FPI In the News

By way of Reuters, a troubling interview with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin:

Russia's paramount leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, hinted on Monday he would return to the presidency in 2012 for six more years and said democracy protesters marching without permission deserved to be beaten...

The Foreign Policy Initiative is pleased to announce the launch of its Future Leaders Program, which will cultivate the next generation of foreign policy leaders in Washington, DC.  The program will identify young professionals who share FPI’s commitment to international engagement, support for America’s allies, expanding political and economic freedom, and a strong military and connect them with foreign policy experts and former senior government officials. 

The ceremony on Saturday marking the beginning of the fueling of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor was preceded by much commentary about the implications of the move for Iran’s nuclear program and international efforts to halt Iran’s steady progress toward a nuclear weapon.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Thirty-seven former U.S. government officials, human rights and democracy advocates, and Russia experts warned Wednesday that the arrest of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov at a demonstration on July 31 and other anti-democratic steps by the Russian government constitute an “alarming trend” and that continued abuses should have “serious consequences” for U.S.-Russian relations.

Last Tuesday, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke on the subject of the proposed mosque at Ground Zero. His remarks will be read with curiosity by future generations of Americans, who will look back in astonishment at the self-deluding pieties and self-destructive dogmas that are held onto, at once smugly and desperately, by today’s liberal elites. Our liberation from those dogmas, and from those elites, is underway across the nation.

Earlier this month, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney raised a number of questions about the wisdom of the New START treaty in a Washington Post op-ed. In response, the treaty’s proponents unfortunately shed more heat than light on the matter, attacking Romney personally for raising “hyperbolic” and “discredited” objections, for “politicizing” the arms-control process, and, of course, for being ill-informed.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo are locked into their position on the plan to build a mosque and Muslim community center—the Cordoba House—at Ground Zero. They maintain there are no security risks posed by the project and that this is simply an issue of religious expression. The Lower Manhattan Community Board, after holding hearings, recommended against halting the project.

It's hard to believe that ratification of the New START treaty is turning into a pitched battle between some Republicans and the White House. It's even harder to believe that advocates for and against the treaty are trying to turn it into a stand-in for some imagined ideological contest over arms control and nonproliferation. It's not. This treaty is simply too unexceptional to carry such heavy freight.

Several of my Shadow Government colleagues have already responded to Jacob Heilbrunn's obituary for the Republican foreign policy establishment. Most of the comments have focused on the diversity present on the Right on foreign policy and I agree with those assessments.