Obama's Doctrine

Last In, First Out, Contentions, March 30, 2011. "Commentators here and elsewhere have dissected the belated strengths and considerable weaknesses of the president’s speech on Libya. But no one has noted that the speech is yet another piece of evidence that this administration regards foreign policy as a problem to be overcome as rapidly as possible, not as an enduring challenge with serious consequences. Barack Obama remains eager to get to the serious business of domestic policy."

NGOs and Neutralism

Why There Is No Neutral, Contentions, March 28, 2011. "Nadia Schadlow has a fine essay at Foreign Policy which points out that many of the NGOs on which the U.S. and its allies are relying to contribute to the “Build” phase of the counterinsurgency strategy proclaim that they refuse to take sides in the conflict. It’s not just the Red Cross that believes it is “essential to provide neutral and impartial assistance to all populations.” Most of the others follow suit. Many NGOs go beyond simply providing aid to all civilians, and – in the words of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office – argue that NGOs have “nothing to gain and much to lose” by interacting with ISAF, which in their view only wants to “[leverage] advantage from [NGO] activities.” This is not the neutralism of helping the poor, no matter who they be: it is political neutrality."

Wanted: Flexibility

Google, Wisconsin, and Distributional Coalitions, Big Government, March 25, 2011. "Over the past month, Google made waves with the announcement that it has tweaked its search algorithms to penalize ‘content farms.’ These are “low quality sites whose main goal is to attract search traffic by piling up (mostly) useless content.” The lesson from Google is simple: no system devised by the mind of man is immune to being gamed by other men. Google’s merit is that it can respond quickly to thwart the gaming. That will, in turn, breed more gaming, but Google will, if it is attentive, not fall too far behind. If it slacks off, it will quickly be overtaken by a more nimble rival. The same, unfortunately, is not true of society as a whole."

America the Exceptional

The Exceptional Battleground: A Controversy, The City, Spring 2011 edition, a publication of Houston Baptist University. "The United States is an exceptional nation. Most Americans would not regard that as a controversial statement. And there is a good reason for that: it is true."

The Arms Trade Treaty and Libya

On Arming Those Libyan Rebels, Contentions, March 10, 2011. "Max Boot has argued that arming the Libyan rebels may be the best way to ensure that a prolonged conflict in that country doesn’t flood the world’s black market with arms. I am agnostic on this point: the world’s black market is flooded with arms in any case, and if I believed it was necessary or desirable to arm the rebels — though certainly not with surface-to-air missiles, a possibility against which Max rightly cautions — I would not be dissuaded by the reality that at least some of the weapons would inevitably surface somewhere else."

Intervention to Enforce Non-Intervention

John Stuart Mill on Mercenaries in Libya, Contentions, March 9, 2011. "It’s not clear whether Muammar Qaddafi is importing mercenaries to help him (further) crush his own people. The Christian Science Monitor is inclined to credit the reports, while Human Rights Watch argues that the allegations are unconfirmed and arise from Qaddafi’s efforts to promote civil equality in Libya (no, really, that’s what they say)."

Press Freedom in Russia?

The Unrealism of the Russian Reset, Contentions, March 8, 2011. "Russia, I acknowledge, is not one of those places we can afford to dismiss diplomatically. Nuclear weapons and oil aside — and that is pretty much all Russia has going for it in the great power sweepstakes — Russia has a UN veto and an almost infinite capacity to make trouble, not least for our supply lines into Afghanistan. But it is one thing to recognize that, in the world as it is, we are sometimes going to have to work with places like Putin’s Russia, and quite another thing to kid ourselves about what they are."

A Policy of Binding Our Hands

Libyan Revolution Reveals Foolishness of Arms Trade Treaty, Heritage Foundation Foundry, March 4, 2011. "The Obama Administration has declared its support for the U.N.’s efforts to negotiate an arms trade treaty (ATT) that would regulate the transfer of conventional arms. This is unwise for many reasons. The following stories show just how an ATT, far from saving civilians, would actually tie the hands of democracies in resisting dictatorships."

The Other Ones

The Dictators We Forgot, Contentions, March 4, 2011. "In the face of the Middle East’s revolutions, it’s easy to believe that the world’s dictators are comprised of autocrats we worked with (Mubarak), dictators we were trying to (Gaddafi), and dangerous regimes that won’t play ball (Iran). If only. The biggest category of all is the dictators we forgot."

Qaddafi's Academic Toads

London School of Economics’ Ties to Libya the Tip of the Iceberg for Academia, Contentions, March 4, 2011. "The Director of the London School of Economics, Sir Howard Davies, has resigned after fresh revelations of LSE ties to Libya emerged on Thursday morning. The LSE was already under intense fire for taking a donation of 1.5 million pounds from Qaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, who studied at LSE and — it appears — may also have plagiarized his thesis."

How Must America Practice Diplomacy?

How Must America Practice Diplomacy?, Heritage Foundation, Understanding America Series, Essay Number Six, March 3, 2011. "The purpose of American diplomacy never changes: It is to secure the national interests of the United States. The fundamental American interest is to ensure that America remains independent and governed by the American people."