Journal of International Studies

Obama can expect some difficult conversations when he heads to Asia in April.

President Obama   finds himself in a weakened state.   His health care la w   is sapping his political strength and generating intense anxiety among his Democratic troops in Congress. His performance rating is at an all-time low. His trust with the American people is deteriorating badly, as reflected in a recent   Quinnipiac University poll . His political capital is ebbing. And into this dire political situation comes a new challenge that will test the president’s resolve and mettle in a big way. If he wants to save his high-stakes effort to foster a negotiated agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, he must take on, directly, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel lobby in the United States. If he doesn’t, Congress will kill his effort; the opportunity to find a peaceful solution will be lost; and  chances for war with Iran will rise ominously . Indeed, administration officials have warned that the current congressional push for...

Moroccan King Mohammed VI will meet with President Barack Obama in Washington on November 22, amid cascading conflict in the Arab world and new challenges in Arab-American relations. The possibility of US-Iranian detente has stirred hopes among many in the West that a peaceful resolution of the nuclear standoff is possible—but Gulf states and others in the region have voiced concerns about the new initiative. The same may be said of Washington’s UN-brokered accord with Moscow and Damascus calling for the peaceful destruction of the Syrian regime’s chemical-weapons stockpiles: Americans weary of war are relieved by the avoidance of a new military entanglement, whereas the Saudi government has dubbed the agreement “blatantly perfidious”—a sentiment shared by others in the region. Midway into the cloistered US-backed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, fears abound that the process will come to naught and lead to a new Intifada. Meanwhile, Iraqi streets bleed. Tunisians polarize and ra...

[This epilogue to Scahill's bestselling book,  Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield , is posted with the kind permission of its publisher, Nation Books.]  On January 21, 2013, Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term as president of the United States. Just as he had promised when he began his first campaign for president six years earlier, he pledged again to turn the page on history and take US foreign policy in a different direction. "A decade of war is now ending", Obama declared. "We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war."  Much of the media focus that day was on the new hairstyle of First Lady Michelle Obama, who appeared on the dais sporting freshly trimmed bangs, and on the celebrities in attendance, including hip-hop mogul Jay-Z and his wife, Beyonce, who performed the national anthem. But the day Obama was sworn in, a US drone strike hit Yemen. It was the third such attack...

In  Principles of War , Carl von Clausewitz states as his second rule governing strategy that a concentration of power against the enemy force is crucial to victory, as well as a willingness to suffer setbacks in strategically secondary engagements.  Many historical leaders have disregarded this principle and opted to commit important assets to sideshows of little strategic consequence. To the chagrin of Republicans, former US president George W Bush was one of them.  Phillip II had his Netherlands, Napoleon had his Portugal, Winston Churchill had his Gallipoli and the 43rd administration had the "global war on terror".  In this conflict, the elite of the US Army was bogged down in the Iraqi insurgency for the best part of a decade, with its intelligence distracted with such "vital" theatres as Afghanistan, Somalia or the Sahel.  While the struggle against terrorism certainly merited attention from the US defense establishment after 9/1...