I always first think of a headline that sums up the theme of my blog. But I could not decide on a good header for my analysis of the first state visit hosted by the Obama administration. I toyed with a number of them. The first was "President Obama throws...

Nobel Peace Prize. That's one thing President Obama didn't need at this juncture of his presidency. He may have been right when he said in his remarks at the White House on Oct. 9 that the award was a "call to action" rather than for what he had already accomplished.

Does the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul really favor additional American troops build-up in Afghanistan as Gen. Stanley McChrystal has sought in his "Commander's Initial Assessment"?

CNN's Christiane Amanpour was the first to get President Karzai on record on the subject when she interviewed him on Sunday and asked him...

There is no denying that a section of Indians view President Obama with suspicion. There is among them a lurking, and for reasons of political correctness, unarticulated fear that he could be sympathetic toward Pakistan, which, in many contexts, is a code word for Islam.

Obama's paternal lineage, his...

If we set aside the celebretology that passes for media coverage of the Obama administration, the new president's performance in the first 100 days would still earn a very high grade. On the foreign policy front in particular, President Obama has breathtakingly departed from the old script, setting the stage...

In the first week of his inauguration, President Barack Obama acknowledged the urgency of the situation in South West Asia. He not only convened the first National Security Council meeting on Pakistan and Afghanistan, considered a "single theater of war," but also appointed Richard Holbrooke special envoy to the two...

President-elect Barack Obama's conspicuous silence on the latest conflagration in the Middle East is perhaps not only tactical but also prudent. There is, after all, no defensible position to take in such a situation. But once in office, neutrality will not be much of an option. Obama is likely to...

The muted response to the recent shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad could mean that there is a popular consensus that size 10 fits President Bush. If the Left had a tough time keeping a straight face while condemning the Iraqi journalist who hurled the footwear, the Right wing, which appears to...

It is said that in Washington no one believes a rumor until it is officially denied. Here's a rumor the Obama camp can deny: Sen. Hillary Clinton was offered the position of secretary of state in the incoming administration only to make way for Caroline Kennedy to enter the U.S....

The terror strategists who orchestrated the diabolical attacks in Mumbai have apparently decided that global audiences have become inured to images of suicide missions triggering spectacular explosions and mass killings.

Their altered tactic -- to stage a protracted carnage at high-value venues that guarantee greater number of victims and...