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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had a clear and unified message coming out of their meeting in Washington, D.C. Monday: They are looking for a political solution in Syria and won't consider putting international troops there unless the Syrian regime agrees. Clinton and Davotoglu spent the afternoon preparing for the upcoming inaugural meeting of the "Friends of Syria" group this weekend in Tunisia. Following the meeting, they both urged the international community to support the Arab League's recommendations for Syria following their Sunday meeting in Cairo, which included a request for a U.N.-Arab peacekeeping...

History shows that world orders, including our own, are transient. They rise and fall, and the institutions they erect, the beliefs and "norms" that guide them, the economic systems they support—they rise and fall, too. The downfall of the Roman Empire brought an end not just to Roman rule but to Roman government and law and to an entire economic system stretching from Northern Europe to North Africa. Culture, the arts, even progress in science and technology, were set back for centuries. Modern history has followed a similar pattern. After the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, British control...

BBC World Have Your Say just came on. A very angry Syrian man was being interviewed by the beeb. Rockets were falling very close to his position. He was screaming for help from the world. Then he said (and I'm paraphrasing, but this is pretty close), "Where is America? America is supposed to be the defender of humanity! Where is America?" While I'm happy that the guy has such a high opinion of us, I wonder whether he would feel the same way after *we* win his freedom for him, which is to say he'd be burning the US flag...

President Barack Obama, in a bid to reconcile with the Teheran regime, has blocked legislation that would hold Iran accountable for the Hizbullah bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marines in 1983.

Hundreds of angry Libyans on Saturday stormed the transitional government's headquarters in the eastern city of Benghazi, carting off computers, chairs, and desks while the country's interim leader was still holed up in the building. Libyans have grown increasingly frustrated with the pace and direction of reforms in the country more than three months after the end of the civil war that ousted longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Those concerns spurred residents in Benghazi, where the uprising against longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi broke out in February, to begin protests nearly two weeks ago to demand transparency and justice from the country's...

Washington (CNN) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is acknowledging publicly the key role a Pakistani doctor who assisted the United States ahead of the strike on Osama bin Laden's compound last May that killed the terrorism mastermind. The doctor who provided key information ought to be released, Panetta told CBS's "60 Minutes" in a segment set to air Sunday. "I'm very concerned about what the Pakistanis did with this individual," Panetta told CBS. "This was an individual who in fact helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation. And he was not in any way...

(MEMRI) — Yassir Al-Burhami: Appointing infidels to positions of authority over Muslims is prohibited. Allah said: “Never will Allah grant the infidels a way [to triumph] over the Believers.” We are not afraid of losing the elections or of not getting votes. We are not trying to ingratiate ourselves before the people. Can the Christians of Egypt be compared to the Jews of Al-Medina? The case of the Jews of Al-Medina is one example of the relations between the Muslims and the infidels. The Muslims can implement any form of conduct used by the Prophet Muhammad. When the Prophet Muhammad...

There are few things the liberal media like more than a Republican renegade. David Stockman has made a career out of strutting his independence from the GOP. So little surprise that he was an honored guest on this morning's Up With Chris Hayes on MSNBC. That Stockman repaid his hosts by attacking Republicans was utterly predictable. Even so, the absurdity of Stockman's particular assertion was breathtaking. The former Reagan budget director actually claimed that the notion of American exceptionalism, a focus of Newt Gingrich's campaign, is nothing less than . . . "neo-con code" for an aggressive foreign policy. View...

Obama administration officials would not confirm whether President Obama called for direct talks with Iran, after an Iranian lawmaker claimed Wednesday that the president floated the proposal in a secret letter to the Islamic Republic's supreme leader. The White House acknowledged the letter and reiterated that the door remains open for Iran to return to international talks over its nuclear program. "It remains available to Iran to this day," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, adding that the U.S. position has not changed. But he did not confirm whether the president called for direct talks. The letter also warned...

Former US ambassador to the United Nations on Wednesday blasted President Barack Obama's sanctions-driven approach to curtailing Iran's nuclear ambitions in an op-ed he wrote for USA Today. “A nuclear armed Iran will be his most lasting legacy,” Bolton – a long-established proponent of a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear program – wrote of Obama. "Sanctions have long been touted as the answer, but they are not," Bolton explained. "Sadly, we have been behind the curve for years, and recent Obama administration claims about slowing Tehran down are little more than re-election propaganda." Noting that Iran's alliances with China, Cuba,...

Like most Americans, I began thinking about presidential candidates by determining their views on the issues that I cared about the most. Due to my immigrant Muslim-American identity, I was chiefly concerned with social values and foreign policy. But I found it increasingly difficult to choose between the Republicans and the Democrats. Insofar as the Republicans championed conservative social values, I was attracted to their leadership, and, insofar as the Democrats challenged a hawkish foreign policy, I gravitated towards them. However, when I thought primarily as an American, rather than a Muslim or a humanitarian, I turned Republican because the...

Jon Huntsman has halted his campaign for president, leaving Romney the only serious choice on foreign policy.

The 2012 presidential election is in full swing. The Republicans have lined up to vote for whomever they think shares their values and will beat Barack Obama. There is a large segment of the Republican base known as social conservatives and the “Religious Right.” Often these Christian voters focus on issues like abortion, gay marriage, prayer in schools, etc. However, Christians should also focus on more foreign policy issues, like war and peace, international development, and conflict zones. Christian ethics necessarily means that they have to reject certain international relations concepts, like realism and isolationism. Realism holds that all that...

Ron Paul: The Perfect Storm If you talk to his supporters, you will hear that Ron Paul is the only man who can save our Republic, he is the only candidate who understands the Constitution, and that he is the only one who will fight wasteful government spending and save us from economic catastrophe. I beg to differ. Up until this year, Ron Paul was considered by most as the affable Dennis Kucinich of the Republican Party. He was simply the eccentric uncle whom everyone liked, but never took very seriously. He had some ideas that appealed to the base...

About the only people having a Happy New Year in the Muslim world aren't the Christians who are huddling and waiting out the storm, but the Islamists who use a different calendar but are having the best time of their lives since the last Caliphate. The news that the Obama Administration has brought in genocidal Muslim Brotherhood honcho Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to discuss terms of surrender for the transfer of Afghanistan to the Taliban caps a year in which the Brotherhood and the Salafists are looking up carve up Egypt, the Islamists won Tunisia's elections, Turkey's Islamist AKP Party purged the...

The U.S. is considering a proposal to transfer a top Taliban commander out of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as part of a potential step toward peace talks with the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. A senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that Mullah Mohammed Fazl is among the prisoners being considered for release. Held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, Fazl was suspected in sectarian killings of Shiite Muslims before the U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001. The U.S. alleges he was a top Taliban official who at one point commanded thousands of troops...WikiLeaks...

The foreign policy crisis horizon shows little respect for the calendar New Year: The Obama Administration ought to have a pretty good idea of the crises that await it in different global hotspots as it braces for election year, 2012. But a recurring theme in the current menu of challenges, whether in the Middle East, north or south Asia, Africa or Europe, is the declining leverage available to Washington to shape favorable outcomes. President Obama's reelection prospects may be in part shaped by events from America's shores, and yet in most cases the outcome of those events will be determined...

DAVENPORT, Iowa – Newt Gingrich saw the enemy Monday, and his name was Ron Paul. Without speaking Paul’s name, Gingrich took dead aim at the Texas congressman who’s crept up in state polls as he’s started to tumble, and is looking increasingly likely to run strong in the caucuses. Focusing on their foreign policy differences, Gingrich painted Paul as unprepared for the presidency and a threat to American safety. “I will stand apart from some of our candidates and believe we need a strong defense, we need a fairly modernized intelligence community,” Gingrich said during a five-minute opening statement. “I...

Much has been said against Ron Paul's foreign policy. He has been accused of anti-Semitism, of living in a pre-technological past, and of using moral equivalency arguments to critique America's unwillingness to "mind its own business," in effect blaming the U.S. for September 11th. Whatever truth there may be in some of these criticisms of Paul's position -- and I have previously expressed sympathy with one or two of them (though not the anti-Semitism) -- the December 15 debate in Iowa exposed a deeper concern with Paul's foreign policy: unbelievable ignorance. Herman Cain took a lot of heat from conservatives...

Ask any conservative about Ron Paul and you will usually hear the following statement: "I love him on fiscal policy but his foreign policy is naive and dangerous." You can also throw in the obligatory "He hates Israel." If someone had asked me about Paul from 9/12/01 through October of 2011, I'd have said the exact same things. Something about my certitude always felt a bit uncomfortable, though, because I admired the "good parts" of Ron Paul (and later, his son Rand). Having participated in the Tea Party movement since its inception, and then witnessing the phony propaganda concocted to...

In sum, US interests are, paradoxically, very well served in the current scenario if sectarian tensions escalate in Afghanistan and Western troops become the only really credible provider of security. That is to say, any number of forces could be interested in indirectly buttressing the US's regional strategies. Ironically, on Tuesday, in faraway London, Afghan Minister for Mines Wahidullah Shahrani announced that Karzai's government had for the first time invited bids to develop gold mines and copper mines. The London Times duly noted, "Invaders since Alexander the Great have dreamt of exploiting its mineral wealth. Now Afghanistan is seeking foreign...

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) Dec 8 - With the European debt crisis dominating the news and threatening to pull the world into a double-dip recession, there are growing calls for Uncle Sam to come to the rescue. The U.S. is already committing untold billions to the $1.4 trillion European bailout fund, but that's not enough, according to some European leaders and even U.S. politicians. They say that while the EU bailout is costly, it's also necessary. They are only right about the cost. These endless bailouts are not only unnecessary, but are in fact...

There is a revolution going on in America. But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests. Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil, and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United States, due to revolutionary methods of exploration and exploitation such as fracking and horizontal drilling. Current prices of over $100 a barrel make even complex efforts at recovery enormously profitable. There were always known to be additional untapped reserves of oil and gas in the petroleum-rich Gulf of Mexico, off America’s shores, and in the American West and Alaska....

When the Japanese fighters and bombers passed like shadows over the waters of Hawaii, they carried more than bombs and bullets, their fleeting shadows marked the end of over a century of security. The last time an enemy army threatened American territory was in the early nineteenth century, since then the closest thing had been the vicious clowning of Pancho Villa. But in the nineteenth century Commodore Perry had come calling to end Japan's isolation and nearly ninety years later, the Japanese warplanes came to end America's isolation. That isolation had been crumbling throughout the twentieth century as presidents began...

U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said Thursday that Washington has been fully cooperating with Israel when it comes to the Iran and its nuclear program. "There is no issue that we coordinate more closely than on Iran," Shapiro said during a briefing to reporters in Tel Aviv. Shapiro's comments come against the backdrop of uncertainty regarding the U.S.-Israeli coordination on a possible strike on Iran.

Link only: http://detnews.com/article/20111129/POLITICS03/111290386/Embattled-Cain-focuses-on-security-in-Hillsdale

CAIN’S VISION FOR FOREIGN POLICY & NATIONAL SECURITY The Americas Mexico: Friend and Partner Mexico is a friend in need. Our southern neighbor is struggling with drug-related violence that has claimed an estimated 40,000 lives over the past several years. By standing with Mexico now to help it solve its increasingly severe economic and security problems, we will help solve the problem of illegal immigration at home. Some 40% of Mexicans believe Mexico is a failed state. This helps explain why so many are seeking to emigrate. With declining oil reserves, a looming water shortage in Mexico City, and youth...

One of the digs at Ronald Reagan before he was president was that he lacked a keen grasp of foreign policy. The former actor and California governor had never had to grapple with those questions firsthand. Surely, critics argued, he couldn’t match the abilities of people with real-world experience like George H.W. Bush or John Connally. Once in office, Reagan demonstrated that principle and vision could more than make up for inexperience. He had a good plan and stuck to it; the rest was just a matter of details. Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is taking a page from the...

Abd al-Hakim Belhaj, the commander of Tripoli's Military Council who spearheaded the attack on Muammar al-Qaddafi's compound at Bab al-Aziziya, is raising red flags in the West. Belhaj, whom I met and interviewed in March 2010 in Tripoli along with Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi, is better known in the jihadi world as "Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq." He is the former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a jihad organization with historical links to al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Egyptian al-Jihad organization. Does his prominent role mean that jihadists are set to exploit the fall of Qaddafi's regime? Established in...

"Exiled Libyans with connections to Al Qaeda are racing to find ways to send people home, in hope of steering the anti-Gaddafi revolt in a radical Islamist direction, according to several senior Afghan Taliban sources in contact with Al-Qaeda.“This rebellion is the fresh breeze they’ve been waiting years for,” says an Afghan Taliban operative who helps facilitate the movement of Al Qaeda militants between the tribal area and Pakistani cities. “Some say they are ready to go back at this critical moment.” The operative, who has just returned from Pakistan’s lawless tribal area on the Afghanistan border, adds: “They realize...

I can’t tell if he’s joking or not, which is a recurring theme lately in some of his pronouncements about foreign policy. He was joking, I think, when he said he’d offered to make Kissinger secretary of state again. He wasn’t joking, I thought, when he answered a question about whether his grasp of foreign policy is too slight with “9-9-9,� although the Standard’s John McCormack theorized last night on Twitter that maybe he was actually saying, “Nein, nein, nein,� in which case he was joking. The fact that we’ve reached the point where no answer is too goofy to...

Saturday’s Republican foreign-policy debate yielded only one revelation, neither comforting nor productive: When it comes to international affairs, most of the contenders offer plenty of political theater and little substance. First there are the “know nothing” candidates, who struggle to produce a one-minute debate answer. They fear straying from conventional Republican foreign-policy talking points because they know nothing about foreign policy and merely aspire to keep afloat in the debate. Rick Perry and Herman Cain duked it out to see who is captain of the Know Nothing team. Who was more unimpressive? It was a close call. Perry couldn’t spit...

The New York Times‘ Thomas Friedman told The McLaughlin Group host John McLaughlin that he gives President Barack Obama high marks… for following through on a certain previous president’s foreign policy plans. Can you guess whose? Said Friedman: I’d give Obama high marks for fulfilling Bush’s foreign policy. I think he’s been very good at executing Bush’s foreign policy, particularly the war on terrorism. Been very focused. He’s I think brought power to bear in a very smart way. He’s gotten the people he needed getting. In terms of his own foreign policy, I’d agree with Mort. I think it’s...

For the second time in four days, the GOP presidential candidates took the stage for a debate. This one focused exclusively on foreign policy and national security. The first hour aired live on the CBS network. The final half hour was only available online and the CBS feed was lousy for the first 15 minutes of that. So, most viewers only paid attention to the first hour. This recap covers the entire debate. Here is a look at how each candidate fared, along with winners and losers: Michele Bachmann: Once again, the Minnesota congresswoman was in command on the issues...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech justifying Obama Administration Middle East policy changes everything. True, it isn’t surprising. I’ve been writing for almost three years about how the current U.S. government thinks these things. Do not underestimate this speech’s importance. It isn’t a reluctant acceptance that Islamists might win elections and take over countries. It is an enthusiastic endorsement of that idea. But now there can be no doubt that Obama’s Middle East policy is engaged in what might be the biggest blunder in the history of U.S. foreign policy. Millions of people will bemoan it as delivering their countries...

In a New York Times Op-Ed, international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith describes a meeting he had in Pakistan with residents from the Afghan-Pakistani border region that has been relentlessly bombed by American drones; if I had one political wish this week, it would be that everyone who supports (or acquiesces to) President Obama’s wildly accelerated drone attacks would read this:

Can you imagine this? The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood lied! And can you imagine this: the two civilians who are Egypt’s greatest hope for avoiding an Islamist dictatorship are very worried. Let’s start with the Brotherhood. First, it promised to run candidates for only one-third of the parliamentary seats, saying this would proof of its moderation and willingness to share power. But a little later, it raised that number to 50 percent but said that’s all and they wouldn’t run a candidate for president. Again, we were told: they’re moderate! Next, it created a front party to run a candidate for...

Many Herman Cain supporters view the upcoming election through a narrow prism focused on repairing the economy, and they believe that the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza is just the man to accomplish that feat. Ironically, these are many of the same people who criticized the electorate for voting for a man whose only real job was community organizing and whose resume could fit on the back of a postage stamp. In a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 61% of respondents said they approve of the way that President Obama is handling the war on terror. This is not...

In August, consultant and former Navy officer J.D. Gordon was ready to launch a new foreign policy and national security think tank called the Center for Security and Diplomacy...and then he got a call from Herman Cain. "We were a few days away from making CSD's website public. Now most of the think tank is being absorbed by the Cain campaign," Gordon told The Cable in an interview. The Cain team saw Gordon on one of his many Fox News appearances, where he served as an expert commentator. He joined the campaign on Sept. 1 as the vice president...

In August, consultant and former Navy officer J.D. Gordon was ready to launch a new foreign policy and national security think tank called the Center for Security and Diplomacy...and then he got a call from Herman Cain. "We were a few days away from making CSD's website public. Now most of the think thank is being absorbed by the Cain campaign," Gordon told The Cable in an interview. Now, about two months into his time with Cain, Gordon is leading the expansion of the campaign's national security infrastructure, drawing heavily from the think tank he had been developing before Cain...

Almost every day, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is handed a one-page briefing from his chief foreign policy adviser on news from around the world. It’s one of several things his campaign says the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO, who has never held elective office before, is now doing to bone up on foreign policy — especially as he faces a big test in November at a GOP debate on national security issues. “He’s really getting up to speed a lot more so than people give him credit for,” J.D. Gordon, Cain’s foreign policy and national security adviser who prepares the...

Across a vast expanse of the Muslim world, from Tunisia to Pakistan, the forces of Islam are rising. Tunisian voters have given the Al Nahda (Muslim Brotherhood) party a dominant position in the national assembly that will write the country’s new constitution. In Libya, Chairman of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, has declared he seeks to make Islamic law the basis for legislation.In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood campaigns under the slogan, “Islam is the Solution” as Coptic Christians face the worst persecution in decades. ...Here at home, the Obama administration’s Justice Department has launched a campaign to extirpate...

President Barack Obama delivered on another foreign policy promise on Friday with plans to pull the last U.S. troops from Iraq. But in a re-election campaign all about the weak U.S. economy, he may not get much credit. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi -- these are all dead U.S. opponents that Democrat Obama can claim a measure of credit for getting. Now add to that Obama's announcement on Friday that the eight-year war in Iraq is ending, fulfilling a campaign goal he made in 2008 when he declared the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama sought on Saturday to cast himself as a strong leader on foreign policy, highlighting a U.S. pullout from Iraq and the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as success stories. In a message Obama is likely to push in his 2012 re-election campaign, he said his leadership had made it possible to turn the page on a decade of war and refocus on bolstering the U.S. economy and paying down the national debt. Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address that Gaddafi's death and the announcement that all U.S. troops would be...

It took me a couple of hours of reading, cogitation, and regurgitation to critique Mitt Romney's foreign policy positions. Clearly, I didn't think it was perfect, or even all that good in many places. But, I had to assess it, mull over the content... you know, think. Now, I desperately want to be an equal opportunity blogger, and at this point Herman Cain appears to be the co-frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination. Sure, I've had my fun with him in the past, and he has no shortage of foreign policy gaffes, but I figured that impromptu utterances during debates...

Unicorns are beautiful, make-believe creatures. But despite overwhelming evidence of their fantastical nature, many people still believe in them. Much of America's China policy is also underpinned by belief in the fantastical: in this case, soothing but logically inconsistent ideas. But unlike with unicorns, the United States' China-policy excursions into the realm of make-believe could be dangerous. Crafting a better China policy requires us to identify what is imaginary in U.S. thinking about China. Author James Mann captures some in his book, The China Fantasy. Here are my own top 10 China-policy unicorns:

We (Fox) caught up with GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain and asked him questions direct from you. Hear what he had to say about illegal immigration, his '999' plan, foreign policy and more...

GOFFSTOWN, N.H.–Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul condemned the U.S.-backed killing of al Qaeda figure and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul greets guests at a house party Thursday, Sept. 29, 2011 in Derry, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole) “Nobody knows if he ever killed anybody,” Mr. Paul said after a breakfast at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics. “If the American people accept this blindly and casually…I think that’s sad.”Mr. Awlaki, accused by the U.S. of planning al Qaeda attacks on U.S. citizens and recruiting terrorists, has been a longtime target of the U.S.

There is something almost touching in the American tendency towards naiveté in looking at the larger world. Almost, but not quite. We often believe that our adversaries, particularly in the Muslim and Third worlds, are not really our adversaries–or perhaps they might yet be brought to see the benign logic in our positions. Yet this credulity often has very baleful consequences in blood and treasure, as we will see here....

It is not actually his region. Still, with the arrogance that is so characteristic of his behavior in matters he knows little about (which is a lot of matters), he entered the region as if in a triumphal march. But it wasn’t the power and sway of America that he was representing in Turkey and in Egypt. For the fact is that he has not much respect for these representations of the United States. In the mind of President Obama, in fact, these are what have wreaked havoc with our country’s standing in the world. So what—or, rather, who—does he...