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In his State of the Union Address, President Obama pledged that "America will continue to lead the effort to prevent the spread of the world's most dangerous weapons."

Iran's presidential election may still be some four months away, but the political machinations have already begun. Last week, Iran's Council of Guardians, the powerful governmental oversight body tasked with interpreting the country's constitution, passed a new law imposing additional curbs on the electoral process within the Islamic Republic—and adding a new layer of bureaucracy to its already-convoluted political process.

In late January, the government of the Philippines served official notice that it plans to bring China before an arbitral tribunal over the latter's persistent violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea -- the multilateral treaty that serves as the touchstone for much of the world's behavior on the high seas. The move garnered only limited media coverage, but it provides a telling snapshot of the struggle that is now under way for the shape of Asia.

In the conflict zone stretching from Syria to Afghanistan lies another war waiting to re-emerge: Nagorno-Karabakh. This dispute is likely to occupy President Obama’s new foreign-policy team whether they want it or not.

Two decades ago the newly independent states of Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a bitter war over this remote area of mountains and valleys. Armenia won the war, but nobody has achieved peace. A fragile ceasefire signed in 1994 remains the only tangible achievement of diplomacy.

A significant shift is underway in U.S. defense posture. Over the past year, the Obama administration has carried out a public pivot in strategic focus toward the Asia Pacific theater. The reorientation has been driven in large part by concerns over China’s “peaceful” (or not so peaceful) rise to regional prominence—and by an effort to exploit the opportunities that have been created by it. Widespread regional unease over China’s growing footprint among Asian countries has paved the way for stronger relationships between Asia and the United States, as well as a growing willingness to partner with Washington on matters of regional security and politics.

With U.S. troops out of Iraq and leaving Afghanistan, the last thing the American people want to hear about is the potential for another war. But the growing conflict in Mali is not a new war; it is another front in the same struggle against violent extremism America has been waging since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Until recently, most Americans had never heard of the west African country of Mali. They may have heard of the Malian city of Timbuktu, but even then only as a byword used to describe the middle of nowhere. However, an Islamist insurgency has thrust Mali into the forefront of the national security debate, and highlighted the continuing complexities of the struggle against violent extremism.

Today, the United States confronts no shortage of strategic challenges in the Middle East. Initial optimism about democratic change among the countries of the “Arab Spring” has given way to deep apprehension over the ascendance of Islamist forces in places like Egypt and Libya. The post-Saddam government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki remains fragile and unstable, riven by sectarian divisions and propelled by divisive power politics. And al-Qaeda, although down in the wake of the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, is decidedly not out, as frequent bombings in Iraq and mounting unrest in Yemen underscore.

During the tenure of the Bush administration, the United States entered into numerous agreements with many countries, including our Cold War adversary Russia, to deal with the growing danger of nuclear terrorism.

It has been heralded as a humanitarian gesture and a sign of Arab leadership, but Qatar’s decision last week to double its $2.5 billion aid package to Egypt is also a telling indicator of the true economic state of affairs in post-revolutionary Egypt.

Buried deep in the report of the Accountability Review Board convened by outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to examine the tragic events that took place this fall in Benghazi, Libya is the answer to why the U.S. ambassador was there in the first place. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who lost his life in Benghazi, was there "to open an American Corner at a local school and to reconnect with local contacts." Apparently, a friendly local Libyan was opening a school to teach English with an "American Corner" as part of that effort. The ambassador thought it so important that he wanted to participate personally in its opening. It is, thus, not an exaggeration to say that Ambassador Stephens died in the pursuit of "public diplomacy."

In late October, speaking at the Intrepid Museum in New York, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta delivered a stark warning. The United States, Panetta said, could soon face a mass disruption event of catastrophic proportions, a "cyber Pearl Harbor" of sorts.

North Korea's successful use last week of a long-range rocket to launch a satellite into orbit has catapulted the Asian rogue state back into the international spotlight. It also has brought back the global danger posed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea into sharp focus.

The Obama White House is notoriously insular, a quality reflected in its selection process for secretary of state. So far as the country knows, the only two persons that have been seriously considered to be foreign minister of the most important country on earth are Washington insiders who actively campaigned for the job. The qualities desirable—even necessary—to serve the United States well at State have scarcely been mentioned in the controversy over U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice or in the expectation that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry will be the next secretary.

Money laundering and terrorism financing are global problems that transcend national boundaries, and launderers and terrorists are constantly adapting their techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in the financial system to disguise the movement of funds.

Since the start of the year, the Obama administration has executed a very public pivot to Asia in its foreign policy and defense planning. The shift is more than simply rhetorical; in both doctrinal and practical terms, Washington is increasingly looking to the Asia-Pacific as its new arena of geopolitical focus.

The swift and near-simultaneous arrests late last month of 11 individuals allegedly preparing to bomb U.S. and other Western targets throughout Java, Indonesia's most populated island, should serve as a wake-up call to Asia's national security establishment, lawmakers and leaders. The foiled plot would have been just the latest in a flurry of terrorist activity by members of Islamist organizations, all of which are registered and legally sanctioned by the Indonesian government.

There's a tried-and-true rule in politics that, when there's trouble at home, it's time to look abroad. The Iranian regime is proving to be no exception to this axiom; as its economic fortunes have dimmed as a result of widening Western sanctions, the Iranian regime has ramped up its interference throughout the Middle East.

The United States, like most of the industrialized world, is currently engaged in a race to develop viable, non-Chinese sources of the rare earth elements that are so critical to modern technologies. And we better move fast, or we will lose that race.

“I am with the Uprising of Women in the Arab World,” says a sign that Marwa (from Tunisia) holds in front of her, “because women’s sexuality is considered as a [sic] Taboo, while Sexism, Pedophilia, and Rape are seen as commonsense.”

Foreign policy seemed to go on hiatus during the U.S. presidential election. Economic issues dominated the race, and Americans waited to see which candidate's vision would prevail. But the world kept turning, and in President Barack Obama's second term he will face a number of legacy issues from his previous four years and several emerging strategic challenges.

You might not be familiar with Sergei Magnitsky, the 37-year-old Russian lawyer who died of medical complications while languishing in a Moscow prison back in 2009. You should be — Magnitsky’s case is worth knowing, both because of what it says about the nature of the Russian state and because it could soon prompt a substantial shake-up in U.S.-Russian relations.

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.

The next president must discard two longstanding but problematic pillars of U.S. policy in the Middle East and chart a new course that reflects both regional realities and the dynamic changes that are underway there.

For decades, presidents have sought to maintain regional stability by propping up pro-Western autocrats and to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the first step toward addressing broader regional issues.

The outrage seen on Pakistan's streets over the recent shooting of 14 year-old Malala Yousefzai is a welcome contrast to the silence that greets so many acts of violence there. The liberal lawmaker Salman Taseer, assassinated by his bodyguard in 2010 for daring to speak out against Pakistan's arcane blasphemy laws, received no such outpouring of sympathy. There was no public outcry earlier this year when a Pakistani cabinet minister personally offered a $100,000 reward to any man who killed the filmmaker behind an incendiary anti-Islam video.

Monday night's debate on foreign policy between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, saw plenty of tactical agreement on issues such as strengthening sanctions against Iran and the need for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. But at least one topic -- how America should approach the Middle East -- provided a marked contrast between the candidates.

Call it President Obama’s “October surprise.” This past weekend, just days before tonight’s much-anticipated presidential debate on foreign policy and national security, the New York Times reported that the White House appears to be on the cusp of a diplomatic breakthrough with Tehran—and that direct, one-on-one negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear effort could take place in the near future, following the U.S. presidential election in November.

Recent back-to-back visits to the United States by the top two leaders of Myanmar (better known as Burma) -- opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and current President Thein Sein -- have brought the Southeast Asian nation back into the international spotlight. They have also underscored the need for U.S. engagement as a bulwark against the economic uncertainty, ethnic tensions and civil unrest that continue to plague Burma's exceedingly fragile evolution.

You've got to feel a little sorry for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. With his nuclear brinksmanship and inflammatory public rhetoric, Iran's firebrand president is accustomed to hogging the international spotlight. But recent days have seen him making news for a different reason entirely. Ahmadinejad is now fighting for his political life against domestic opponents who blame him for the country's current fiscal crisis.

As the world evolves, presenting new challenges to U.S. national security, the patterns of U.S. foreign aid should evolve with it.

Nowhere is this truer than in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous and historically most influential state, which is gradually transforming itself from a Western-leaning secular autocracy into an increasingly Islamic state that's run by the anti-Western (specifically, anti-American) Muslim Brotherhood.

Quite suddenly, it seems, Iran’s economy is in serious trouble. In recent days, the country’s national currency has fallen to record lows against the U.S. dollar. On October 1st alone, the value of the Iranian rial declined by some 17 percent, collapsing to 34,700 to one American dollar. (It has since reportedly fallen still further). All told, the rial has lost more than 80 percent of its worth over the past year.

The troubling travails of Rimsha Masih, a Christian teenager who lives near Islamabad and is facing blasphemy charges for allegedly burning pages of the Koran to cook, reflects the growing intolerance toward religious minorities that amounts to what one expert calls a “gradual genocide” in Pakistan.

When it comes to American policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, one approach has tended to crowd out all others. Over time, economic sanctions have come to be seen as something of a catch-all—a panacea of sorts for the West's nagging problem with the Iranian regime and its persistent nuclear ambitions. As a result, policymakers in Washington, as well as their counterparts across the Atlantic, have invested tremendous time and energy in crafting an elaborate framework of economic pressure against the Iranian regime.

Late last month, many Americans experienced difficulties accessing their digital bank accounts and the Web sites of their financial institutions. The culprit wasn't a simple computer glitch, but a series of coordinated cyberattacks aimed at the U.S. financial sector.

At first blush, Argentina seems like an odd choice of partners for the Islamic Republic of Iran. The South American nation holds the dubious distinction of being the first victim of Iranian terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, suffering terrorist attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires that were carried out by Iranian-sponsored radicals in 1992 and 1994. Yet today, relations between Argentina and Iran are unmistakably on the upswing.

Recent revelations from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has both continued and expanded its uranium enrichment activities have focused attention anew on U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic — and what more can be done to stop Iran’s march toward the bomb.

With Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to expel the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, from his country, perhaps Washington can finally set aside its ill-founded belief -- through presidencies of both parties -- that U.S. leaders can build productive ties to Moscow's strongman.

Next month marks the 50th anniversary of the 1962 Sino-Indian war. The event will be met with little fanfare in India, where China’s surprise invasion still evokes feelings of outrage and betrayal. But the episode may be worth remembering for another reason, as the first occasion when India shed its nonaligned scruples and formed a tactical military alliance with the United States.

For the moment, let's set aside the friction in U.S.-Israeli relations over Iran's nuclear program, which serves neither Washington nor Jerusalem.

Almost eleven years after the attacks of September 11, 2011, it’s still hard to discern exactly how we are faring in the struggle against radical Islam. The death in May 2011 of Osama Bin Laden was a key counterterrorism victory for the Obama administration—one that, according to the State Department, has helped put al-Qaeda on a “path of decline.” Yet it’s far too early to count the Bin Laden network out, as recent terrorist attacks by the group’s regional franchises in places like Yemen, Iraq and Mali make clear. Perhaps the most curious anomaly of our current counterterrorism fight, however, is the fact that the subject matter experts who serve at its intellectual front lines have found themselves unexpectedly under attack.

Jaap Polak walks gingerly these days, leaning on a cane or holding the rail as he climbs the stairs to his second-floor room at The Sparhawk, a comfortable waterfront resort in the southern Maine town of Ogunquit. That's where, for more than half a century, he and his wife, Ina Soep, have spent a few weeks in August -- and that's where I first got to know this couple and learned their remarkable story.

Tucked away in what is colloquially known as the “post-Soviet space,” the tiny, landlocked Central Asian republic of Tajikistan seems like an unlikely strategic prize. Yet a potentially significant geopolitical tug of war is brewing there between the United States and Russia. The stakes of this unfolding contest are high and involve continued Western access to Central Asia and, quite possibly, the political future of at least part of the region.

Will Israel, in fact, attack Iran? That question, a perennial one in the debate over Iran's nuclear program, has gained far greater urgency of late, as it is becoming increasingly clear that Western sanctions have failed to alter the Islamic Republic's strategic trajectory.

The West isn't the only part of the world going to Asia for commerce. Confronted with Western sanctions over its nuclear ambitions, Iran is increasingly turning to Asia's vast markets and its sympathetic governments.

A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" foreign policy enhanced American power and prestige around the world. Today, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan imperils his country's chances of regional preponderance by pursuing a policy of speaking pugnaciously and carrying no stick.

It is the most important country in the Muslim world. Its economy is already the 16th-largest on the planet, and—in marked contrast to those of its sluggish neighbors in Europe—continues to grow by leaps and bounds. And its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was recently ranked the most popular politician in the entire Middle East.

Following a 2-year investigation, U.S. prosecutors have submitted a mindboggling 30,000 pages of documentation and 2,000 recorded phone calls that paint an extensive picture of how one of Mexico's most powerful drug-trafficking organizations raises, moves and eventually washes its illicit funds.

In October 2011, U.S. attorney general Eric Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller revealed the thwarting of an elaborate plot by elements in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington at a posh D.C. eatery, utilizing members of the Los Zetas Mexican drug cartel.

The foiled terrorist plot, with its Latin American connections, focused new attention on what had until then been a largely overlooked political phenomenon: the intrusion of the Islamic Republic of Iran into the Western Hemisphere. An examination of Tehran's behavioral pattern in the region over the past several years reveals four distinct strategic objectives: loosening the U.S.-led international noose to prevent it from building nuclear weapons; obtaining vital resources for its nuclear project; creating informal networks for influence projection and sanctions evasion; and establishing a terror infrastructure that could target the U.S. homeland.