Section: The Atlantic (USA)
The Middle East Is Unraveling—and Obama Offers Words
Anti-government protesters pray at Tahrir Square in Cairo. Amr Dalsh / ReutersJeffrey Goldberg has conducted the most extensive autopsy of President Obama’s foreign policy—and revealed that it is based on the doctrine that the best leader is the one who leads the least, and contemplates and talks the most. Obama is an impressive wordsmith....
Obama’s Biggest Bet
Jonathan Ernst / ReutersThe title of Jeffery Goldberg’s very fine essay notwithstanding, there is no Obama Doctrine. Indeed, over the course of his on-the-job education in statecraft, President Obama has developed a pronounced aversion to doctrines—grand statements of principle that subsequently provide an enduring basis for policy. Such,...
Obama Is Not a Realist
A man waits for the arrival of President Obama in Nairobi, Kenya. Noor Khamis / ReutersTeaching U.S. foreign policy at Stanford, I had been waiting for a piece like “The Obama Doctrine” for seven long years. Missing among reams of adulation and vituperation directed at the president was an intimate, yet dispassionate look like Jeffrey...
One President’s Stand Against the Washington Herd
Reuters / Pete Souza / White HouseIn October 2007, Senator Barack Obama, then a struggling Democratic presidential candidate, stood before a few hundred students at DePaul University in Chicago and delivered a speech that few in the foreign-policy world noticed. Five years after his famous statement against the disastrous Iraq invasion, Obama...
The Obama Doctrine
Ruven AfanadorFriday, August 30, 2013, the day the feckless Barack Obama brought to a premature end America’s reign as the world’s sole indispensable superpower—or, alternatively, the day the sagacious Barack Obama peered into the Middle Eastern abyss and stepped back from the consuming void—began with a thundering speech given on...
The Edge: Mitt Romney: Trump is a Loser
Jim Urquhart / ReutersToday in One Paragraph The Republican presidential candidates will debate tonight at 9 p.m. ET in Detroit. Hours before the candidates line up on the stage, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney publicly denounced Donald Trump, calling him a “phony.” President Obama visited Wisconsin where he praised the...
The Atlantic Daily: Refugee Crisis, GOP vs. GOP, EPA and SCOTUS
Alexandros Avramidis / ReutersWhat We’re Following: A Sobering Warning From Europe Donald Tusk, the European Council’s president, warned would-be economic illegal migrants against making the life-threatening journey to European countries. “It is all for nothing,” he said. The plea comes as Europe is struggling with the influx of more...
Facebook Is Making a Map of Everyone in the World
Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Mobile World Congress on Sunday in Barcelona. Albert Gea / ReutersAmericans inhabit an intricately mapped world. Type “Burger King” into an online box, and Google will cough up a dozen nearby options, each keyed to a precise latitude and longitude. But throughout much of the world, local knowledge stays local. While...
Dominican Baseball and Black-Market Lapel Pins: The Week in Global-Affairs Writing
Boys practice baseball at a park in Guerra, Dominican Republic. ReutersPropagandalands Peter Pomerantsev | Granta “The activists behind their laptops seemed as big as ministries; mythological fiends from Twitter as real as tanks. The borders between Russia and Ukraine, between past and present, between soldier and civilian, rumour and evidence,...
Preparing for the Collapse of the Saudi Kingdom
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. ReutersFor half a century, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been the linchpin of U.S. Mideast policy. A guaranteed supply of oil has bought a guaranteed supply of security. Ignoring autocratic practices and the export of Wahhabi extremism,...
