Tonight, some time between 9 and 10 pm EST (and then again between 11 pm and midnight) during the Rachel Maddow Show — not sure of time just yet — I’ll be chatting with Rachel about America’s foreign policy plate. We may be on McChrystal, Petraeus & Afghanistan.
A movie on the Honduras coup may not be the big draw that the Tom Hanks film, Charlie Wilson’s War, was — but one has to wonder whether we are seeing a remake in which a lone Member of Congress, this time a US Senator from South Carolina, drags the country into the internal affairs…
Given the tumultuousness in many parts of America’s foreign policy portfolio, it’s easy to nitpick and criticize (which I do frequently), but I have to tip my hat to President Obama’s measured and positive comments today following the conclusion of what are officially called the P5+1 Negotiations with Iran.
I am presently a guest of David Bradley, Walter Isaacson and Shelby Coffey at the Atlantic Monthly/Aspen Institute/Newseum sponsored mega-wonk meeting titled “First Draft of History.” It’s an excellent conference, but I’m losing it listening to Republican Majority Leader Whip Eric Cantor essentially argue that there is zero value engaging Iran.
Oliver Lough is a research intern at the New America Foundation. China’s 60th birthday was celebrated in elaborate and wonderfully old-fashioned style by the thousands of carefully choreographed performers (and pieces of military hardware) that congregated in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square this morning.
David Shorr is a program officer at the Stanley Foundation and co-editor of Powers and Principles: International Leadership In A Shrinking World.