Jon Weinberg is a research intern at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force. A couple of weeks ago, Angelina Jolie, who makes periodic trips as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), visited Iraqi refugees in southern Damascus along with her partner, Brad Pitt.
Stephen Kinzer, author of Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds and one of the United States’ most knowledgeable Turkophiles, has an optimistic op-ed in today’s Boston Globe about the recent normalization agreement between Turkey and Armenia and Turkey’s potential as a regional power.
This is a guest note by Flynt Leverett. Flynt directs the New America Foundation/Iran Project and is the former Senior Director of Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council. He is also publisher of the forthcoming blog, The Race For Iran.
This is a guest “note” by Daniel Levy. Daniel Levy directs the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force and formerly served as a senior Israeli negotiator. Levy is a principle drafter of the Geneva Israel-Palestine accords. Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, reopened today after a long break for the summer and the Jewish holidays.
While putting back together the United States’ foreign policy portfolio, one of the key challenges for the Obama administration will be to engage rising powers like China, India and Brazil without offending traditional allies, including Japan. The future of the U.S.
“The Japanese,” writes Masaru Tamamoto, “are a people who endlessly and fruitly ask who they are.” If this is the case, then the dramatic re-shaping of their political landscape has provided the Japanese (and everybody else) a rich new opportunity to indulge in their national pastime. The country’s new prime minister Yokio Hatoyama (a.k.a.
Last week, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett penned a New York Times op-ed advocating for a robust effort to achieve a “grand bargain” with the Iranians, rather than continuing down the Bush-Obama path of “containment.
Center for a New American Security Senior Fellow Robert Kaplan has an excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times that offers a balanced assessment of the regional and great power dimensions of the United States’ involvement in Afghanistan.
(Photo Credit: White House) Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are insisting that if only Congress could dream up better and more effective sanctions to squeeze Iran and get Russia and China to go along, then the Iranian nuclear problem would go away. This is nonsense.
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.
