Us politics

The last six years have been fallow ones for the neoconservatives. From around 2005, when Iraq began its descent into chaos, the ideology that did so much to shape US foreign policy became marginalised as, first, George W Bush turned increasingly realist and, then, Barack Obama continued where his predecessor left off. While ideas are not responsible for the people who hold them, it did not help that, after President Bush left office, those who espoused a neoconservative outlook included the likes of Sarah Palin. Funding for democracy-promotion was slashed, and the focus for aid programmes became “accountability” – with the word “democracy” banished from sight. To declare oneself a

When John Huntsman, the Republican governor of Utah, accepted Barack Obama’s offer of the ambassadorship to China it seemed to be further evidence that Obama was going to be a two term president. The ambitious Huntsman, who would stand a good chance in a Republican primary, appeared to have decided that the nomination in 2012 wasn’t worth having. So it is a sign of the shifting political tide that Huntsman is now indicating that he may resign as ambassador to China soon and run for the Republican nomination. With Obama’s approval rating now significantly below 50 percent, the Republican nomination is now a far more appealing prize. There is, unusually for

Barack Obama has had a great couple of weeks. First DADT was repealed and then START was ratified by the Senate, safeguarding a major Obama foreign policy initiative In truth, both issues are peripheral to voter concerns. To them, the jobless recovery is what matters. New figures show that the unemployment rate in the US has jumped to a seven-month high of 9.8 per cent. Nor did the White House get all it wanted from Congress recently. As the Senate was debating DADT, the House of Representatives killed a provision in a defence bill to transfer detainees from Guantanamo to the US. But in politics having momentum – the Big Mo

This week will give Barack Obama’s liberal credentials a significant boost. On December 18th, the Senate had a  successful cloture vote in favour of a bill to repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. DADT as it is commonly known restricts the US military from trying to discover or reveal closeted gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members, while it bars those who are openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual from military service. The bill has now passed in both Houses of Congress and it only awaits President Obama’s signature. As my friend R. Clarke Cooper, Executive Director of the Log Cabin Republicans, and one of several prominent ex-officers to lead the fight against

When the Obama administration started its latest Middle East initiative, it was amid great fanfare. I blogged – sceptically — about the optimism exuding from the State Department at the time. Now, however, the US government has given up its push for a freeze in Jewish settlement construction as quietly as possible. As Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution puts it: “The Middle East peace process just died, but nobody seems to be in mourning. Twenty months of U.S. efforts to freeze Israeli settlement activity to create a conducive environment for negotiations have produced only deadlock.” Keen for the demise of the latest US effort to be seen favourably, Hillary

Now the Wikileaks are beginning to become dangerous. Before, the leaks contained high-level tittle-tattle, confirmation of existing analyses and embarrassingly accurate portraits of world leaders. I still thought it wrong to regurgitate this data, as it will lead to more secrecy, bilateral problems and potentially even conflicts – the things that Julian Assange claims he is seeking to avoid. Yet I told NPR that the idea of prosecuting the Wikileaks founder for treason was far-fetched; he is not a US citizen and it was not clear to me what kind of charges could be brought against him in the US courts. Now, however, with the publication of data which will

The GOP is ambling towards the start of the 2012 nominations race. Two probable candidates are busy pitching their media tents. Sarah Palin is on a coast to coast tour, flogging her latest book; she has also been cheering on her daughter on Dancing with the Stars and she recently gutted a halibut on her Alaskan reality TV show. It’s all action and personality from the Mamma Grissly. By contrast, the cerebral Mitt Romney has agreed to appear on…Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. Leno makes Parky look almost vital. As one Democrat strategist observed: “On the hipness scale, this is far from Bristol Palin on ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ It’s more

Like everyone else, I have poured over the latest cache of Wikileaks – the publication of which I find irresponsible and destructive. There are several pieces of information now in the public domain that will cause the US diplomatic embarrassment or worse may even help the regimes in Tehran, Pyongyang and Moscow. Just ask yourself a few questions. Will the West be safer if the Saudi leader cannot trust that a conversation he has with a US envoy will remain secret? Will that help or hinder Iran’s nuclear prpgramme? Will US-German links be improved by the knowledge that US diplomats are sceptical of Angela Merkel’s policies? Will that aid G20