Foreign Policy

As General Joseph Dunford, commander of all international and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, prepares to appear before the Senate and House Armed Service Committees this week to discuss his plans to wind down the war, just under a week after Army General Martin Dempsey recommended that NATO retain between 8,000 and 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014, you might reasonably believe that Afghanistan only exists insofar as there are U.S. military personnel fighting there. Such a view ignores the ongoing challenges that Afghanistan will face after international forces leave – problems that not only affect the people of Afghanistan but the region and the world. Refusing to acknowledge and confront the political and economic issues posed by the transition threatens to undermine those who wish to overcome them.

America and our coalition allies are winning the war in Afghanistan. This garners little attention in the media as many are focused on the impacts of sequestration and events in other parts of the world. Even Afghans seem too busy managing their own lives to notice this gradual transition. Although there will be bumps along the way, the days of this country being dominated by the Taliban and other extremists are over. As we enter this new chapter in Afghanistan, we must responsibly retrograde and deconstruct hundreds of bases that housed thousands of coalition troops. Our failure to act could very well reverse the momentum we've gained through years of hard work and sacrifice.

Last week, the U.S. and 154 other member states in the U.N. General Assembly voted to endorse an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) that would reduce the flow of conventional weapons to states or groups engaged in terrorist activities, organized crime or gross violations of human rights and humanitarian law.

The arms trade is currently less regulated than the trade in bananas and bubble gum. This threatens U.S. security by enabling extremists, drug traffickers and pariah states to obtain weapons easily. Lack of global standards also hurts the U.S. arms industry, undercut by companies operating in more permissive regulatory environments.

With the release of his budget, President Obama must attempt reestablishing a closer working relationship with Congress that gives those members who are inclined toward bipartisanship some assurance that their sacrifices can lead to productive outcomes.
 
Such bipartisan cooperation – the suspension of the pursuit of political advantage in the interest of doing something necessary for our country -- is necessary not only to achieve important national goals, but also to undergird national unity in the event of severe crises.

News headlines about the latest round of nuclear negotiations with Iran repeat what has sadly become too prosaic: botched diplomacy, growing pessimism, and a looming war. Nearly 40 rounds of talks stretched out over a 10-year period have only resulted in 13,000 additional centrifuges and large quantities of enriched uranium in Iran, with nothing worth mentioning on the positive side of the ledger.

Benjamin Franklin once said, "How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them."

When will supporters of engagement in the West own their faults and come to the realization that the cake is not worth the candle when it comes to talking to Tehran?

Margaret Thatcher took control of the Tory Party at a time when Britain was in a chaotic state. I recall finding a safe place to hide during a general strike demonstration which blocked most of the streets in Central London. The miners especially were angry and my contacts with the top labor leaders who spoke at my conferences were concerned that the strikes could turn into violence requiring military action. She was known as the ‘Iron Lady’ because she literally stood up physically to tough union leaders and told them how things were going to be with her in charge. And they did back down.

The skyline in Washington, D.C. might be slightly lower than America’s other cities, but its glass ceilings remain well below average. While women have made notable progress in attaining positions of leadership and power in the private sector; their counterparts in Washington and state capitols across the country lag far behind. The U.S. isn’t dead last in female participation politics, but it’s pretty close (at 77th, we're a notch above Madagascar). In politics, women still struggle to reach the highest seats of power.
 
Susan Rice, whose nomination for Secretary of State was preemptively and undemocratically trampled to death, is one such woman. In many ways Rice challenged the gender biases still present in American politics and, temporarily at least, lost. Both the boardroom and Capitol Hill remain highly patriarchal, and gender parity a distant ideal.

The tenth anniversary of the genocide in Darfur has focused renewed attention on the crimes that the Sudanese regime has committed against its people and the pending International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for President Omar al Bashir and other Sudanese officials. But the fact that the regime’s crimes extend far beyond Darfur and continue to this day has remained under the radar.

Public differences between members of Congress and AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) have largely been papered over in recent weeks, but there remains a palpable sense of frustration with AIPAC’s legislative policy agenda on Capitol Hill. 



The unprecedented dearth of support for parts of AIPAC’s legislative agenda this year may be a sign the façade of invincibility surrounding the Israel lobby is beginning to erode. In the case of ‘The United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013’ (S. 462, H.R. 938), members of Congress appear to have defected en masse; weeks after introduction, the Senate version has only 15 cosponsors. 



Southern Turkey – Two nights ago, my Refugees International colleagues and I paid a visit to a cramped apartment on the Turkish-Syrian border. Dr. Najjar, a Syrian physician, showed us various types of medical equipment he had gathered over the past week. They will be sent into a northern Syria province in the coming days to resupply hospitals and clinics.

The narrow hallway of the apartment was lined with stretchers still in their packaging; the cloth parts  almost festive in their bright reds and royal blues. Folded up and stacked together, they resembled lawn furniture for a patio in summer. One room was jam-packed with crates of catheters, gastrointestinal tubing, and enormous bales of gauze. Another had an assortment of smaller boxes containing surgical scissors, child-sized oxygen masks, and athletes’ heart monitors to be put to medical use. But it was the syringes that made the greatest impression.