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With rising unilateralism challenging its very existence, the United Nations convenes its annual meeting of world leaders Monday and will try once more to tackle problems together as a community of nations, addressing threats ranging from Mideast conflicts to the effects of global warming — and also encouraging the glimmer of hope over the nuclear standoff in North Korea. This year, 133 world leaders have signed up to attend the General Assembly session, a significant increase from last year’s 114. Secretary-General António Guterres called the expected large turnout “eloquent proof of the confidence of the international community in the United...

PENTAGON — Neither Russia nor Iraq warned the United States that cruise missiles had entered Iraqi airspace en route to Syria, a U.S. official told VOA. Russia said Wednesday that it used four warships in the Caspian Sea to launch rockets at Islamic State targets in Syria. Rockets fired from those ships would have traveled through Iraqi airspace, where U.S. and coalition pilots are conducting anti-Islamic State operations to help Iraqi and Peshmerga forces defeat the extremists. The official acknowledged to VOA that this is exactly the kind of action that could result in a mishap or misunderstanding.

President Obama’s foreign policy team is built around one key idea: the neglect of diplomacy by President Bush’s “cowboy” unilateralism has damaged American prestige, alienated our allies, and worsened our problems abroad, particularly with the Islamic jihadists. Thus the new administration will restore diplomacy to its rightful place, and its ambassadors and special envoys and the President himself will diplomatically engage our enemies––even Iran, the Taliban, and Hamas––in discussions whose goal will be to find peaceful solutions to the issues that divide their interests from ours. This narrative of “renewed vigor” and “a new beginning for American diplomacy,” as Time...

Church and state face similar issueshttp://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-76903 Sunday, August 06, 2006 Donald Nuechterlein Early in 2003, before the Pentagon launched the invasion of Iraq, American liberals chastised the Bush administration for ignoring the United Nations and world opinion by pursuing a unilateralist foreign policy on Iraq. When key allies -- France, Germany, Belgium, Canada and Turkey -- refused to join the U.S.-led intervention to oust Saddam Hussein's regime, the NATO alliance was seriously split on a major international issue. In the same year, the U.S. Episcopal Church incurred the wrath of its conservative members and opposition from the worldwide Anglican Communion...

WASHINGTON, July 29 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. Democratic Party criticized the administration of President George W. Bush on Saturday for failing to resolve the North Korean nuclear and missile problems. Delivering a radio address to outline his party's future diplomatic policy goals, Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, said the current impasse surrounding North Korea has the potential to become dangerous. He said that while the Bush administration has been arguing against bilateral talks with Pyongyang, the communist country has quadrupled its amount of weapons-grade plutonium. The politician, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill...

I'm getting damned tired of being made to feel like I have to defend the United States of America against accusations made by people from other countries who consistently prove themselves to be lacking in any respectability or honor whatsoever, and I think it's about time I expressed a few of my more contentious views concerning the "international community" in general. When this country and it's coalition partners first invaded Iraq some 21 months ago, the international press began a disinformation campaign of practically unparalleled proportions, designed specifically to turn world opinion against our efforts to root out and destroy...

The French are always happy to explain how things should be done, and they never lack for criticism of our progress in Iraq. I think it is worth noting, therefore, that the French are having problems of their own in Ivory Coast: France has ordered more troops to Ivory Coast to protect French citizens after nine French soldiers and a U.S. aid worker were killed in a government bombing raid and Ivory Coast troops fired on French forces. French President Jacques Chirac ordered the Ivory Coast planes involved in the Saturday airstrike destroyed and a defense source said French forces...

John Kerry has strongly criticized the Bush adminis tration for its "go it alone" — or unilateral — approach to foreign policy. For months, Kerry has claimed America has shouldered too much of the burden in Iraq by itself. He says he would have taken a multi-national — or multilateral — approach, bringing along more allies for the fight and the reconstruction afterwards. But after vehemently denouncing the Bush administration for being a cabal of foreign-policy unilateralists who needlessly alienate allies at every opportunity, Kerry took quite the unilateral tack himself — on North Korea. After singing the praises of...

US policies pose challenge for Communist Party A senior Central Party School official warns of a future for Chinese diplomacy that is fraught with conflict and friction By Jason Leow BEIJING - The Communist Party's 'serious test and challenge' in the coming years will be American unilateralism and its 'new interventionist ideology', a senior official at the Central Party School has warned. The party's legitimacy will also rest on how it keeps faith with socialist practices against the growing capitalist creed, Mr Yu Yunyao, the school's administrative vice-president, wrote in an official journal. In Outlook Weekly, a journal by the...

It is playing a key role in curbing and caging North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. It played a key role in disarming Libya, discovering and rolling up the Pakistani A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network, and has become a framework for international military and police exercises organized by the United States. Its membership includes most of the world's largest economic powers, most of the world's largest military powers, and most of the most influential states on earth. The United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Russia, the Netherlands, France, Australia and Germany are among its 15 member states, and it is one...

The Boston Fog ReportAn ongoing examination of John Kerry’s “nuances and shades of gray in both foreign and domestic policy.” (Editorial, “A Primary Endorsement,” The New York Times, 2/26/04)for·a·gainst adverb. 1. To be both for and against something at the same time: e.g. “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” (Glen Johnson, “Kerry Blasts Bush On Protecting Troops,” The Boston Globe, 3/17/04) "We welcome John Kerry's newfound support of the Bush Doctrine, a measure designed to protect Americans from threats abroad by confronting dangerous terrorists where they live and train before they attack...

’Preemption" is supposed to be the new slur. Its use now conjures up all sorts of Dr. Strangelove images to denigrate the present "trigger-happy" Bush administration. Partly the hysteria is due to the invasion of Iraq. Or perhaps the venom of the Left comes from recent disclosures that, in the post-9/11 era, the United States has publicly proclaimed it may strike terrorists and their sponsors — or indeed rogue nations who have the history, capability, and desire to obtain frightening weapons — before they strike us. But instead of a rational discussion about the wisdom and feasibility of that logical...

In just 12 weeks the world will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. That somber thought was on my mind as my friend, the distinguished African-American journalist Peter Noel, took me the other night for a tour of Harlem. We passed by Bill Clinton's office, and Peter told me how significant crowds, nearly all African-Americans, await the arrival most mornings of the man dubbed "America's first black president." That description – coined in 1998 by African-American Nobel laureate Toni Morrison – as well as the African-American rapture for Bill Clinton, is nothing short of astonishing. Calling Clinton...

Police commander Gonzalez Perez Garcia, in charge of security for a Spanish brigade, was shot in the forehead by terrorists while he was sitting in his car in the town of Diwaniyah in southern Iraq on Jan. 22. Garcia's injury was inflicted less than 48 hours after he, his country, and the soldiers of 33 other nations were insulted by the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives. "(The president) has pursued a go-it-alone foreign policy that leaves us isolated abroad..." said Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California in her response to the state of the union address. "He failed to...

I. A few weeks ago, I asked Howard Dean how, given his vehement opposition to the war in Iraq, he felt he could overcome the Democrats' reputation as the antiwar party. ''I think you're still in the old paradigm, which says that they're the party of strength and we're the party of weakness,'' Dean admonished me as I sat across from him on his campaign plane. The chaos in Iraq, he said, had upended the old stereotypes. In John F. Kennedy's day, Dean pointed out, the Democrats enjoyed the reputation as the party of resolution. ''I think this may be...

Schwarzenegger move blasted Top Dems strike at emergency move to backfill vehicle fee losses. SACRAMENTO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's unilateral move to provide a down payment on the $2.6 billion he promised local government brought down the wrath of several leading Democrats Thursday who accused him of jeopardizing the state's financial health and robbing the poor to help the rich. While Controller Steve Westly backed the governor and other Democrats hedged their positions, Treasurer Phil Angelides and Senate President Phil Burton went on the offensive against Schwarzenegger's decision to start cutting health and welfare programs to help fully fund local governments...

London protesters. Big bombs dropping in Iraq. More lectures about Guantanamo. Angst from the French and Russians. Kofi Annan miffed. Jimmy Carter back home writing novels. Wesley Clark alleging that America is the bully without the pulpit. Turkish crowds blaming us for a rash of fundamentalist terror. And always Bush, Bush, Bush the unilateralist. Is there no end to the calumny? American and European intellectuals think they can explain the current furor directed at the United States. In fact, they have fashioned a standard exegesis that goes back to the last decade or so of American foreign-policy efforts. Our supposed...

Restating the Case for War Waiting for Saddam to change is what got us into this mess in the first place. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2003, at 8:00 AM PT The following is a dense paragraph of apparent prescience that was first published in 1998: Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew...

Behind the Deception by William F. Jasper President Bush’s reversal from unilateralism to multilateralism was entirely predictable. He is merely following the internationalist principles that guide his administration. ‘‘Unilateralism!" "Cowboy diplomacy!" Clintonites and other denizens of the one-world Left had been using such expressions to vent their outrage over President George W. Bush’s foreign policy long before he launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the March 19 invasion of Iraq started a new round of hyperventilating by the fervid internationalist choir. The president was undoing the multilateralist world order set up after World War II, they wailed. He was scorning and...

<p>August 15, 2003 -- A NTIWAR or administration critics continue to lament (or rejoice) that only a "handful" of foreign troops are in or on their way to Iraq, thanks to the Bush administration's supposed "unilateralism." Yet there are already rather more foreign troops already in Iraq than most people realize.</p>