Policy and the End of the Bush Administration

Spencer Ackerman has a spectacular article up about the State Department’s new policy document “Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers,” which is going to be published in November. The policy handbook has a lot of interesting things to say.
The handbook seeks to provide a framework for considering whether Washington should intervene in foreign countries’ counterinsurgency operations, [...]

More of Obama in the Middle

Yesterday, in his foreign policy speech, Barack Obama said

And just as we renew longstanding efforts, so must we shape new ones to meet new challenges. That’s why I’ll create a Shared Security Partnership Program – a new alliance of nations to strengthen cooperative efforts to take down global terrorist networks, while standing up against torture [...]

Should Gates Stay On?

Joe Klein fleshes out an idea I’ve sort of been mulling over since Andrew Sullivan floated it a few weeks ago, that Robert Gates should stay on as Secretary of Defence in an Obama administration. The core of the argument is really pretty simple; Gates has done a pretty fantastic job as Secretary of Defense [...]