Jim Lobe

While the United States will remain the world’s single most powerful country in 2025, it will be less dominant and more constrained in its freedom of action – even in the military sphere – than it is now, according to a major new report released here Thursday by the government’s National Intelligence council (NIC). Instead, … Continue reading “Intelligence Analysts See Multi-Polar, Risky World By 2025”

A bipartisan group of some three dozen senior foreign policy figures has released a statement calling for President-elect Barack Obama to make strengthening long-troubled US relations with the United Nations a major priority in his new administration. It calls, among other things, for the incoming administration to pay US dues to the world body on … Continue reading “Obama Urged to Strengthen Ties with UN”

A think-tank closely tied to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is calling for a "dramatic strategic shift" in Washington’s policy toward Pakistan, one designed to both strengthen civilian institutions and promote an effective counter-insurgency against al-Qaeda and indigenous Islamist extremists in the tribal areas along the Afghan border who increasingly threaten the country’s stability. In a … Continue reading “Obama-Tied Think-Tank Calls for Pakistan Shift”

A strategy of threats and "provocations" against Iran by the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama is likely to be counterproductive, according to a new report released here Friday by a group of 20 former top U.S. diplomats and regional experts. The group, co-chaired by former UN Ambassador Thomas Pickering and James Dobbins, a top … Continue reading “Obama Advised to Forgo More Threats to Iran”

While much of the world and many of his U.S. supporters are expecting a sharp break with his predecessor’s foreign policy after President-elect Barack Obama takes office Jan. 20, they may be surprised by the degree of continuity between the two administrations. That continuity – which would be made more concrete if, as expected, Pentagon … Continue reading “Obama’s Foreign Policy:
No Sharp Break From Bush”

President-elect Barack Obama should make the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility a top priority when he takes office Jan. 20, U.S. and international human rights groups said Monday. They are also calling for the abolition of the military commissions that have begun trying suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo, and for them to be … Continue reading “First, Close Gitmo,
Say Rights Groups”

Despite the expenditure of nearly five billion dollars in US military, security, and economic assistance, the cultivation of coca leaf and production of cocaine in Colombia actually increased between 2000 and 2007, according to a major review by the US Congress’s independent investigative agency. In a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office … Continue reading “Coca Cultivation Up Despite Six Years of Plan Colombia”

While a President Barack Hussein Obama will present a strikingly different face of the United States to the rest of the world, how different his actual foreign policy will be remains unclear. On the one hand, Obama has repeatedly stressed the importance of multilateralism and diplomatic re-engagement with the world, including longtime US adversaries such … Continue reading “Obama to Seek Global Re-engagement, But How Much?”

As the United States waded ever deeper into the Indochinese quagmire in the early 1960s, the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara called for "two, three, many Vietnams" to bog down the superpower in unwinnable Third World conflicts that would drain its treasury and overstretch its military. While today’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not quite … Continue reading “Two, Three, Many Grand Bargains?”

Increasingly frustrated by the "downward spiral" that the U.S. intelligence community sees in Afghanistan, the Pentagon appears to be moving in support of engaging leaders of the resurgent Taliban who are prepared to disassociate themselves from al Qaeda. While the seeds for that strategy are being planted now, the next U.S. president – be it … Continue reading “Moving Towards a ‘Grand Bargain’ in Afghanistan”