Our recent health care debate has failed to tackle the real challenges.

A conversation with Brent Scowcroft.

The success of Barack Obama’s presidency will depend on his domestic accomplishments: health care, financial reform and the overall state of the economy. His presidency could be wrecked by foreign policy developments; it cannot be redeemed by them. The five big foreign policy challenges that the Administration confronts—North Korea, Iran, Middle East peace, Af-Pak and […]

At the October 2009 New York gala dinner of the International Crisis Group, former President Bill Clinton paid a moving tribute to the presidency of the man he had beaten, George H.W. Bush. Clinton said that two brave decisions Bush 41 made vastly eased the challenges of Clinton’s presidency. Clinton cited, first, Bush’s decision to […]

How to grade President Obama’s first year in office? As Zhou Enlai replied when asked his opinion of the French Revolution, “It’s too soon to say.” Obama has set in motion a host of bold reforms that could break some of America’s deepest political impasses, or cause massive disillusionment if they fail. The big question […]

Like almost everybody else, I’ve spent much of the past year criticizing Barack Obama, second-guessing many of his decisions, finding fault with the incompetence of some of his appointees. Perhaps it sounds peculiar, then, but when I look back on the year as a whole, I find that I am nevertheless still inclined to withhold […]

Barack Obama has based his policies as President on two assumptions. One year after his election both assumptions appear to have been mistaken.His domestic policies have been based on the assumption that economic distress would produce an increased demand for, or at least acceptance of, big government policies. The financial crisis of September 2008 had […]

Every time I’m about to pile on President Obama for his foreign policy errors, I have to check myself and recall his painful starting point. George W. Bush left him with the worst heap of inflammatory international garbage and country drownings in American history. The only problem Bush made better, in fact much better, was […]

One year into his first term, we pretty much knew where a new President was located on the classical ideological axes of American foreign policy: internationalism vs. nationalism, realpolitik (Nixon, George H.W. Bush) vs. idealpolitik (Jimmy Carter). Within internationalism, there has always been an additional distinction: exemplarism vs. interventionism. Would America shine by example and […]

Perhaps the satirists at the Onion were not joking when they reported in November 2008 that Barack Obama had just been given the worst job in the country. Look what he inherited: a global economic crisis, two difficult wars, erosion of the non-proliferation regime by North Korea and Iran, deterioration of the Middle East peace […]