This is a guest note by Dan Kervick, a regular reader and commenter at The Washington Note. Reaction to Aaron David Miller’s recent pessimistic piece on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has raised calls for outside-the-box thinking as the only alternative to despair and endless conflict in the Middle East.
(Photo Credit: Jon Connel’s Photostream) The huge news here in Istanbul this week is the resignation of Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Deniz Baykal. Baykal leads the main opposition party that represents a secular, nationalist, pro-military alternative to the conservative, religiously-oriented ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
This has to be watched. As the narrator says, “the Gulf appears to be bleeding.” Thanks to UT Austin/LBJ School’s James Galbraith for sending my way. For those of you following this disaster, the blog Gulf Oil Slick is a good resource.
Andrew Lebovich, a frequent TWN contributor and staff member at the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program, prepared today the AfPak page brief for Foreign Policy this morning. This slightly disturbing kicker caught my attention: Afghanistan’s creepiest game When not on the watch for Taliban, U.S.
Nicholas Maliska is a research intern with the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative. This post originally appeared at The Havana Note. With President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to replace Justice John Paul Stevens, the U.S. Supreme Court is changing (although this change should not significantly alter the ideological balance of the Court).
I am worried that there is substantial confusion in Democratic party ranks about what the appropriate role and function of the United States military is and isn’t.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, a champion of tough-edged humanitarianism, too frequently falls into a linear, knee-jerk approach to global justice causes rather than embracing the complexity of most global problems. Nations are good or bad. We must take forceful action against some country or are otherwise appeasing them. And so on.
Joe Biden had AMTRAK trips between D.C. and Wilmington, Delaware so imprinted in his DNA that he must really miss them now. For 35 years, then Senator Biden commuted each working morning and each working night — 100 miles each way — to be with his wife and children.
(Photo Credit: Argenberg’s Photostream) While here in Istanbul for a series of meetings with foreign policy practitioners and analysts, I have been struck by the nearly complete absence of Turkey’s European Union negotiations from my discussions. As one prominent Turkish political commentator explained to me, Turkey’s relations with Europe are in a coma.
