Suchergebnisse

This book tells the full inside story of the Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Written by a top National Security Council officer who worked at the White House with Bush, Cheney, and Rice and attended dozens of meetings with figures like Sharon, Mubarak, the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and Palestinian leaders, it brings the reader inside the White House and the palaces of Middle Eastern officials. How did 9/11 change American policy toward Arafat and Sharon's tough efforts against the Second Intifada? What influence did the Saudis have on President Bush? Did the American approach change when Arafat died? How did Sharon decide to get out of Gaza, and why did the peace negotiations fail? In the first book by an administration official to focus on Bush and the Middle East, Elliott Abrams brings the story of Bush, the Israelis, and the Palestinians to life

Realists have long argued that the international system must be based on hard calculations of power and interest. But in recent years, religion's role on the international scene has grown. The Influence of Faith examines religion as a growing factor in world politics and U.S. foreign policy. Particular attention is placed on the American reaction to the persecution of Christians and Jews overseas, as well as the role of faith-based groups such as missionary and relief organizations in the formulation and implementation of U.S. policy. The Influence of Faith considers these timely issues from d

Every American president, regardless of party or ideology, struggles to push his agenda through America's unwieldy -- and increasingly massive -- national security bureaucracy. "To govern is to choose," the old saying goes, but to govern is also to manage, demand, cajole, impose, and wheedle your way to control of "the government." Choosing is the easy part. Every president must confront powerful rivals for control of the foreign-policy agenda, and the 11 rules presented here are intended to offer a blueprint for how to do so. This include: 1. Let your principals really fight it out -- and send you their actual recommendations, not a fake consensus. 2. Don't let your cabinet secretaries put career officials in top positions. 3. Treat cabinet officers as friends, but understand they are also enemies. 4. Establish a shadow government of presidential loyalists. 5. Recruit your staff to your real team, and shower them with the perks of office. Adapted from the source document.

US Pres Barack Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront. It is a foreign policy structured not to influence events in Russia or China or Africa or the Middle East but to serve as a bulwark against the habits of American activism and global leadership. On the human rights side, administration policy has been marked by indifference. When the people of Iran flooded the streets to protest the theft of their presidential election in June 2009, Pres Obama was silent for in days. Genuine support for human rights is, apparently, a Cold War mindset that leads to confrontation rather than engagement with regimes. As for Israel, the administration has of course followed a twisting path since the days of Obama's Cairo speech in 2009. Adapted from the source document.

As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, there is much discussion of the regime's chemical weapons and whether Syria's Bashar al-Assad will unleash them against Syrian rebels, or whether a power vacuum after Assad's fall might make those horrific tools available to the highest bidder. The conversation centers on Syria's chemical weaponry, not on something vastly more serious: its nuclear weaponry. It well might have. This is the inside story of why it does not. This incident is a reminder that there is no substitute for military strength and the will to use it. Think of how much more dangerous to the entire region the Syrian civil war would be today if Assad had a nuclear reactor, and even perhaps nuclear weapons, in hand. Israel was right to bomb that reactor before construction was completed, and President Bush was right to support its decision to do so. Adapted from the source document.

Among the more vocal critics of the Assad regime in Syria this year has been Andrew Tabler, a fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who lived in Syria from 2001 to 2008. But the story Tabler tells in his new book, In the Lion's Den, is not one of steady opposition to the vicious dictatorship in Damascus. It is, rather, the story of a very slow indefensibly slow disillusionment with the regime. Tabler was never truly in the lion's den in the sense that Syrian protesters, risking life and limb in Syria's streets, have been. Fluent in Arabic and a resident of Cairo, Tabler arrived in Damascus in 2001 to write a comprehensive study of Syria for the Oxford Business Group to help potential investors understand the country. The Syria in which he arrived was seeing a brief Damascus Spring, when the death of Hafez al-Assad and accession of his son Bashar gave rise to hopes of reform. But as the Freedom House report on Syria for 2002 noted, by year's end, whatever progress had been made was effectively snuffed out as the government curtailed informal gatherings and jailed opposition leaders, critical journalists, and intellectuals. Adapted from the source document.

Barack Obama should expend more effort building the institutions of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Part of a special journal section discussing ten things President Obama should do now so that the next two years of his presidency do not go to waste. Adapted from the source document.