A Tip For the British Conservatives

In Australia, Conservatives Won A Shock Victory. There’s A Lesson Here for Conservatives Worldwide, Daily Signal, May 22, 2019. "Here’s a tip for our British Conservative friends: Conservative parties that do conservative things win elections. Conservative parties that don’t do them, or don’t know what to do, don’t win elections."

Weaponizing Interpol

Palestinians Use Interpol As A Weapon of War, Fox News, June 16, 2018. "Should the Palestinian Authority (PA) be able to use an international organization like Interpol as a weapon in its internal fights between factions? The question seems absurd. Yet it is exactly what the PA and its bombastic president, Mahmoud Abbas, are now trying to do."

New Democrats, New Dangers

Obama’s Ugly Legacy in the Mideast, Newsday, March 4, 2018. "The war in Syria was like a stone thrown into a lake. The initial splash has subsided, but the waves are spreading throughout the region. Where the waves meet the shores of the lake, they splash again into new wars. The wars of the Persian Gulf, the Kurds, and Israel are beginning."

Interpol and the Authoritarians

Way To Go, Interpol, Newsday, December 4, 2106, "At its latest meeting, the General Assembly voted four new members to the executive committee. That’s where the trouble starts. The new president of the committee is Meng Hongwei, the vice minister of public security in China. In other words, he’s in charge of enforcing the world’s biggest police state, a police state with a history of abusing Interpol for its own purposes."

Interpol, the Palestinians, and Standards for Membership

Will Interpol Be Able to Create Fair Standards for Membership?, Forbes, November 30, 2016, "Contrary to media reports, a Palestinian effort to win admission to Interpol has not been rejected. As I noted in my previous post, it has been postponed, pending a report on membership criteria to be conducted by Hans Corell, former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the United Nations."

Interpol, the Palestinians, and the Chinese

Interpol Did Not Reject the Palestinian Authority’s Bid for Membership, Forbes, November 30, 2016, "It’s been widely reported that Interpol rejected a Palestinian bid for membership at the latest meeting of its General Assembly, which concluded in Bali on November 10. This is, at best, only a half truth."

Oops, They Did It Again

This Would Be A Serious Mistake for Interpol, Newsday. November 6, 2016, "Just because the United States is in the final days of its election campaign doesn’t mean nothing important is happening anywhere else. Next week, the General Assembly of Interpol, the worldwide federation of law enforcement agencies, will meet in Bali, Indonesia. The General Assembly is Interpol’s governing authority, and it decides who joins Interpol. Both Taiwan and the Palestinian Authority are seeking admission. It’s time Interpol welcomes Taiwan — but letting the Palestinians in would be a serious mistake."

On Recognizing Friends and Enemies

Conservatives and Liberals Need to Rethink Their Mideast Priorities, Newsday, March 22, 2015. "In the wake of Benjamin Netanyahu's victory in Israel, American leaders -- both conservatives and liberals -- should rethink their approach to the Middle East. Conservatives need to recognize more clearly who our enemies are; liberals need to learn to recognize our friends."

Getting Iran Wrong

A Slap Fight With a Purpose, Newsday, March 7, 2015. "The political slap fight over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent address to Congress was an embarrassment. But it was far from pointless. It reflected the fundamental divide between liberals and conservatives on Middle East policy."

Israel's Foolish Signature of the ATT

Israel Signs the Arms Trade Treaty: Unhelpful Appeasement for Implacable Enemies, National Review Online, December 29, 2014, "Last Thursday, Israel signed the U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a treaty that supposedly prevents nations from arming terrorists and mass murderers. But in reality, the treaty’s advocates spend most of their time vehemently criticizing Israel, and, of course, the United States."

We Know What Nonproliferation Looks Like . . .

On Iran, No Deal is a Good Deal, Newsday, November 27, 2014, "It's no secret that the Obama administration badly wants a nuclear deal with Iran. And it's no secret that the Iranians are playing hard to get. The talks, which were supposed to yield a final agreement this week, have been extended to July. That's a relief, because right now, the best deal is no deal."

The Traditional Requirements of Sovereignty

An Assault on Sovereignty in Israel, Ukraine, Newsday, July 25, 2014. "At a conference in Israel earlier this month, the White House's Middle East coordinator, Philip Gordon, spoke the magic word: sovereignty. Unfortunately, for the White House, it's just a word. From Israel to Ukraine, today's crises show what happens when the world forgets what sovereignty requires."

The Enemy of Our Enemy . . . Is Our Enemy

In the Middle East, An Avalanche of Disasters, Newsday, June 27, 2014. "The past weeks have brought an avalanche of disasters for the United States in the wider Middle East. Unless the Obama administration changes course, the coming months will bring worse."

Favors Don't Work in International Affairs

The Genesis of Really Bad Ideas, Newsday, April 4, 2014. "Most bad ideas in the world grow from a few seeds. And there is no seed more dangerous than the belief that we can make other places see things our way by tossing out favors like candy at Halloween."

The Troubled European Periphery

Europe Must Wake Up to New Danger, Newsday, March 7, 2014. "If you looked out from Europe in the 1990s, you could see sunshine on the horizon. With the end of the Cold War, NATO appeared to be on the road to irrelevancy. But the sunshine has faded. Russia's dismemberment of Ukraine should remind Americans and Europeans that European security, for which all of us paid a high price over the past hundred years, is not assured."

The End of a Mission

Tony Blair’s Vision for the Middle East and Britain’s Role in It Has Collapsed, Sunday Express (UK), September 1, 2013. "While Britain may not want to contribute to it, there’s fighting aplenty in the Middle East. In the midst of it stands Tony Blair, honored with the title of Representative of the Quartet on the Middle East, charged with bringing peace between Israel and the Palestinians. That mission has been a failure."

Three, Two, One . . .

Saudi Arabian Missile Base Is A Sign of Waning U.S. Influence, Newsday, August 2, 2013. "The U.S. retreat from Iraq and its handoff policy on Syria and Iran are creating a security vacuum that regional powers are already filling. Last month IHS Jane's, Britain's famed defense and intelligence firm, announced that it had spotted a missile base in the heart of Saudi Arabia. Designed to launch Chinese-made DF-3 missiles, the base targets both Iran and Israel."

How the Dictators Hang Together

A Falkland Islands Coda, Contentions, March 21, 2013. "Spurred on by James Kirchick’s superb piece on why the Falkland Islands matter, and by my on-going visit to the UN, it’s worth pointing out how the Falklands illustrate one more thing: how the autocracies, in hanging together at the UN, all too often organize around their shared hatred of Israel."

The 2012 Race Shapes Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy Enters the 2012 Race, Centre for Policy Studies, September 16, 2011. "What is more interesting, though, is the way that the Democratic defeat in NY-9, which the victorious Republican framed as a referendum on President Obama, shows how foreign policy is slipping into the 2012 race, at a time when all eyes seem to be focused on the economy."

The Convention on Cluster Munitions

The United States Should Not Join the Convention on Cluster Munitions, with Steve Groves, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #2550, April 28, 2011. "The Convention on Cluster Munitions is a misbegotten treaty that neither advances the laws of war nor enhances security. It is an unverifiable, unenforceable, all-or-nothing exercise in moral suasion, not a serious diplomatic instrument. It creates perverse incentives for insurgents to use civilian populations as human shields, undermines effective arms control efforts, inhibits nation-states’ ability to defend themselves, and denigrates the sovereignty of the United States and other democratic states. The U.S. should emphatically reject both the convention and the undemocratic Oslo Process that produced it and should instead continue to negotiate a realistic and enforceable protocol on cluster munitions that balances U.S. military requirements with the humanitarian concerns posed by unexploded ordnance."