The Standoff in Ukraine (and also in Washington)

Posted by on Mar 8, 2014 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe, US Foreign Policy | 1 comment As the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance, U.S. politicians from both parties have been scrambling to take advantage of the crisis. Republicans in Congress have slammed President Barack Obama for his “trembling inaction.” Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has revived the hawkish approach of her pre-secretary of state years by comparing Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s actions to Hitler’s. With...
read more

Ukraine: The Clash of Partnerships

Posted by on Mar 5, 2014 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments The Cold War is history. For those growing up today, the Cold War is as distant in time as World War II was for those came of age in the 1970s. In both cases, empires collapsed and maps were redrawn. Repugnant ideologies were laid bare and then laid to rest, though patches of nostalgia persist. Surely the Cold War has been consigned to the textbooks as irrevocably as the Battle of the Bulge. The...
read more

Ukraine: Out of the Frying Pan

Posted by on Feb 26, 2014 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe, US Foreign Policy | 2 comments In the end, the street triumphed over the elite. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych tried to hang on to power, and failed. Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to maintain Russian influence, and failed. The EU tried to mediate, and failed. And the United States tried to…well, I’ll get to that in a moment. Over the weekend, the Maidan movement in Kiev rejected the agreement reached...
read more

The Scandal of Syria

Posted by on Feb 20, 2014 in Articles, Featured, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments Olivia Pope wears the white hat. Or, as fans of the TV show Scandal know, she desperately wants to believe that she wears the white hat. Olivia Pope is a Washington fixer. She has assembled a team of “gladiators” who do whatever necessary — bending the law, breaking the law, tearing the law into tiny little shreds — to defend the “good guys.” But Olivia Pope, despite her name, is...
read more

Has Obama Already Forgotten about Asia?

Posted by on Feb 11, 2014 in Articles, Asia, Featured, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments Last year was a tough time for President Obama. The health care roll-out was plagued by website malfunctions. His ambivalent approach to intervening in Syria satisfied neither hawks nor doves. Congress stalled on major legislation like immigration reform. And the leaks by Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency was spying on American citizens, a major embarrassment for the...
read more

Asia: The Ghosts of 1914

Posted by on Jan 31, 2014 in Articles, Asia, Featured, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments On the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, Europe is at peace. There are no major border disputes. The countries form a unified economic bloc instead of a patchwork of jostling alliances. In the last 70 years, the only large-scale violence took place during the unraveling of Yugoslavia, which ended 15 years ago. In Sarajevo today, where World War I began with the assassination of...
read more