Section: Foreign Policy (USA)
Rice Pudding
How you read U.S. President Barack Obama’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) will depend mostly on how you feel about the administration’s foreign policy to date. If you are an Obama admirer, you will see it as a reaffirmation of all the reasons you appreciate the president: his restraint, his prioritization of domestic issues, his...
Putin’s Peninsula Is a Lonely Island
SIMFEROPOL, Crimea — “Dear guests and residents of Crimea,” intoned the stern female voice of the airport announcer in Russian, as passengers from the most recent flight from Moscow waited in the baggage claim area, “Please, be aware that Ebola is a life-threatening disease with mortality rates of up to 90 percent. To receive more information...
Welcome to Obama Land
Since 2008, Barack Obama has struggled with how precisely to define his presidency. Was he the risk-ready transformer his base hoped for and his opponents feared? The hope-and-change candidate who promised to move beyond Washington’s partisan, shark-infested waters? Or was he the risk-averse transactor who by 2014 was talking more soberly...
FP’s Situation Report: White House urges patience on global crises; No drones for Jordan; U.S. Special Operators stay put in West Africa; and much more from around the world.
By David Francis with Sabine Muscat President Obama is urging “strategic patience” in confronting worldwide crises. Critics want the White House to move faster to quell violence and unrest in Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria. But according to President Barack Obama’s National Security Strategy, which will be unveiled today, a deliberate approach...
White House to Unveil Call for ‘Strategic Patience’
Critics of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy have for years assailed his administration for responding too slowly to crises ranging from Syria to Russia. In a far-reaching blueprint laying out the administration’s worldview, the White House on Friday will defend its deliberate approach and make clear that it intends to continue...
German Ambassador Warns Against Arming Ukraine
As the drumbeat for arming Ukraine grows louder in Washington, Germany’s top diplomat to the United States cautioned the West to consider the danger of inadvertently escalating the deadly crisis — and triggering a bigger showdown with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. “We don’t see how delivery of weapons would downplay the tensions,”...
The Other Front in Ukraine’s War for Survival
Brandishing a yellow hunk of metal from what he claimed was a public bus hit by a missile from pro-Russian separatists, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko made an emotional plea for western assistance during his speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos. His appeal didn’t go unnoticed. The increasing brutality of the war in eastern...
Europe’s Energy Independence Drive Goes off the Rails
A year ago, Russia’s lunge into Ukraine seemed to be focusing European minds on the dangers of depending on Moscow for their energy supplies, pushing countries across the continent to scramble onto the shale-gas bandwagon in a quest to copy U.S. success and move towards having the ability to produce all the energy they need on their own....
What Germany Owes Ukraine
In a state visit to Hungary on Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated what has become her mantra ever since Russian tanks, men, and materiel began pouring over the border into Ukraine last spring. “I am convinced that this conflict cannot be solved militarily,” the Queen of Europe, now entering her 10th year as the most powerful...
FP’s Situation Report: Iran covers for Syria’s use of chemical weapons; Washington wants help from Europe in Ukraine; Ashton Carter walks an easy path to a tough job; and much more from around the world.
By David Francis with Sabine Muscat Iran gives Syria cover on chemical weapons. The United States wants to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people. Iran is using a series of backchannel diplomatic maneuvers to protect him. FP’s Colum Lynch with the exclusive: “The latest sign of...
