Jim Lobe

It was Jim Hoagland, the Washington Post‘s liberal hawk par excellence, who first pondered the possible foreign policy consequences of Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans. "Will post-Katrina America," he asked in his regular column, "be humbler, more cooperative, and more understanding of other nations’ problems and failures? "Or will the United States … Continue reading “Will Katrina Bring an Isolationist Revival?”

Amid increasing tension between the United States and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program, and growing concern about overstretched U.S. ground forces, the George W. Bush administration is moving steadily toward adopting the preemptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states as an integral part of its global military strategy. According to a March document by … Continue reading “Pentagon Foresees Preemptive Nuclear Strikes”

If U.S. President George W. Bush was counting on Sunday’s “Freedom Walk” and country music festival at the Pentagon to revive the patriotic spirit (and rally his sagging approval ratings) that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on their fourth anniversary, he is likely to be very disappointed. And it won’t be just because … Continue reading “Four Years After 9/11, Anti-Terror Strategy in Doubt”

With state, local, and federal officials still grappling with the extent of the devastation and human suffering inflicted by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and points east, suggestions that the already plunging political standing of President George W. Bush could also be a major casualty of the disaster have begun taking hold. While few observers … Continue reading “Iraq War Splurge Hits Home at 150 MPH”

The U.S. Treasury is paying out more each month to sustain the war in Iraq than it did during the Vietnam War, according to a new report that calls the ongoing conflict “the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years.” The 84-page report, “The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War … Continue reading “Iraq War Costs Now Exceed Vietnam’s”

Arms merchants from industrialized nations are increasingly finding Asia, which has replaced the Near East as the world’s top conventional-weapons market, the place to go, according to a new report [.pdf] by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Led by purchases by China and India, the world’s most populous region accounted for nearly 50 percent of … Continue reading “Asia Displaces Near East as Top Arms Importer”

One day after the formal presentation by a majority of Iraq’s elected leaders of their proposed constitution, opinions here and in Baghdad appeared divided over whether the draft would lead to greater democracy or the virtual, if not actual, disintegration of the country. While U.S. officials predictably put the most positive spin on the charter, … Continue reading “Iraq: Democracy or Disintegration?”

Anyone who still believes that the U.S. neoconservatives who led the drive to war in Iraq are diabolically clever geo-strategic masterminds should now consider Iran’s vastly improved position vis-à-vis its U.S.-occupied neighbor. Not only did Washington knock off Tehran’s arch-foe, Saddam Hussein, as well as the anti-Iranian Taliban in Afghanistan, but, with this week’s completion … Continue reading “Iran’s Growing Sway in Iraq Defies Neocons’ Logic”

While Republicans voice growing unease over U.S. President George W. Bush’s vow to "stay the course" in Iraq, Democrats remain deeply divided about their position on a conflict that most of them privately describe as a major foreign policy disaster. Despite the plunging popularity of the war – and of Bush’s approval ratings – leading … Continue reading “Democrats Fumble Iraq Policy”

Is realism finally, definitively, back in the driver’s seat of U.S. foreign policy? That’s the conclusion featured this week on the op-ed page of the nation’s most influential newspaper, the New York Times, in a column by the managing editor of the nation’s most influential foreign-policy journal, Foreign Affairs, published by the nation’s most influential … Continue reading “Realists Taking Over in Washington?”