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore, held from May 31 to June 2, when he announced that Chinese ships have been conducting reconnaissance operations in America’s Exclusive Economic Zone. It wasn’t exactly a surprise: Buried in its 2013 Report on Chinese Military Power was a statement by the Pentagon that Chinese ships had begun conducting “naval activities” around Guam and Hawaii. What may have been surprising though, was the response of Adm. Samuel Locklear, the head of U.S. Pacific Command: “They are [conducting exercises in our EEZ], and we encourage their ability to do that.” Why would the United States want the Chinese navy patrolling the waters off Hawaii?
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey's acknowledgment this week that Iran "is a threat to U.S. national security in many ways," and not just in its pursuit of nuclear weapons, is both welcome and timely.
In highlighting Iran's nuclear pursuit, U.S. policymakers and pundits have cast insufficient light on Tehran's other activities in the region and beyond that dog U.S. security interests and make its potential nuclear capacity so frightening.
Opponents of U.S. nuclear modernization are operating under a slew of false assumptions. That is the message of Major General Garrett Harencak, the top nuclear advisor to the U.S. Air Force's Chief of Staff, who spoke recently to a hundred top military and civilian experts at a seminar in Washington. And it is one that is worth heeding.
Last week, Argentine state prosecutor Alberto Nisman dropped a bombshell when he issued his long-awaited indictment in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israel Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires. The 502-page report pins the blame for the attack -- which killed 85 and wounded hundreds more in what experts call Latin America's 9/11 -- squarely on the Islamic Republic of Iran. In doing so, it provides a timely reminder that Iran's radical regime is active in the Western Hemisphere and that its presence here is far broader than is commonly understood.
ISTANBUL – By now, the media coverage of the upheaval in Turkey has been extensive, but certain points have been insufficiently emphasized.
I suspect that I’m like many of you. I want to believe Israeli-Palestinian peace is coming, that the two sides will soon agree to borders, Palestinian terrorists will stop launching rockets from Gaza, and ultra-right Israelis will abandon dreams of absorbing the West Bank into a “Greater Israel.”