Foreign Policy

There’s been quite a bit of chatter in the media this week about the use of drones in the surveillance of American cities, with conservative commentators like Charles Krauthammer lining up to say they should be banned.

But where is the conversation about the legality of their use outside the United States? What about the border areas of Pakistan and other places such as Yemen, Somalia and Libya? There was only a blip of public awareness after the targeted killing of al Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen last September, but only because he was American-born. The attorney general, Eric Holder, took five months to justify Awlaki’s killing on foreign soil. He eventually said there was a three-point test under which the government must determine that an American citizen poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States, that capture is not feasible, and that the killing would be consistent with laws of war.

Thanks to reader Stephen Bone for his generous comment yesterday re: France and “the colonies.” He adds, of my picking on the French, “After all, without France we would not have a country.” But historic time presents us with a riddle. What would America be like without the American Revolution? Possibly much like it is today.

Consider what Hitler might have felt when he drove his troops into Paris on June 14, 1940. Americans held still for two years without defending their French allies of the Revolution. Why would they bother to defend their natural enemies, England? But aid we did and we culturally rebonded with England via the invasion of France with both our armies.

President Obama’s unguarded comments on a live mic with outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, about how he will have “more flexibility” to deal on such issues as missile defense after the U.S. elections, are a statement of fact.

Presidents who are no longer running for office in a second term have the opportunity to concentrate on legacy issues. It was in President Ronald Reagan’s second term that he signed a landmark agreement with the Russians on eliminating an entire category of nuclear weapons in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987. But that was then, and this is now.

Judging from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC last night, you would think that he received a green light from President Obama to attack Iran unilaterally.

My reading of their meeting at the White House yesterday was that although Obama recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself “by itself,” as he said in his own speech to AIPAC on Sunday, he is asking Netanyahu to hold fire. So in the terms of the driver’s manual, Obama has issued a flashing red signal. Not a green light. Not a flashing yellow light meaning proceed with caution. But a flashing red light that means: Come to a complete stop and proceed when the way is clear.

The conversation between President Obama and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu next week in Washington could have huge implications for both deciding on a course of action. What they say to one another and how they interpret each other’s posture will be critical.
 
- Global pressure continues to mount on Iran, making it more difficult for them to go to their people to justify the nuclear program. The economy is starting to come apart at the seams and the sanctions are increasingly biting.

Hillary Clinton has called the deal just struck with North Korea a “modest first step in the right direction.” She’s right. We have been there before.

North Korea has agreed to a nuclear weapons freeze in return for 240,000 tons of food aid to the impoverished and isolated country. Today’s joint announcement from the State Department and Pyongyang comes after direct talks between the United States and North Korea in Beijing. But I doubt it will be popular on Capitol Hill.

Foreign leaders don’t cast a vote in American elections. But they do have the opportunity to influence the outcome.

In the case of the showdown over Iran’s nuclear program, both Iran and Israel are closely watching the U.S. election. Their actions in the coming months and their calculations about President Obama’s reelection chances will undoubtedly help determine the outcome.

The congressional hawks on Iran didn’t get what they came to hear today from U.S. intelligence chiefs.

Instead of underpinning the argument for military strikes on Iran — (remember Iraq?) — Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, came to a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill with plenty hedging on the Iranian nuclear capability.

U.S. relations with Egypt have sunk to a new low in a row between the Egyptian military rulers and foreign pro-democracy NGOs accused of fomenting instability in the country. Unfortunately, both sides have mishandled things and the crisis is escalating.

I’m in Cairo, where Egyptian activists say that the military authorities should have acted earlier to enforce a 2002 law providing for the registration of NGOs. But while Egyptian authorities contend that the NGOs failed to register, the NGOs say they had taken steps to do so and fear that the registration is just a pretext for the crackdown.

The United States has advocated democratic and liberal reforms in the Middle East for over half a century. Sometimes it has worked behind the scenes. Other times, it has been out in front, trying to catalyze change.

Whatever the strategy, U.S. policymakers have repeatedly found their efforts stymied by the grip of longstanding authoritarian regimes, the persistence of deeply rooted cultures and social norms, and hostility to Western “meddling.” How ironic, then, that, when change finally arrived in the Middle East, the United States was taken by surprise — just like everyone else watching from the outside — and left scrambling to keep up as the situation on the ground changed on almost a daily basis. Even more ironic, now that the historic transition that the United States has long supported is finally under way, American policymakers — like their counterparts in Europe — are hardly in a position to lend the Arab world much support.