Archives: October 2011

Off to China this morning. Shanghai is first part of trip. Feeling a lot like Oakley right now.

\ Tom Donilon was sworn in as the 23rd National Security Advisor on the 8th of October last year — and though it’s a bit late in the month to pounce on the anniversary date of his ascension, I am putting together an article looking at whether America’s foreign and national security platforms have been…

The congressional “Super Committee” by most accounts is working feverishly to get some sort of deal that would avoid triggering an automatic $1.2 trillion set of cuts across government accounts.

A close friend with whom I worked in Senator Jeff Bingaman‘s office in the 1990s, Wayne Propst, was forged into who he is today in part because of his experiences teaching people how to create fish ponds in Ghana.

Think tanks in Washington scramble and compete with each other to influence the policy debate on a variety of fronts — but what is desperately needed is for one of them to put forward a white paper on how to spell Moammer Gaddafi’s name.  This is not a trivial matter.

Pervez Musharraf, the former Army general turned (former) President of Pakistan, is a different man than the Musharraf who has now declared that he will again contest for his nation’s presidency.

The World Economic Forum‘s Global Competitiveness Index offers comparative rankings for 139 countries.  Here is the pdf of the United States report. Here’s how the United States ranked on the various criteria in the 2010-2011 Global Competitiveness Report.  The picture is not good.

Reuters This morning, Washington Post editors challenge Mitt Romney‘s foreign policy views in this morning’s lead editorial and also give Jon Huntsman a working over.

News is breaking now that U.S. investigators have arrested suspected senior officials of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard/Quds force for an alleged plot to orchestrate the assassination of Saudi Ambassador to the United States Adel al-Jubeir.