Journal of International Studies

Moderates within the Syrian opposition are increasingly losing ground—literally and figuratively—to extremists, and the Obama administration is partly to blame. If this trend persists, America is likely to lose its ability to shape events in Syria, which will have disastrous consequences there and beyond. Worse still, it may already be too late to reverse course. It has become obvious that the administration’s reluctance to more robustly strengthen Syrian moderates and the extremists’ ascendancy are two sides of the same coin. Largely because radical groups generally have access to higher-power weaponry than what the U.S. has been willing to provide to the moderates, recruits are flocking to the extremists’ ranks. Nobody should have been surprised by   reports late last month  that thirteen powerful rebel factions formally broke with the exiled Syrian National Coalition—the political arm of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA)—to form an Islamist alliance that in...

The attempt to play chicken with government operations and the nation's creditworthiness, and the shutdown and anxiety in financial markets resulting from the attempt,   already have harmed U.S. foreign relations and interests overseas . This is part of a much broader   array of major costs and damages that will be adding up for a long time. But if you are interested in avoiding an Iranian nuclear weapon—the focus of negotiations this week in Geneva—at least the way the crisis of governance in Washington ended provides a silver lining to this sorry chapter in American political history. This is because if President Obama is going to reach an agreement to keep the Iranian nuclear program peaceful and to make that agreement stick, he needs to demonstrate the ability and willingness to rein in destructive behavior in Congress that would preclude such an agreement. The administration will need Congressional cooperation to undo sanctions that were erected supposedly to indu...

In 1972, Duke University professor James David Barber brought out a book that immediately was heralded as a seminal study of presidential character. Titled   The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House , the book looked at qualities of temperament and personality in assessing how the country’s chief executives approached the presidency—and how that in turn contributed to their success or failure in the office. Although there were flaws in Barber’s approach, particularly in his efforts to typecast the personalities of various presidents, it does indeed lay before us an interesting and worthy matrix for assessing how various presidents approach the job and the ultimate quality of their leadership. So let’s apply the Barber matrix to the presidential incumbent, Barack Obama. Barber, who died in 2004, assessed presidents based on two indices: first, whether they were "positive" or "negative"; and, second, whether they were "ac...

Perhaps the most successful U.S. diplomacy of the past half century was the management by Richard Nixon, aided by Henry Kissinger, of relations with other major powers in the early 1970s, and in particular the triangular diplomacy involving the Soviet Union and China. Although some of what Nixon and Kissinger did was specific to the issues and circumstances of the great power politics of their time, their performance holds some transferable lessons. We should think carefully about the major attributes of their diplomatic approach and strategy. They were not stuck in a bipolar mold, even though the Cold War was widely perceived as a world-shaping bipolar confrontation. They did not conceptually divide the world into good guys with whom to cooperate and bad guys to be opposed or shunned. They did not let diplomacy be limited by repugnance over someone else's domestic policies. The U.S.S.R. of the 1970s was a sclerotic and intolerant dictatorship, and China at the time was...

The Turkish government’s  recent decision  to award its high-altitude missile defense contract to China conjured images of the residents of Troy rejoicing the large, Greek-made wooden horse near the end of the Trojan Wars. That story did not have a pleasant end for the Trojans. It is not clear how this one will play out for Ankara and its NATO allies. Turkey’s decision to choose the Chinese-made FD-2000  over the U.S.-made Patriot PAC-3 , the Russian-made S-400, and the French-Italian EUROSAM SAMP/T may seem odd for a country that has been a member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) since 1952. 22 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, commitment to NATO and good relations with Washington remain the cornerstones of Ankara’s foreign policy calculus. That calculation seems irreconcilable with the fact that the manufacturer of the FD-2000, CPMIEC (China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation),  is under U.S. sanctions  for doing busin...

Earlier this month, Tunisia’s main political parties  signed an agreement  on how to proceed in its transition to a consolidated democracy. While Tunisia’s process so far has been slow and steady, it has also been largely devoid of internal or external meddling like the coup d’état in Egypt or outside interference in Libya or Syria. These factors could actually lead to its ultimate success and should be applauded. When in Tunisia last month, many I spoke to just want things to be normal and to provide for their family, without all of the crises. There are major challenges that remain ahead though, notably on the economic and security fronts. All of the main political parties including the Islamist party Ennahda, which leads the current government, agreed to a new road map to complete Tunisia’s transition period. The only surprise was that the Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki’s Congrès Pour la République (CPR) party did not sign the roadmap even though Marzouki himself...

Europe heaved a sigh of relief with Angela Merkel’s reelection as German chancellor. She has been a key support during the eurozone’s fiscal-financial problems, and all of Europe knows how important Berlin’s support will remain going forward. Of course, Merkel  has yet to settle on the specifics  of her coalition government. On Wednesday the Green Party announced that it will end unprecedented talks with the Christian Democrats and not serve as a coalition partner. Now a Grand Coalition with the Social Democrats looms. If the German media are right, a lot of compromise will go into that effort. But even with all the prospective political give and take, Europe can count on future German support. Economic and financial imperatives will compel it. Even if the vote had gone less well than it did, the country simply is too tied to the euro and the union to turn away. Berlin may negotiate its best deal, but it knows that if it were to let the common currency fail, even in par...