Clinton to China: Don't Be Like Us on Environment

Secretary of State secured Arab buy-in, convinced prez to act

(NEWSER) - President Obama came late to the decision to authorize military force against Libya , but he did so based on the counsel and efforts of Hillary Clinton, reports the New York Times . The secretary of state was herself against intervention until she secured buy-in from Arab nations; she then joined a small cadre of administration advisers calling for action, and within hours had convinced her boss to act. Clinton “had the proof,” a top adviser says, “that not only was the Arab League in favor, but that the Emirates were serious about participating.” More»

Campaign feud gets in the way of foreign policy

(NEWSER) - Hillary Clinton visited Armenia last week, trying to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh disagreement and resolve the country's dispute with Turkey over the massacres of 1915. “You’ve got to salute Hillary,” writes Roger Cohen of the New York Times . “It’s a heck of a job being secretary of state when the White House puts a tight collar around the big issues — Afghanistan, Iran, Israel-Palestine and Iraq — and you’re left with Nagorno-Karabakh.” More»

President ignores Chinese warning against sit-down with Tibetan leader

(NEWSER) - Despite China's warning that a meeting with the Dalai Lama would "threaten trust and cooperation" with the US, President Obama still plans to sit down with the Tibetan spiritual leader when he visits Washington this month. "The president told China's leaders during his trip last year that he would meet with the Dalai Lama and he intends to do so, " a White House spokesman told reporters traveling with Obama on Air Force One today. More»

President's miscalculations include scale, momentum

(NEWSER) - Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts is the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s first-year political strategy, John F. Harris and Carol E. Lee write for Politico . The miscalculations cover “three major counts":

• Believing 2008 was a game-changer: The Obama team thought the "election represented something seismic." But "the assumption that Obama would be swimming mostly with the current rather than often against it on issues such as health care, financial regulation and global warming was naive in retrospect."

But government tries to tamp down drama

(NEWSER) - Google is a puppet of US foreign policy, Chinese state-owned media are reporting, calling the company's threat to pull out of China unless censorship is dropped a conspiracy by the US government to interfere in Chinese politics. One paper quotes a political scientist saying, "the Google incident is not just a commercial incident, it is a political incident"—a direct reversal of the Chinese government's previous response to the brouhaha and a move that threatens to escalate US-China tensions, CNN reports. More»