An indication of how far removed most of the current presidential campaign has been from intelligent and useful debate on important public issues is the speech on foreign policy that Donald Trump gave in Washington on Wednesday.
With U.S. attention toward the Middle East being recently focused on such matters as warfare in Syria and Iraq and on the relationship with Saudi Arabia, little attention span is left over for the relationship with the most populous Arab nation. But developments in Egypt have, in multiple respects, significant capacity for creating attention-grabbing problems for Washington in addition to problems to which Egypt already is contributing in significant though less salient ways.
Evidence continues to mount on how lopsided has been the implementation so far of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a.k.a. the Iran nuclear agreement, with Iran's rigorous carrying out of its obligations regarding its nuclear program being unmatched by the sort of financial and commercial opening to Iran that was a fundamental part of the bargain that was struck. The extensive and complicated U.S.-imposed sanctions are still the chief impediment to implementation, thus continuing to demonstrate how U.S.
Mark Landler has an interesting extended article in the New York Times about how Hillary Clinton came to views about the use of military force that have made her, in Landler's words, “the last true hawk left” in this year's presidential race.
The president of the United States is going on a foreign trip, and that means it is time for another surge in temperature-taking regarding the state of relations between the United States and some of its “allies.” The countries involved may include not only ones such as members of NATO that are indisputably allies by virtue of being linked to the United States by a mutual security treaty but also “allies” that are called that mainly because there is a general habit or practice in Washington of calling them that.
In a story out of Tehran, President Hassan Rouhani, who in the Iranian political context merits the labels “reformist” and “moderate”, is being pushed by others in the reformist camp who believe he has not been aggressive enough in challenging Iranian hardliners across the full spectrum of issues that separate hardliners from reformists.
Secretary of State Kerry's visit to Hiroshima, as part of a trip in which he met with other G-7 foreign ministers in preparation for a summit meeting later this spring, has raised the prospect of President Obama becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit the same site when he is in Japan for the summit meeting itself. It is easy to anticipate some of the reaction from Mr. Obama's political opponents in the United States if he does make the visit. He should visit anyway.
Attention has increased recently to sanctions against Iran and relief from sanctions under the terms of the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, to limit Iran's nuclear program. As usual whenever this set of subjects comes up, commentary in the United States reflects different agendas, some of which are not congruent with U.S. interests or the interests of international security. Also as usual, there is much exploitation of misunderstanding of what economic sanctions can and cannot do.
A major deficiency in America's history of involvement with armed conflict overseas has been inattention to whatever would follow defeat of the bête noire of the moment. The outstanding example is, of course, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, with the promoters of that war being irresponsibly negligent in not seriously considering that the aftermath of deposing the Iraqi regime would be anything other than a stable and democratic polity. A similar deficiency occurred when the United States followed a European lead in deposing Muammar Qadhafi in Libya.
A common argument made by some of those opposed to the United States reducing its greenhouse gas emissions—even by opponents who do not try to deny the fact of human-induced global warming—is that U.S. action would be useless as long as other major emitting countries continue their polluting ways. This argument received a sharp blow when the Obama administration reached an agreement with the biggest emitter—China—about reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants, which have been the largest single component of China's poisoning of the atmosphere.
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