As the calls for US withdrawal from Iraq grow ever louder, both boosters and opponents of American disengagement are kept up at night by a common fear: that the departure of American troops will eliminate the one thing standing in the way of Iraq's descent into chaos and slaughter of...

I almost jumped out of my subway seat yesterday morning while reading Mike O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack's NY Times op-ed entitled: "A War We Just Might Win." The pair just returned from a trip to Iraq and declare:

Here is the most important thing Americans need...

As Israel and the West try desperately to prevent the West Bank from from falling to Hamas, they ought to bear in mind the two factors cited most often as drivers of Hamas' upset parliamentary election victory in the Palestinian territories in January of 2006: anti-corruption and social services.

Israel,...

One of the most improbable and unintended legacies of the Bush administration is an emerging generation of European foreign policy leaders that is more progressive than any in decades. They were chosen by new heads of state eager to move beyond the polarizing politics of the U.S. invasion and occupation...

The White House's latest spin on the Iraq War involves likening the US role in the conflict to the American military presence in Korea: a roughly 40,000 strong force that, more than 54 years after the end of the Korean War, faces essentially no casualties and is barely noticed...

High on the list of things that have given the UN a bad name over the years is the spectacle of countries with abysmal human rights records issuing pious pronouncements on the subject from the comfort of international meeting halls. This Alice-in-Wonderland phenomenon leads the world body's critics to conclude...

While the idea of politically explosive suburbs seems almost oxymoronic to an American, that's not so in France, where it's feared that today's election of Nicolas Sarkozy could ignite violent protests in peri-urban areas inhabited by the country's disadvantaged Muslim population. France's Muslims resent Sarkozy for a series of racially...

Paul Wolfowitz's long, bitter swan song at the World Bank is now accompanied by supportive sounds from unexpected quarters. In Tuesday's NYT, Nuhu Ribadu, Chairman of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission wrote an impassioned defense of the embattled Bank President. He praised the very crusade against corruption in...

In a world where China and India and, to a lesser extent, Brazil, Russia and others enjoy mounting economic and political power, where does that leave the United States? On Friday the Century Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton convened a seminar on this topic, gathering a small...

The Best Available Intelligence Can be Dead Wrong Or, Even Worse, Manipulated for Political Purposes - When the war was first launched, the prospect that evidence of Saddam's weapons program might never be found was a cringe-worthy nightmare scenario. It was impossible to imagine that Colin Powell's UN powerpoint was...

A piece yesterday in the NYT about an ex-British diplomat who parted ways with his country's foreign service after testifying to intelligence lapses over Iraq's weapons program got me thinking: what would have happened if, two or three years ago, a chorus had arisen among the sitting military leadership,...

A fascinating thing to watch over the next few weeks and months will be the Congress, the media, the Administration, the military and the American public's evaluation of how the "surge" is going. Last week there was some qualified good news about the initial American sweeps of Baghdad going...

Congressional Democrats are enmeshed in a dilemma that became inevitable once they took over both chambers of Congress last November. At the time, I made the point that Congressional authority over foreign policy is limited, and that by losing sight of this Democrats would risk assuming the blame for...

If Congress is to derail President Bush's wayward plan to send more U.S. troops to Iraq, it must offer more than non-binding resolutions and bluster on the Senate floor. It must come up with a responsible and compelling alternative. As Bush challenged his critics last month, "My only call to...

In the aftermath of the most deadly bombing since the US-led occupation of Iraq began, President Bush praises the Iraqi government for professing to care to keep its citizens alive (not, mind you, for doing anything to further that end). He said:

"I appreciate the fact that the Iraqi...

I am not anything close to an expert on Iran, but like anyone else with an interest in how to rehabilitate US foreign policy, I've been reading and thinking more about this rising Persian power in recent months. Its pretty obvious that a resolution that reintegrates Iran into the international...

While the crux of Bush's argument for increasing US troops in Iraq is utterly unconvincing, he's made at least one point that is valid: those who oppose his plan ought to offer something in its stead. As he put it: "To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible."

Here are 10 fallacies I heard from the White House library tonight:

1. That the strategy is "new" - Bush referred directly to the "clear, hold and build" strategy promulgated in October 1995. At best, this is a course-correction which has unaccountably taken more than 15 months to be put...

It's a truism today that America's position as the world's superpower is shakier than it used to be. The nation's military is overstretched and unable to take on new commitment. And Washington has made little progress on urgent foreign policy objectives, including stabilizing Iraq, curbing Iran's and North Korea's nuclear...

After five days of ruminations and commentary, the prevailing feeling on the Iraq Study Group seems to be one of disappointment and a renewed sense of despair that the hoped-for silver bullet bipartisan solution failed to materialize.

The dashed expectations are twofold: 1) first off, as I lay out...