Policy & Strategy

Moscow has emerged again as a key roadblock to any possible military action to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and end the growing violence in the country.

The House has already approved a sweeping defense authorization bill that creates an East Coast missile defense system.

Rep. Mike Rogers said he's not sure that providing arms to the Syrian insurgents "is the right answer."

Spreading sectarian violence across the Middle East is now the “most probable" scenario as a result of the conflict in Syria, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told reporters Wednesday following a UN Security Council briefing on the situation.

Susan Rice said the success of UN special representative Kofi Annan's peace plan or, barring that, Security Council agreement on further sanctions could help defuse the situation. But both those scenarios seem unlikely in the wake of last Friday's massacre of more than 100 civilians that the United States and others have pinned on the Syrian government and its proxy forces.

“In the absence of either of those two scenarios,” Rice said, “there seems to me to be only one other alternative – and that is indeed the worst case, which seems unfortunately at the present to be the most probable – and that is that the violence escalates, the conflict spreads and intensifies and reaches a higher degree of intensity and involves countries in the region, it takes on increasing sectarian forms, and we have a major crisis not only in Syria but in the region.”

The 33-year prison sentence handed down to Shakil Afridi sparked a backlash in Congress against Pakistan.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday that Syria would be better off with President Bashar al-Assad out of power after a weekend massacre left more than 100 dead and drew international scorn.

President Obama and Mitt Romney offered clashing views over whether to arm insurgents in Syria.

The Obama administration again came under fire for its aggressive use of armed aerial drones against suspected terror targets on the same day the No. 2 al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan was killed by an American drone. 

The Defense Department on Tuesday attempted to walk back the rhetoric in Washington for military action in Syria, saying the Pentagon and the White House remain focused on finding a peaceful solution to the crisis.

Mitt Romney, Obama's presumptive opponent for the presidency this November, favors arming the Syrian rebels.