US Foreign Policy

The Int’l Community at Berlin II wants Oil and a Stop to Emigration from Libya; What Libya needs is Strong Institutions and Peace

Mt. Berry, Ga. (Special to Informed Comment) – A lazy international press corps is missing the big story on Libya. English language news coverage of the June 23rd Berlin II International Conference on Libya has been focused almost exclusively on the presence of foreign mercenaries while eliding information crucial to understanding the negotiations and the […]

Joe Biden

Cold War Nostalgia is not a Policy: Joe Biden needs a New, less Militaristic Vision for America

Andrew J. Bacevich

“I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Kurt Vonnegut’s famous novel about the World War II bombing of the German city of Dresden appeared the year I graduated from West Point. While dimly […]

Iran

Iran’s Hardliners: We’re Back, Too

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – To some critics, U.S. elections are managed affairs. According to this cynical view, the “powers that be” narrow the field of candidates, the two parties don’t represent the real range of public opinion in the country, and periodic elections are just shadow plays staged by powerbrokers behind the […]

Iran

Iran election: what Ebrahim Raisi’s victory will mean for his country – and the rest of the world

The Conversation

By Arshin Adib-Moghaddam | – When Iranians elect a new leader, the world watches. So the election of Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline right-winger, to replace the more centrist Hassan Rouhani, is global news of some significance. Raisi is the choice of Iran’s socially arch-conservative and politically anti-reformist “deep state”. This ideological core of the state […]

Iran

Conservative hard-liner poised to be Iran’s next president – what that means for the West and the nuclear deal

The Conversation

By Nader Habibi | – ( The Conversation ) | – Iran’s conservative rulers’ effort to orchestrate the outcome of the June 18 presidential election triggered a voter boycott – but the result may still bode well for ongoing negotiations over the lapsed 2015 nuclear deal. The leading candidate is Ebrahim Raisi, chief of Iran’s […]

China

Is Putin’s Positive View of the Biden Summit a sign he is Souring on his China Alliance?

Nikola Mikovic

Belgrade (Special to Informed Comment) – The results of the historic summit between the US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, held in Switzerland on June 16, will be felt for some time. Officially, the two leaders discussed Syria, Libya, Iran, Afghanistan, Ukraine, hacking and “strategic stability”, but what they agreed during […]

Iran

Israel’s Netanyahu may be ousted but his hard-line foreign policies remain

The Conversation

By David Mednicoff | (The Conversation) – After two years of repeated and inconclusive Israeli elections, the advent of a new coalition government has ended the long era of Benjamin Netanyahu’s prime ministership. Yet he leaves a legacy of hawkish policies that will likely remain intact. As a scholar of Middle Eastern politics, I think […]

Joe Biden

Could Putin woo Turkey from Biden and NATO?

Nikola Mikovic

Belgrade (Special to Informed Comment) – The Turks seem to be weary of the alliance with the United States. Although it is still a NATO member, and has the second largest army in the organization, Turkey is strengthening military, political and economic ties with the US “major geopolitical rival” – Russia. According to a recent […]

Arab World

Biden wants to end America’s 20-Year War on the Middle East: But Can He?

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Walden Bello | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Next September, when the last C-130 cargo aircraft and Chinook transport helicopters take off from the infamous Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan that has doubled as a CIA torture center for suspected jihadists, they will not only be leaving behind the site […]