FPI In the News

February 3, 2012 | Washington Post

These days “soft” power and “smart” power are in vogue (who wants to make the case for “dumb” power?) while American “hard” power is on the chopping block. This is, in part, a symbolic sacrifice to the fiscal crisis — even though the looming defense cuts are a drop in the bucket compared with the ballooning entitlement spending that is not being cut. And partly this is the Obama administration’s election-year strategy of playing to a presumably war-weary nation.

January 27, 2012 | Defending Defense - American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Heritage Foundation

The President’s budget request will slash $487 billion from the military over the next ten years, delaying vital next-generation systems and giving the pink slip to 100,000 active duty men and women in uniform.  Unfortunately, this is a budget-driven strategy that kills jobs and puts our military at risk while it is still in harm’s way. Despite increasingly tough talk about the importance of Asia, the Obama administration’s preview of its fiscal year 2013 defense budget proves that it is a “pivot” in name only. 

January 23, 2012 | US News and World Report's Debate Club

By ending America's military presence in Iraq, President Obama has irresponsibly endangered that country's progress in internal security, sectarian reconciliation, and democratic reform—progress that U.S. troops had fought hard to facilitate.

January 23, 2012 | Foreign Policy

On the accomplishment side of the ledger, credit Barack Obama with a very smart policy in Asia. By taking advantage of China overplaying its hand in the South China Sea and generally unnerving most of the region, the Obama administration has reconfirmed the central role of the United States in East Asia. The opening of a new base in Australia is a powerful symbol of America's enduring strategic presence in the region. The opening with Burma obviously has both strategic motives and strategic implications.

January 23, 2012 | Foreign Policy

As Barack Obama seeks reelection, he will likely tout the country's counterterrorism successes under his watch and, in a sop to his base, his ending of the war in Iraq and his efforts to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Although voters in 2012 will be focused primarily on the state of the economy, they should consider who is best suited to defend the country and advance America's interests as commander chief when choosing whether to reelect Obama or bring in a new president.

January 19, 2012 | The Weekly Standard Blog

In a recent presidential debate, Congressman Ron Paul made a bizarre equivalence between a Chinese dissident taking refuge in America and Osama bin Laden hiding in Pakistan, as he was attempting to criticize American foreign and defense policies generally. And while it may come as a relief to dissidents like Yu Jie that, according to Paul, “if a Chinese dissident [came] over here, we wouldn’t endorse the idea, well, [that the Chinese government] can come over here and bomb us and do whatever.”

January 17, 2012 | The New Republic

Is the United States truly declining?  Or are Americans, mistakenly fearful of decline, actually committing a “pre-emptive superpower suicide”?  FPI Director Robert Kagan—a former U.S. State Department official and the best-selling author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams (2008), Dangerous Nation (2006), and Of Paradise and Power (2003)—unflinchingly answers these and other provocative questions in his new book, The World America Made, available on February 12, 2012.

January 17, 2012 | Foreign Affairs

It has been the policy of U.S. presidents over the last three decades to state that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable. Yet as Iran moves closer to achieving that goal, political leaders, including key Obama administration officials such as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, have begun to waver.

January 14, 2012 | The Weekly Standard

We’ll stipulate that of course the Marines who urinated on the bodies of dead Taliban in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, last year should be appropriately disciplined, assuming things are as they appear in the video.

January 13, 2012 | The Weekly Standard Blog

Obama administration bigwigs are falling all over themselves to denounce, condemn, lament, and apologize for the unfortunate behavior of a few Marines in Afghanistan last year. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta condemned the action as not just deplorable but “utterly deplorable.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed not just dismay but “total dismay.”

January 12, 2012 | The Weekly Standard Blog

The Wall Street Journal Asia editorial page is covering the uptick in verbal attacks on Hong Kong individuals and institutions by Chinese Communist officials and their official press. So far, the list includes pro-democracy politicians and their supporters, the Catholic Church, and the top U.S. diplomat in the territory.  Now, the Wall Street Journal editorial page notes, “Beijing is turning up the Cultural Revolution rhetoric again” in a “rectification campaign” aimed against two academics.

January 11, 2012 | The Weekly Standard Blog

“China is the largest hypocrisy in the world,” Richard Gere told an interviewer from Indian television station NDTV yesterday, while attending a major Buddhist teaching by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Bodh Gaya. In the lengthy interview, the transcript of which can be read here, Gere argues that China’s policies of repression in Tibet and in China will not succeed, notes the importance of the democratic Tibetan government-in-exile for the future, and identifies”money” or “truth” as the world’s choice in dealing China.

January 7, 2012 | The Weekly Standard

A funny thing happened last week in Iowa. Foreign policy—mostly the question of how to deal with the threat posed by a nuclear Iran—emerged front and center in the Republican presidential race.

On January 1, Rick Santorum told David Gregory on Meet the Press that he would support airstrikes to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Then Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich both raised Iran in their post-caucus remarks, promising, if elected, to use all options at their disposal to prevent a nuclear Iran.

January 6, 2012 | Foreign Policy Initiative

From FPI Policy Director Robert Zarate and Policy Analyst Evan Moore

Is the United States now on a path to becoming a much diminished global power?  Unless the President and Congress work together to quickly change the Pentagon’s new trajectory, the answer is "Yes."

January 6, 2012 | Washington Post

We keep hearing that the world has changed fundamentally and that the old issues which used to occupy us no longer matter. The new era is about globalization, the Internet, non-state actors, the diffusion of power, the rise of Asia and the decline of the West, the end of ideology and the rise of pragmatism. It is true, of course, that the world and the international system are always in flux. Yet some of the most pressing issues this year are remarkably familiar.

January 5, 2012 | The Commentator

Europe’s on-going debt crisis will have a dramatic impact on NATO’s future defense operations.  As we speak, governments across the Continent are instituting austerity measures to avert credit downgrades and the collapse of the Euro. After years of shrinking defense budgets, more cuts are expected, further restricting the continent’s ability to defend U.S. and European interests abroad. 

January 5, 2012 | Fox News Channel's Special Report w/Bret Baier

January 3, 2012 | Working Group on Egypt

Dear Secretary Clinton,

We write to express our grave concern about the assault last week by the Egyptian authorities on Egyptian and international civil society groups. These latest actions undermine the already unsteady progress toward democracy in Egypt and raise serious doubts about whether the current military authorities will permit a successful transition from Army rule.

January 2, 2012 | National Review Online's The Corner

As the race to win the Iowa caucus comes down to the wire, Rep. Ron Paul’s views on foreign policy have rightfully come under attack. Paul, who proudly touts his willingness to slash the defense budget, end the war in Afghanistan, and bring U.S. troops home from Europe and Asia, does have a group of hardcore supporters, but is he fit to be commander-in-chief?

December 30, 2011 | Shadow Government

In his 2009 Inaugural Address, President Obama laid down a marker to those who would threaten the United States:

"We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense.  And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken -- you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

December 30, 2011 | Wall Street Journal

When the dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize from his prison cell, the Chinese government reacted hysterically—denouncing the Nobel Committee, retaliating against Norway diplomatically and trying to intimidate foreign governments out of sending representatives to the ceremony.

December 29, 2011 | The Weekly Standard Blog

Another country has calculated that Christmas time is a good time to launch a crackdown on human rights. Following China’s harsh sentencing of two writers on subversion charges, Egyptian security forces today rolled up to several prominent democracy and human rights NGOs in Cairo and shut them down, confiscated materials, and detained employees onsite for questioning.

December 26, 2011 | The Weekly Standard Blog

The Communist Party sends more greetings of the season. A Guizhou court today sentenced another mainland activist, Chen Xi of Guizhou, to 10 years, on subversion charges for his writing. Chen Xi's sentence follows the 9-year sentence on similar charges for Chen Wei passed down by a Sichuan court on December 23. The two Chens are not related to each other.

December 25, 2011 | The Weeky Standard Blog

The Washington Post has an interesting story on the escalating verbal attacks from theChinese government on America's top diplomat in Hong Kong, Stephen Young.