Research Library

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.”

As Israeli-Palestinian peace talks "stumble toward collapse," blogs fellow Joe Barnes, the U.S. "needs a thorough rethink" about its role in negotiations.

Despite mounting efforts toward achieving gender equality, the Middle East and North Africa region continues to rank the lowest worldwide when it comes to women's economic participation and opportunity.

With the Yemeni government in a state of transition, the time is right to propose legislation that would protect young girls from the physical, emotional and economic harms of early marriage.