By Ben Katcher

Yesterday in Baghdad,Turkish leaders met with Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, for the first time in four years.

Faith Smith is a Research Associate at the New America Foundation. Yesterday a top Iranian diplomat announced that Iran would stop enriching uranium if it was guaranteed a regular supply for their power stations.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of last Friday’s presidential debate was that neither candidate proposed a bold, new way of thinking about foreign policy that cuts through the crisis-driven, incremental approach that has characterized the United States’ national security posture since the end of the Cold War.

The question of how and when the United States should promote democracy abroad rose to the forefront of our nation’s foreign policy discourse following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and reached its apex in President Bush’s Second Inaugural Address.

Those such as Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson who advocate increasing economic ties with China often argue, persuasively in my view, that China’s economic development is likely to lead to political reform and a more cooperative international disposition.

The question of whether to integrate Turkey into the European Union requires a balancing of costs and benefits across Europe’s entire portfolio of political, economic, and security interests. Expanding the Union to include a state that would be among its largest, poorest, and furthest to the East would clearly have a wide range of consequences….

Jonathan Wallace is a member of the staff of the New America Foundation. One week ago, Steve Clemons wrote a post on this blog involving Zbigniew Brzezinski and Mustafa Bhargouti that discussed Palestinian human rights, and specifically the freedom of movement within the occupied territories.

Last night, Turkey’s staunchly secular Constitutional Court decided against throwing out the ruling, moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP). The decision, which cut Prime Minister Erdogan’s party’s public financing in half and warned it to abide by Turkey’s strictly secular constitution, averted a potential political crisis.

One of the central challenges for the next president will be to address the precipitous decline in the United States’ popularity throughout the world that has characterized the Bush years. This is in part a result of stepped-up US counterterrorism efforts, which have clashed with once sacrosanct internationalist tenets like sovereignty.