Obama Foreign Policy Takes Cue From Aretha

White House engages with Russia, China, and more, and gets results

(NEWSER) - Diplomacy has become a major part of Barack Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan; the administration has been proactively recruiting regional allies, even ones that seem like strange bedfellows. Russia, for example, which suffered its own defeat in Afghanistan in part thanks to US covert operations, recently gave a general authorization allowing flights supplying US forces to fly through its airspace. “What we coalesced around is, this is a regional issue,” National Security Adviser Jim Jones tells Politico . More»

(NEWSER) - President Obama’s decision to scrap plans for a missile defense shield is a political bombshell, writes Robin Oakley for CNN. America’s allies in Poland and the Czech Republic are left holding the bag after expending significant political capital on the unpopular system. Abandoning it might make their lives easier, but it won’t make them likelier to embrace future US causes. Moscow, meanwhile, must choose whether to tout its victory or embrace the move as a sign of easing relations. More»

It may anger neocons, but he should keep his hands clean: Stephens

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama and his team clearly want to support the Iranian opposition, writes Philip Stephens, and Republicans such as John McCain have hammered the president for not condemning an election viewed as a sham. But for the Financial Times columnist, Obama is striking a shrewd balance between idealism and real-world politics. Obama knows, he writes, that "overt US backing for Mousavi would hand a weapon to Ahmadinejad." More»

Ex-senator blasts president for State Dept. nomination

(NEWSER) - President Obama doesn’t respect American values—he made that clear when he apologized for the “arrogance” of the Bush years in France last week, former US senator Rick Santorum writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer. But the president has outdone himself by nominating Harold Koh to be the top lawyer at the State Department, a move that confirms Obama's "disdain for American values." More»

Pundits too often advocate outdated 'imperial policy'

(NEWSER) - You just can’t please the Washington establishment, Fareed Zakaria observes in Newsweek. Beltway pundits almost universally blasted former President Bush’s foreign policy as arrogant and incompetent. But now that President Obama is charting a decidedly different course—closing Guantanamo, nixing torture, and signaling openness to talks with Syria, Iran, Russia, and elements of the Taliban—commentators still aren’t happy. More»