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America must not "dictate" to world, new defense chief says 2:01pm EST By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Decorated Vietnam veteran Chuck Hagel was sworn in as U.S. defense secretary on Wednesday after a bruising Senate confirmation battle, and promised to renew old U.S. alliances and forge new ones without attempting to "dictate" to the world. Addressing Pentagon employees shortly after a small, closed-door swearing-in ceremony, Hagel spoke optimistically, if vaguely, about global challenges ahead and the importance of American leadership abroad. "We can't dictate to the world. But we must engage the world. We must lead with our allies,"...

The FCO organizes press conferences like weddings, visitors on one side, hosts on the other, and inevitably the first question that came whistling from the British side of the aisle was about the Falklands’ planned March 10 to 11 referendum. Islanders will be asked, “Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an overseas territory of the United Kingdom?” That they will answer with a resounding “Yes!” is not in doubt. That’s the sort of enthusiasm Brits wanted from Kerry too. Instead they got this: Let me be very clear about our position with respect...

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward ripped into President Barack Obama on "Morning Joe" today, saying he's exhibiting a "kind of madness I haven't seen in a long time" for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns. "Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said. "Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need?'" Or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not...

Stipulating that foreign aid can be an important part of American foreign policy, and further that trade is an important component of U.S. foreign policy; Secretary of State John Kerry made two really important mistakes in his maiden speech, delivered to a fawning audience of American university students. The first was in the definition of America's challenges in the second decade of the 21st Century. Mr. Kerry posited: "Our challenge is to tame the worst impulses of globalization even as we harness its ability to spread information and possibility, to offer even the most remote place on Earth the same...

John Kerry invents country of Kyrzakhstan John Kerry has suffered his first gaffe as the new US secretary of state, inventing the nation of 'Kyrzakhstan' By Jonathan Earle, Moscow 11:36AM GMT 25 Feb 2013 In an embarrassing slip of the tongue, Mr Kerry last week praised US diplomats working to secure "democratic institutions" in the Central Asian country, which does not exist. The newly minted diplomat was referring to Kyrgyzstan, a poor, landlocked nation of 5.5 million, which he appeared to confuse with its resource-rich neighbour to the north, Kazakhstan. The State Department kindly omitted the error in the official...

When Hillary Clinton took office, much of the world had been alienated from the United States by the policies of the Bush administration. Expectations were high that President Obama's team would change the tone, and Clinton delivered. She put a glamorous, smart, politically astute face on American policy. Yet Clinton produced no diplomatic breakthroughs nor any new strategic doctrine. And when it comes to issues of war and peace - in the Mideast, South Asia, and North Asia - she leaves a minimal legacy.In large part, that's because policy-making was tightly controlled by the White House. It's hard to know...

Moscow Both Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister have lashed out at the West in recent days for pursuing what they regard as naive and incoherent Middle East policies. The critique targets Western backing of anti-dictator rebellions in Libya and Syria, which, as Mr. Putin tells it, only fuels the spreading flames of extreme Islamist insurrection, including the current war in Mali and last week's terrorist strike on a gas complex in Algeria. "The Syrian conflict has been raging for almost two years now. Upheaval in Libya, accompanied by the uncontrolled spread of weapons, contributed to the deterioration of the...

A U.S. Army brigade will begin sending small teams into as many as 35 African nations early next year, part of an intensifying Pentagon effort to train countries to battle extremists. The teams will be limited to training and equipping efforts, and won't be permitted to conduct military operations without specific, additional approval from the secretary of defense. The sharper focus on Africa by the U.S. comes against a backdrop of widespread insurgent violence across North Africa, and as the African Union and other nations discuss military intervention in northern Mali.

Egyptian lawyers today accused the Muslim Brotherhood of taking 10 billion Egyptian pounds (U.S. $1.5 billion) from the Obama Administration. Egypt’s Chief Public Prosecutor Talaat Ibrahim has ordered an investigation in an accusation against the Muslim Brotherhood of receiving 10 billion Egyptian pounds from the United States, asking for the sources of the Brotherhood’s money to be revealed. According to Aswat Masriya, the two plaintiffs claimed that the United States granted the Brotherhood the money illegally to back its interests in the region.

On Bill Maher's Friday night show, Daily Beast columnist Andrew Sullivan was practically spitting in S.E. Cupp’s face as he jabbed a finger at her. CNN contributor and Democratic strategist James Carville also reacted with open disgust. What did Ms. Cupp say that ignited the firestorm? Watch the video

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here is Romney burying Obama on the apology tour... ROMNEY: The president in his campaign some four years ago said he'd meet with all the world's worst actors in his first year. He'd sit down with Chavez and Kim Jong-il, with Castro and with president Ahmadinejad of Iran. I think they looked and thought, "Well, that's an unusual honor to receive from the president of the United States." And then the president began what I have called an apology tour, of going to various nations in the Middle East and criticizing America. I think they looked at...

Romney for President released a new television advertisement titled “Apology Tour.” After taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama went on an apology tour around the world. He even said that America had “dictated” to other nations. Last night Mitt Romney responded, “Mr. President, America doesn’t dictate to other nations; we have freed other nations from dictators.”

Yesterday, the President and Secretary of State of the United States of America went on Pakistani television to apologize. In a commercial containing clips from their Washington press conferences, subtitled in Urdu, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton said “sorry” to the mad hordes attacking the American embassy in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and deplored the infamous anti-Muslim14-minute YouTube video. “We absolutely reject its content and message,” said Clinton in the advertisements, which ended with the seal of the American embassy in Pakistan. U.S. taxpayers footed the bill for this high-level official apology to the tune of $70,000. This is...

This clip is a few days old but worth watching in its entirety. Appearing on “On the Record” with Greta Van Susteren Thursday night, Congressman Allen West (R-FL) explained why “it’s insane” for the Obama administration to base their entire foreign policy on the death of Osama bin Laden. Take a look: Allen West It's insane for Obama to promote killing Bin Laden as basis for his entire foreign Policy

Obama Record: Four Americans are killed in Libya, our consulate burned and our Egyptian embassy stormed on the anniversary of 9/11 after we apologize for a film allegedly "insulting to Islam." Arab Spring, Mr. President? Maybe President Obama shouldn't have skipped all those national intelligence briefings. The burning of our Libyan consulate in Benghazi, the murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others, including two U.S. Marines, and the storming of our embassy in Egypt after our diplomats apologized for a film made in the U.S. should show just who is the foreign policy novice in the 2012 presidential...

For the second time in as many weeks, the State Department has contradicted President Barack Obama, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton re-affirmed the apologetic stance disavowed earlier this evening by the White House in reacting to the storming of the U.S. embassy in Cairo by a mob of radical Egyptian Al Qaeda sympathizers on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Clinton's statements on the day's events, released through the State Department's website and Twitter feed, condemn "in the strongest possible terms" an attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya in Benghazi that left one American dead, but offer...

From aWhiteHouse official: "The President was informed of the Libya situation by NSA Donilon yesterday afternoon as he started his weekly meeting with the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The President was updated on both incidents several times throughout the evening and again this morning...The President was notified last night that Ambassador Stevens was unaccounted for and then notified again this morning about his tragic death."

The Obama administration is engulfed in a full-blown foreign policy crisis just two months before the presidential election with the two campaigns trading angry accusations over events in Libya, Egypt and Israel. Footage of the body of Christopher Stevens, United States ambassador to Libya, slung over the back of a protester, was reminiscent of the 1993 'Black Hawk Down' incident in Somalia in 1993 when militia fighters lynched American aircrew in the streets of Mogadishu. President Barack Obama's staff will also be mindful that a shadow was cast over Jimmy Carter's presidency by the Iranian hostage crisis after the US...

President Obama has a long track record of insulting the Poles. In 2010 he chose to play golf on the day of the funeral of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 senior officials who perished in the Smolensk air disaster. Eight months earlier he humiliated Warsaw by pulling out of the agreement over Third Site missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. And last night Barack Obama caused huge offence in Poland by referring to a Nazi death camp in Poland as “a Polish death camp” while awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom...

Obama is getting a lot of praise for his recent successes in foreign policy, particularly the new and clever doctrine of "leading from behind," which, we're assured, is superior to the practice of earlier presidents such as FDR and Harry Truman. Along with the usual left-liberal suspects we've heard from John McCain, who really should know better. (The latest on record is the great Geraldo Rivera, who paused from interviewing dolphins or whatever he's been doing lately to inform us that Obama has mastered the most "efficient" foreign policy of any president -- granted that "efficiency" is not the first...