Editor's Note: Michael O’Hanlon is coauthor with Martin Indyk and Kenneth Lieberthal of the new book, Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy. You can read more from him on the Global Public Square.
By Michael O'Hanlon – Special to CNN
Today's attacks in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan do offer proof of a still-resilient insurgency. They do cause a certain amount of angst among Afghans. They entail human casualties, too, even if largely to the attackers themselves.
But we must think strategically and not fall prey to an obvious Taliban propaganda ploy. The attacks were on balance of only modest effectiveness (at most), and were suppressed almost entirely by Afghan forces.
They were the first of this type in Kabul in half a year. They would be hard to stop frankly in a Western city, requiring as they did only small arms for the most part, so we should hardly be surprised that they can't always be prevented. They are an attempt by the enemy to use limited means to maximize psychological shock value. FULL POST
Welcome to Uncommon Ground, a new discussion series on CNN Digital that brings people together from around the world for unlikely conversations.
Wednesday at 10:15a.m. EST, we’re discussing the ongoing violence in Syria with a panel of leading analysts from Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria and Russia.
Is Syria in civil war? Will the army splinter? Should the international community intervene? What would a post-Assad Syrai look like?
You can join the discussion directly and pose your own questions.
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Editor's Note: Jiang Xueqin is a deputy principal at Peking University High School and the director of its International Division. He has previously worked as a journalist, a documentary film-maker, and a United Nations press officer.
By Jiang Xueqin, The Diplomat
One writer who must be excited right now about basketball team the New York Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin is Michael Lewis, America’s best writer of non-fiction. In his book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis profiles the Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane, as he stole unseen stars from wealthier teams by exploiting baseball’s prejudices; unlike the rest of baseball, Beane wasn’t interested in good looking athletic players who either hit homeruns or struck out nobly, but in smart players who got on base. In The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, Lewis uses the inspiring rags-to-riches story of a poor homeless African-American high school player to explain how football strategy and tactics have evolved over the years.
And at long last, with the arrival of Jeremy Lin onto the world stage, Michael Lewis can complete his sports trilogy. FULL POST
Editor's Note: The following image and text is from The Institute of Modern Russia's photography exhibition "Russian Visionaries. Into the Light." The photograph is by Kirill Nikitenko. The text is by Garry Kasparov, the Russian political activist and former World Chess Champion.
The GOP presidential candidates sparred Tuesday night on national security, but there was at least one point of agreement among them, or at least between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.
“I think that we ought to have an H-1 visa that goes with every graduate degree in math, science and engineering so that people stay here,” said Gingrich.
“I'd staple a green card to the diploma of anybody who's got a degree of math, science, a Masters degree, Ph.D,” said Romney.
The candidates explained that keeping foreign-born students who study science, technology, engineering or math in the U.S. was an important step in creating new technologies, new industries and new jobs.
The U.S. Census Bureau recently released a report on foreign-born bachelor’s degree holders living in the U.S. The numbers give some sense of how U.S. universities remain magnets for those seeking to study science, math or engineering. There are now 4.2 million foreign-born science and engineering bachelor's degree holders in the U.S., a number double the population of Houston, Texas, for comparison.
Editor's Note: Pavel Khodorkovsky is the son of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a wealthy Russian businessman who was jailed in Russia in 2003 and charged with fraud. Amnesty International and numerous international observers contend that he was jailed for political reasons. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Pavel Khodorkovsky.
By Pavel Khodorkovsky - Special to CNN
It’s been eight years since Vladimir Putin’s thugs forcibly removed my father, Mikhail, from a plane and took him to prison.
The last time I saw him was a few weeks before his arrest, when he was visiting me at college in Boston. There were already concerns about his safety in Russia; his business partner, Platon Lebedev, had been locked up earlier that summer. And despite the urging of American friends and colleagues to stay here, my father remained firm and returned home.
In the intervening eight years, after enduring two show trials and countless other indignities – all while the international community’s condemnation of his imprisonment fell on deaf ears within the corrupt Russian regime – my father has not given up hope.
Editor's Note: Dr. James M. Lindsay is a Senior Vice President at the Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. Visit his blog here and follow him on Twitter.
By James M. Lindsay
Rick Perry is making his media rounds. He discussed defense and foreign policy with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour. The veteran foreign correspondent asked if a President Perry would advocate a preemptive American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Perry pointed out that the United States has few good options:
Well, here’s where we find ourselves with two really bad—positions. We’re either going to allow this madman to have become—a in control of a nuclear device or we are going to have a nuclear strike, or excuse me—a military strike—a to keep that from occurring, either the Israelis unilaterally, or—in a bilateral—or multilateral way— with their allies.
When Amanpour pressed for a yes or no answer, Perry said:
I never would take a military option off the table when it comes to dealing with this individual.
So count that as “maybe.” That’s the position the Obama White House has taken. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Dr. James M. Lindsay is a Senior Vice President at the Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. Visit his blog here and follow him on Twitter.
By James M. Lindsay
Only a smattering of foreign policy news from the campaign trail over the weekend:
Herman Cain drew some barbs on the Sunday morning news shows for not knowing enough about foreign policy. Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson told David Gregory on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “you can’t have presidential candidates and not have some kind of interest and degree and knowledge of foreign policy.” Later on the show, Gregory probed GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman on the gaps in Cain’s foreign policy knowledge. The former Utah governor answered:
Well, I think there needs to be a baseline, a level of knowledge from a foreign policy standpoint. But specific to China, I mean, as far as the eye can see into the 21st Century, the United States and China are on the world stage. And whether that’s in the economic realm or whether it’s in the security realm, we’ve got to figure out how to make that relationship work. And it would be nice to have a president in office who actually had a head-start and actually knew them intimately well in terms of the economics and the security issues involved.
On ABC’s “This Week,” former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Cain’s comment on Uzbekistan “wasn’t the greatest thing to say if you’re running for president.” FULL POST
Editor's Note: Christopher Sabatini is editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas. Ryan Berger is policy advisor at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas.
By Christopher Sabatini and Ryan Berger - Special to CNN
The revelation of the strange plot of the Iranian Quds Force’s allegedly contracting a Mexican criminal gang to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. has brought attention to Iranian activities and Islamic extremism south of the U.S. border. Such concerns are nothing new, and since 9/11 a number of reports and allegations have been made of Iranian collusion with governments and the activities of groups like Hezbollah in the hemisphere.
The focus of most of those has been Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The fiery, populist former lieutenant colonel’s courting of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - and his unabashed anti-Americanism and stated declarations to challenge imperialism - have led to all sorts of speculation regarding the degree of intimacy between Caracas and Tehran. FULL POST
Editor’s Note: Yossi Melman is a feature writer and columnist for Haaretz, specializing in strategic issues. He writes about Israel’s intelligence community, nuclear matters and terrorism.
By Yossi Melman – Special to CNN
In the shadow war between Hamas and the State of Israel, the Islamic Palestinian militant movement Hamas had the upper hand this week. Their victory in securing the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners comes at the expense of their domestic rival - the moderate Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas. This is bad news for peace in the Middle East.
Tuesday, in a dramatic prisoner's swap, Israel released 477 male and female Palestinian prisoners - some of them mass murders - and is due to release additional 550 in two months in return for one of its soldiers, Gilad Shalit, who was in Hamas captivity in Gaza for 64 months.
The Shalit deal is above all a result of a humiliating failure of the Israeli intelligence community as a whole but in particular on the part of the General Security Services (Shin Bet), the organization responsible for intelligence coverage of the territories - the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The outcome was that the Israeli Defense Forces were not able to even explore the operational feasibility of a rescue mission. FULL POST
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