Foreign Policy

A national defense analyst and former State Department official to the Bush administration says Barack Obama is on the road to re-Carterizing America.

Dr. Kim R. Holmes, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies and director of the Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation, served as an assistant secretary of state during George W. Bush's first term. In a recent op-ed in The Washington Times, he points out that irresponsible foreign policies have invited huge and costly disasters twice in modern U.S. history.

In the 1920s and 1930s, he notes, European appeasers allowed dictators like Adolph Hitler to come to power, leading to the carnage of World War II. But the 1970s brought Jimmy Carter, who promised "a whole new approach to American foreign policy that basically challenged the post-war peace-through-strength model that we had engaged in the previous 25 years," Holmes explains...

Thirty religious leaders have sent a letter to the Obama administration asking the president why he has not appointed an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom after almost 15 months in office.

The letter, dated Match 30, requests that a person with advanced foreign-policy experience and expertise be named along with the announcement of a government strategy for promoting religious freedom, which is increasingly under attack around the world. It also asks that this official have expertise in religion.

"President Obama has said some fine words about religious freedom, but getting an ambassador in place is not a priority," said Thomas Farr, one of the signers and the former director of the State Department's Office of Religious Freedom as well as a senior fellow at the Berkley Center at Georgetown University....

The United States expressed mild disappointment Friday that Iran withheld a decision on whether to accept a U.N.-coordinated plan that could ease fears about Iran's potential for making a nuclear weapon.

The U.S., along with Russia and France, officially endorsed the plan Friday. The State Department said it was unhappy that Iran was not ready to embrace the plan, which calls for Iran to ship most of its low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment. The resulting fuel is to be used for a research reactor in Tehran that makes medical isotopes and is under regular monitoring by a U.N. agency.

The plan is attractive from the U.S. point of view because it would consume a large proportion of Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium, thereby limiting the potential for it to secretly convert it into uranium suitable for making a nuclear weapon. Iran denies it has any intention of making a nuclear weapon...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After dialing back his attacks on President Obama's foreign policy, former Vice President Dick Cheney says the administration has damaged U.S. ties with key allies, dangerously wavered in Afghanistan, undermined progress in Iraq and sabotaged the Bush administration's national security legacy.

In a hard-hitting, wide-ranging speech Wednesday for a conservative gathering, Cheney targeted the administration's decision-making process on how to proceed in Afghanistan, saying Obama has failed to give troops on the ground a clear mission or defined goals and appeared "afraid to make a decision."

"The White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger," Cheney said at the Center for Security Policy. "Make no mistake, signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries"...

(CNSNews.com) – From the time he entered the White House, President Obama frequently has spoken about having “inherited” an economic mess, and he has been criticized for it. But the expression arguably has been used even more often by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Nine months later, it is a theme she returns to regularly at home and abroad.

During her most recent trip, a six-day visit to Western Europe and Russia earlier this month, Clinton used the phrase publicly at least four times on three occasions.

At a joint press conference with her British counterpart David Miliband in London on October 11, she said with regard to Afghanistan, “We have been in office about nine months. We obviously believe that the prior eight years were not as effective or focused as they might have been … our challenge has been to take what we inherited”...

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that the threat of sanctions against Iran would be counterproductive, resisting U.S. efforts to win agreement for measures if Iran fails to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.

Lavrov spoke following talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is trying to gauge Moscow's willingness to join the U.S. in imposing sanctions if Iran fails to come clean on its nuclear activities.

Lavrov said Russia's position is that under current conditions even the threat of sanctions against Iran would be counterproductive...

GENTHOD, Switzerland - Iran and six world powers put nuclear talks back on track at a landmark session that included the highest-level bilateral contact with the U.S. in years. The meeting ended with a pledge to meet again this month, but disputes surfacing shortly after its conclusion indicated a rough road to agreement ahead.

Iran accepted a demand Thursday at the talks in a villa outside Geneva to allow U.N. inspectors into its covertly built enrichment plant, in a move that appeared to defuse tensions that had been building for weeks.

Western officials at the session said the Islamic republic had also agreed to allow Russia to take some of its enriched uranium and enrich it to higher levels for its research reactor in Tehran, a potentially significant move that would show greater flexibility by both sides...

(CNSNews.com) – Striking a defiant pose after being confronted by the West about more clandestine nuclear activity and just days before important international talks, Iran on Sunday began a series of fresh missile launches.

Sunday’s tests included the firing of medium-range rockets at targets up to 420 miles away, while on Monday morning the more sophisticated Shahab-3 missile was launched, Iranian media said.

State television said the surface-to-surface missiles hit their intended targets. They were fired as part of war games known as “Great Prophet IV,” a follow-up to “Great Prophet III” in July 2008...

In a preview of campaign refrains to come, prominent conservatives are saying President Obama’s foreign policy is hurting our allies and helping our enemies.

The “Obama as Carter” motif dominated the conservative Foreign Policy Institute’s annual conference, held in Washington Monday and Tuesday, with GOP headliners making unflattering comparisons to the 39th president to warn of a decline in U.S. international standing.

Obama’s stance on the presidential crisis in Honduras, willingness to engage Iran in nuclear talks and decision to scrap the Bush administration’s missile defense plans in Eastern Europe were popular targets...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says Iran has chosen to scale back much of its most troubling interference in Iraq, and she credits the strength of U.S. pressure.

Rice told The Associated Press in an interview Monday that she doesn't think the Iranians are acting out of goodwill. She says Iran is finding it harder to operate inside next-door Iraq, and claimed that a turning point was last spring's rout of Iranian-backed forces in the southern city of Basra...