I’m not all that impressed with Obama’s plan to bomb Pakistan’s NWFP if there is “actionable intelligence against al-Qaeda.” As analyst Joshua Foust has noted, such an attack would surely turn much of the country against us and severely derail our counter-terrorism efforts in the long-haul. It’s also just lazy – an easy response to a problem that is much more complex and deeply-rooted. But, that quibble aside, Obama generally appears to have a good read on...

Brilliant: AMMAN, Jordan — Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran. He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq. Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital,...

A biweekly feature of news and opinion pieces from the Israeli and Palestinian press. 1.) A new poll has found an uptick in popularity for Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. His surge in public approval comes as Mahmoud Abbas’s is dropping. The survey, which was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, also determined that fresh elections would lead to a strong showing for Hamas in both of the Palestinian territories....

Details are still coming out about Iran’s recent parliamentary elections, but here are a couple of my early thoughts and observations. First, a lot of English newspapers are inaccurately spinning this as a crushing win for conservatives. That’s somewhat misleading. The Guardian Council — which vets majlis legislation and monitors elections — disqualified about 1,700 candidates before the vote, including many of those in the reformist camp. Those in the Mohammad Khatami mold...

As part of this biweekly feature, I’ll be presenting a slate of news and opinion pieces from the Israeli and Palestinian press. 1.) The Syrians have been making a strong push to restart peace talks with the Israelis. Between 2004-2006, there had been unofficial, track two discussions between a prominent Syrian-American businessman and a former Israeli official; these negotiations made major progress towards a peace agreement, but ultimately fell through. Recently, however, Syrian officials...

One of Putin’s major selling points — and that of his successor, Dmitri Medvedev — has been the impressive rates of economic growth that have occurred on his watch. In no small measure, these economic successes have helped to bolster Putin’s public approval rating to 70-80%, and ensure an easy victory for his party in last year’s Duma elections. But most of this boasting is just hot air, with little substance to back it up. Foreign Affairs recently ran an article by...

Gallup has recently finished the most complete survey of Muslim public opinion that has ever been conducted. The poll took six years (from 2001-2007), and involved thousands of interviews with Muslims from more than 40 different countries. The results are a vindication of what many observers have been saying for a long time: About 93 percent of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates and only seven percent are politically radical, according to the poll, based on more than 50,000 interviews....

As the crisis escalates, Matt Dupuis provides a good analysis of the ongoing standoff between Venezuela and Colombia.

Studying in Damascus in 2005-6, I was struck by the Syrian obsession with the Golan Heights. Since the Israelis took the fertile territory back in 1967, the Syrians have made its reacquisition a central goal of their foreign policy. They tried unsuccessfully to retake the land in 1973, and they now jealously guard a UN-staffed ceasefire line. The Syrian town along the border, Qunetra, is a wasteland. No one lives there. Instead, the Syrians have largely left it untouched since the Israelis destroyed...

A must-read for foreign affairs watchers: Yonatan Mendel’s recent article in the London Review of Books.

Michael Signer, a former adviser to the Edwards campaign, recently wrote an article for The Washington Post arguing that the media isn’t paying enough attention to foreign policy issues in its coverage of the presidential campaign. It’s hard to argue with that. As Signer notes, most reports about candidates and their foreign policy agendas have the “flavor of a fantasy baseball article in Sports Illustrated.” The press should certainly do a better job of questioning presidential...

Exactly: But loyalty that can be purchased is by its very nature fickle. Only months ago, members of the Awakening were planting IEDs and ambushing U.S. soldiers. They were snipers and assassins, singing songs in honor of Fallujah and fighting what they viewed as a war of national liberation against the foreign occupiers. These are men the Americans described as terrorists, Saddam loyalists, dead-enders, evildoers, Baathists, insurgents. There is little doubt what will happen when the massive influx...

Via The Arabist, the Iranian Ministry of Information has produced an amazingly paranoid video that details the “American-Zionist conspiracy” against Tehran. The graphics are excellent, as is the experience of watching a digitalized John McCain speak in fluent Farsi. For those who have better things to do, here’s a quick summary of the video’s message to the Iranian people: be careful of NGOs, left-wing propaganda, George Soros, imperialist Jews, John McCain, human rights advocates,...

(Hat tip: Saint in Exile)

Count me as less than enthralled with McCain’s foreign policy agenda. For one thing, he typifies the kind of badly-reasoned Cold War realism that is all-too-eager to embrace foreign dictators. Consider, for example, what he had to say about Pervez Musharraf back in December of 2007: Prior to Musharraf, Pakistan was a failed state. They had corrupt governments and they would rotate back and forth and there was corruption, and Musharraf basically restored order. So you’re going to hear...

China is playing a spoiler role not only in Sudan, but now in Kenya as well. In the midst of the country’s post-election turmoil, Beijing has steadfastly refused to put any pressure on the warring parties, despite (or perhaps because of) its “large and growing economic stake.” Numerous countries have already sent envoys, as have the AU and the UN — China’s absence from the process, then, is striking. Like in Sudan, the failure of Beijing to play a more active role could...

This article by Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal will make you wonder whether the cruelty of the Soviet era did, in fact, end decisively in 1991. The answer, in many regards, is no. Under Vladimir Putin, some of the most despicable and cruel tactics of the Communist years have been reinvented – from the intimidation of opposition leaders, to the killing of journalists, to the infamous brutality towards detainees, the “new” Russia is looking increasingly like its prior self. But...

Syria is engaged in a renewed crackdown on political dissent, culminating with the recent detention of Riad Seif (left), a prominent opposition leader. This won’t be the first time that Seif’s been in jail – in 2001, he and several other pro-democracy advocates were thrown into prison for five-year terms, effectively ending a period of political openness known as the “Damascus Spring.” No doubt to bolster its reputation in the wake of the Hariri assassination, Bashar...

In Israel-Palestine, high-level peace efforts appear to be going nowhere. It has been two months since the international meeting took place in Annapolis to jumpstart negotiations but the general feeling “is that talks between Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia are taking place in an alternate universe.” (Haaretz) The meetings are irregular and, to most observers, far too infrequent. Livni and Qureia are meeting only once a week, while Olmert and Abbas...

In the Middle East, the issue of women’s rights is increasingly taking hold in public discourse and, according to The Economist, there is some tangible progress being made. Most prominently, in Saudi Arabia, a country with some of the must discriminatory gender practices, the monarchy is beginning to seriously reconsider its treatment of women. Laws forbidding violence against women are now being drafted. Women are now allowed to stay in hotels unaccompanied. The government has given initial...

Within the Israeli press, there has recently been an upsurge in interest about the American presidential race. In Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, Ynet News, and other media outlets, the question is increasingly being asked: which candidate is best for Israel?

Clinton and Obama have dramatically different visions for American foreign policy. One of the key policy distinctions between the two candidates is their differing views on the issue of negotiating with unsavory foreign leaders. Clinton has argued for a policy of continuity with the current administration — that it is a mistake to sit down, without preconditions, with the likes of Hugo Chavez, Bashar al-Assad, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Obama, for his part, believes that establishing preconditions...

The Israeli press is alive with discussion of the Winograd Report, a study that assessed the conduct of Olmert’s government during the Israeli-Hezbollah war. Most analysts agree that the findings are much less harsh than had previously been expected. Via Reuters: The Winograd Commission’s final findings issued on Wednesday described “serious failings” by political and army leaders during the war, but did not blame Olmert personally. It endorsed key and controversial decisions...

This year has not been a good one for the spread of democracy. From Pakistan to Kenya to Russia, democratic norms have been on a backwards slide. A recent Economist article suggests that the tremendous democratic gains experienced at the end of the Cold War are now slowing down to a crawl. It’s a dramatic reversal from a few years ago. Exciting developments in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Georgia suggested that maybe, as Dan Drezner wondered in 2005, a “fourth wave”...

Far too wonky to publish on a respectable blog like this one, I’ve written a brief analysis of the connection between Yemen, terrorism, and American policy over at Foreign Policy Watch. The post, I should add, includes some rare praise for the Bush administration.