"Islamic extremism is not an enemy that we will vanquish. It is a problem we will be forced to manage," writes Baker Institute fellow Joe Barnes in a commentary on the Islamist attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.
The United States and Cuba, it seems, are poised to resume diplomatic relations severed in 1961. Fellow Joe Barnes explains why normalization of relations between the two countries is simple "good sense."
Read "Normalizing U.S.-Cuban relations: Long overdue" in the Dec. 18, 2014, Baker Institute Blog.
Fellow Joe Barnes looks at the kerfuffle arising from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s critical — much-publicized — response to President Obama’s description of his foreign policy as “don’t do stupid stuff.”
A Malaysian airliner with 298 people on board crashed in Ukraine on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, amid allegations it was shot down. Baker Institute fellow Joe Barnes examines the possible diplomatic ramifications of the tragedy in the Baker Institute Blog.
One hundred years after the start of World War I, the legacies of decisions made by colonial powers during and after the period cast a long shadow over the Middle East.
President Obama’s commencement address at West Point on Wednesday was clearly aimed at deflecting rising criticism of his administration’s foreign policy. In particular, the speech was designed to address complaints that U.S. foreign policy under Obama has lacked strategic coherence and signaled a U.S. retreat from the international arena. The administration promoted the address as a platform for the president to describe his “vision” for U.S. foreign policy during the remainder of his term. To the extent that the speech did present a vision, it was not a particularly new one.
Talk of a “pivot to Asia” that supposedly would mark President Obama’s second term is “misplaced and even simplistic,” writes fellow Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. In a globalized world, “key U.S. relationships with strategic and commercial partners … cannot be addressed in isolation from one another. The convergence of U.S. ties and Asian ties with the Middle East is a case in point highlights how regions and issues are interconnected as never before.”