News Abroad

Turkey's Islamist Turn, Ten Years Later

by Daniel Pipes

Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.Is Turkey -- due to its size, location, economy and sophisticated Islamist ideology -- set to become the West's greatest problem in the Middle East?A tumultuous decade has passed since the Justice and Development Party was first elected to office on November 3, 2002. Almost unnoticed, the country exited the pro-Western era started by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) and entered the anti-Western era of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 1954).The 2002 election followed 10 years of back-and-forth between weak center-right and center-left governments. The 1990s also witnessed the country's first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, in power for a year before his ousting via a "soft" military coup in 1997. In retrospect, that period marked the interim between the death in April 1993 of Turgut Özal, the towering former prime minister and president, and Mr. Erdoğan's becoming prime minister in 2003.

This Veterans Day, Beware the Dangers of Robot War

by William Astore

Beyond Bayonets and Battleships

by Alfred W. McCoy

Artist's conception, circa 2008, of the U.S. Falcon Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle, an unmanned aircraft that will fly at an altitude of twenty miles and destroy targets almost anywhere in the world within an hour. Credit: DARPA.It’s 2025 and an American “triple canopy” of advanced surveillance and armed drones fills the heavens from the lower- to the exo-atmosphere. A wonder of the modern age, it can deliver its weaponry anywhere on the planet with staggering speed, knock out an enemy’s satellite communications system, or follow individuals biometrically for great distances. Along with the country’s advanced cyberwar capacity, it’s also the most sophisticated militarized information system ever created and an insurance policy for U.S. global dominion deep into the twenty-first century. It’s the future as the Pentagon imagines it; it’s under development; and Americans know nothing about it.

Israel Can Curb a Nuclear Iran

by Louis René Beres

Israeli Shavit missile. Credit: ISA/Wiki Commons.When, back in March of this year, he was interviewed on CBS's 60 Minutes, Meir Dagan, former chief of Israel's Mossad, stated: "The regime in Iran is a very rational one." Moments later, hedging a bit, Dagan admitted that it was "not exactly our rational." He then proceeded to hedge even further, indicating that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was "not exactly rational based on Western thinking."What, exactly, was Meir Dagan saying? Reduced to its bare essentials, his statement claimed only that Iran's leadership displays some form of "logical thinking." Nothing more.To be sure, there was literally nothing in his remarks to suggest that the regime in Tehran would consistently value collective survival as its highest goal.Such an omission was plainly significant. This is because the rationale of strategic deterrence must always rest upon a uniformly presumed preeminence of national self-preservation. By definition, where such a presumption is absent, there can be no traditional deterrence.

The Foreign Policy Case Against Barack Obama

by Walid Phares

Credit: Flickr/Wikimedia Commons.As Governor Romney and President Obama continue to debate foreign policy and national security, voters would be wise to evaluate the “Obama doctrine” against the current combustible state of affairs that it has led to in the Greater Middle East. In less than four years, the Obama administration’s policies have transformed the region into a powder keg with a hairpin detonator that could be set off by the slightest diplomatic misstep, engulfing the region and the world in war. And, as if an economy on the brink wasn’t daunting enough, the current administration’s feckless diplomacy in the Arab world have begotten a near-impossible foreign policy conundrum that Mitt Romney will be forced to attend to from the moment he is sworn in as the forty-fifth president of the United States.In order to help voters see clearly where unfolding events in the region are headed, I have summarized the salient facts and provided a brief analysis below.

The U.S. *Has* Pulled Off Successful Embassy Rescues Before

by Timothy R. Furnish

U.S. and RVN personnel in front of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, January 31, 1968. Credit: U.S. Army.What President Obama knew about the attacks on our consulate in Benghazi, when he knew it, and whether he withheld military assistance to the besieged staff there -- an allegation denied by administration spokesmen -- has now become a political football in this presidentital election, rivaled only by the ongoing anguish caused by Hurricane Sandy.

Ninety-Five Years Since the Balfour Declaration

by Daniel Mandel

Lord Balfour and his declaration. Credit: Wikimedia CommonsA mere sixty-eight words helped alter the course of history. Ninety-five years ago (as of November 2), the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James, Lord Balfour, sent the following communication to Walter, Lord Rothschild, one of the most prominent Jews in England, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland:His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Big Maps, Big Dreams, and the Failure of the Obama Doctrine

by Nick Turse

General Miles Dempsey (arms crossed) leads a "strategic seminar" at Quantico. Credit: D. Myles Cullen/Department of Defense. They looked like a gang of geriatric giants. Clad in smart casual attire -- dress shirts, sweaters, and jeans -- and incongruous blue hospital booties, they strode around “the world,” stopping to stroke their chins and ponder this or that potential crisis. Among them was General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a button-down shirt and jeans, without a medal or a ribbon in sight, his arms crossed, his gaze fixed. He had one foot planted firmly in Russia, the other partly in Kazakhstan, and yet the general hadn’t left the friendly confines of Virginia.

Why the Only Solution is the Two-State Solution

by Asher Susser

A bombed-out Egged bus in 2009. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Face/Off: The Last 2012 Presidential Debate

by Timothy R. Furnish

Credit: Flickr/Neon Tommy.On Monday night, October 22, President Obama and Governor Romney squared off in the final debate of the 2012 presidential election season. The moderator was CBS’s Bob Schieffer, and the scheduled sole topic of foreign policy was more than once pushed aside as both candidates tried to reinforce their domestic affairs message. But in toto this was a well-refereed debate and a valuable window into the geopolitical thinking of the current president of the United States and his challenger.

Sham Debates and Endless War

by William Astore

U.S. Army soldiers at a checkpoint near the Afghan-Pakistani border. Credit: U.S. Army.Here's something I'd like to see this campaign season: our two major party candidates debating our wars rather than ignoring them. Both President Obama and Governor Romney prefer to praise the troops rather than to address the tragic consequences of continuing military action in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The latter, when they're addressed at all, are reduced to sound bites and homilies about the need to "stay the course" and "support our troops."

What Would a Mitt Romney Foreign Policy Look Like?

by Timothy R. Furnish

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan at a rally in Lancaster, Ohio. Credit: Flickr/Robert Batina.Massachusetts governor and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave a foreign policy-centric address at the Virginia Military Institute [VMI] on October 8; his running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan, opined at some length -- when Vice-President Joe Biden would let him speak -- on foreign policy during the VP debate on October 11. While the Romney-Ryan positions on international affairs are spelled out on the campaign website, getting the information straight from the elephants’ mouths can often prove more enlightening -- and taken together, these two public addresses provide evidence of potentially surprising strengths, as well as troubling weaknesses, should these two men win next month.

Foreign Policy and Original Intent: The Powers of the President

by Ray Raphael

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, Howard Chandler Christy, 1940.Would President Romney or President Obama take us to war with Iran or Syria?Not if Charles Pinckney, a South Carolina delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, has anything to say about it. The first speaker to address the question of an independent executive at that momentous gathering, Pinckney proclaimed he was fervently in favor of a “vigorous Executive,” but not with powers that extended “to peace & war &c.” That, he feared, “would render the Executive a monarchy, of the worst kind, to wit an elective one.”

Local Governments and National Security Policy

by Lawrence S. Wittner

Sign in Berkeley, California proclaiming the city to be a nuclear-free zone. Credit: Flickr/dotpolka.Can local governments influence national security policy? Congress has the power to appropriate funds for military purposes and to declare war. But local governments sometimes have something to say about this -- especially when national policy has significant effects upon them.In recent years, as Congress has poured trillions of dollars into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and into an escalating Pentagon budget, well over half of U.S. federal discretionary spending has been devoted to funding the U.S. military. Meanwhile, federal spending on domestic programs has been sharply curtailed, leaving many cities, counties, and states hard-pressed to cover the costs of education, housing, health care, parks, and other social services.

The Vietnam War as You've Never Seen It ... From Hanoi: Interview with Lien-Hang Nguyen

by David Austin Walsh

North Vietnamese First Secretary Le Duan and Prime Minister Pham Van Dong in Hanoi in 1969.Few historians can can claim that their first book was met with near-universal acclaim, received prestigious national prizes, an offer to write an op-ed for the New York Times, and an invitation to speak at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

Overwrought Empire

by Tom Engelhardt

General Miles Dempsey (arms crossed) leads a "strategic seminar" at Quantico. Credit: D. Myles Cullen/Department of Defense. Americans lived in a “victory culture” for much of the twentieth century.  You could say that we experienced an almost 75-year stretch of triumphalism -- think of it as the real “American Century” -- from World War I to the end of the Cold War, with time off for a destructive stalemate in Korea and a defeat in Vietnam too shocking to absorb or shake off.

A Policy Lesson from Reagan for Obama and Romney

by William Lambers

U.S President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev at the Hofdi House in Reykjavik, Iceland on October 11, 1986, during the Reykjavik Summit. Credit: Flickr/CTBTO/Ronald Reagan Library.When President Obama and candidate Mitt Romney take to the stage for a foreign policy debate on October 22, nuclear weapons are sure to come up, especially Iran's ambitions for the Bomb. But the debate should also focus on the countries that actually have nukes, including Russia, China, North Korea, and rivals India and Pakistan.As President Eisenhower once said, nuclear weapons are the only thing that can destroy the United States. Americans will want to hear how the next president plans to control the thousands of nuclear weapons that exist around the world.

Why Aren’t We More Worried About Pandemics?

by Jonathan Gifford

Soldiers from Fort Riley, Kansas, in a hospital ward ill with Spanish Flu. Credit: U.S. Army/Wikimedia Commons.

Post-Mortem on the Muhammad Protests

by Daniel Pipes

Islamic flag at a protest outside the U.S. embassy in Qatar, September 14, 2012. Credit: Flickr/Omar Chatriwala.As Muslim crowds dissipate and American diplomatic missions return to normal activities, here are three final thoughts on the riots that began this Sept. 11 and killed about thirty:

Protests in the Muslim World Aren't About Hatred -- They're About Dignity

by Maurice Jr. M. Labelle

Protest march in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on September 24. Credit: Flickr/vikalpasl.Nakoula Basseley Nakoula’s derogatory and hateful movie trailer, Innocence of Muslims, has generated much discussion in both the United States and the Muslim world at large, and rightfully so. The YouTube clip blatantly demeans Islam, the Prophet Mohammad, and Muslims. In both the United States and the Muslim world, the disgraceful video and proceeding violence have been predominantly denounced non grata.But Muslim protests against Nakoula’s production have continued. And to the bewilderment, disappointment, and even irritation of many Americans, so did those against Washington, in spite of its clear non-involvement in the production of the offensive film.