Policy & Strategy

The White House on Monday defended President Obama's “red line” on Syria. 

Pyongyang has hit the pause button in its aggressive rhetoric toward the Washington and its allies in the Pacific, calming tensions between the United States and North Korea. 

A U.N. commission says it has no conclusive findings of chemical weapons use by any parties.

A key Senate panel hears this week from President Obama's nominee to replace slain Ambassador Christopher Stevens, giving Republicans an ideal platform to demand answers to their questions about last year's terror attack in Benghazi, Libya.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has announced it will hold a hearing Tuesday on the nomination of Deborah Kay Jones to serve as ambassador to Libya. The hearing comes as Republicans are relaunching their investigation into the attack. The House oversight panel hears from three State Department witnesses on Wednesday, and some senators have threatened to hold up Jones's nomination.

“Unfortunately it seems like that’s the only vehicle we can use to get answers,” panel member Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told The Hill shortly after crossing swords with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she testified in January. 

“I’d like to cooperate with the president and make sure that his administration is staffed and these important ambassadorships are filled. But if that’s the only avenue we have in terms of eliciting information from the administration, that might be something we have to do.”

The allegations will likely make it harder for the Obama administration to justify taking a more active role in Syria.

Obama first warned Assad in August, 2012, that chemical weapons would change his calculus toward Syria.

The president's comments during a news conference in Costa Rica came amid reports that Israel had bombed targets inside Syria.

The State Department has tapped its first ambassador to post-Taliban Afghanistan to serve as the new special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

James Dobbins will replace Marc Grossman, who stepped down last year after less than two years heading the special envoy position created by President Obama. Richard Holbrooke was the first to occupy the post, until his death in December 2010.

Dobbins “has deep and longstanding relationships in the region and I couldn’t be more grateful that Jim has agreed to take on this assignment,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement Friday. “This is a pivotal moment for both Afghanistan and Pakistan, with interconnected political, security, and economic transitions already underway in Afghanistan, and Pakistani elections just days away, marking an important and historic democratic transition.”

Lawmakers in the House and Senate are going nuclear in their first week back from a short recess. 

The future of the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise will be at the top of the agenda when the heads of the House and Senate Armed Services committees get back to business on Tuesday. 

Pentagon officials have been given the green light to begin using new Blackberry and Android smartphones on Defense Department networks.