Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.
On taking office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama put Israeli settlements at the center of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Israel and the Palestinians had been at the table together for decades until the Obama/Mitchell/Rahm Emanuel decision to demand a total end to Israeli construction froze not the settlements but the diplomacy.
At the height of the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Soviets and their allies and satellites did not shirk human rights debates with the West. They had their arguments ready.
Reagan did not wait out the Soviets; he beat them.
It seems clear to me that the Obama Administration has no human rights policy. That is, while in some inchoate sense they would like respect for human rights to grow around the world, as all Americans would, they have no actual policy to achieve that goal - and they subordinate it to all their other policy goals.
There's always Tunisia. Amid the smoking ruins of the Middle East, there is that one encouraging success story.
An effective U.S. policy toward Sudan - one capable of changing the situation in the south and affecting the lives of its people - will require top-level attention and a great deal of energy. It should have three elements: aid, diplomacy, and financial disclosure.
The United States should help strengthen nongovernmental humanitarian agencies working in Sudan so that they can handle an increased flow of aid.
Syria's population is 74% Sunni Muslim.
The Middle East that Obama inherited in 2009 was largely at peace, for the surge in Iraq had beaten down the al Qaeda-linked groups. U.S. relations with traditional allies in the Gulf, Jordan, Israel and Egypt were very good. Iran was contained, its Revolutionary Guard forces at home.
Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. What the Syrians did in response, nothing. Israel has killed a number of terrorist leaders in Syria. Response? Nothing.
President Bush was disgusted by the Assad regime's oppression of the Syrian people as well as its support for terrorism, interference in Lebanon, and encouragement of jihadist attacks on Americans in Iraq.
While Argentina, Brazil, and Chile - what in textbooks used to be called the ABC countries - seem settled into democratic politics and free market economics, the Andean countries are in disarray.
The truce brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas depends, above all, on the borders between Egypt, Gaza and Israel.
Tunisia is small - just ten million, no great natural resources.
Never fight turf on turf. Fight it on the basis of ideas.
The accession to power in Pyongyang of Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il and grandson of Kim Il Sung, is a unique achievement in world politics.
If you say to the White House, 'Obama has been very unfriendly to Israel,' they say, 'What do you mean? It's the best military-to-military relationship ever.' And that part is true.
Thousands of members of Congress have come and gone over the years, their individual achievements hidden in committee reports, private compromises, amendments pushed through or blocked, and innumerable, unnoticed meetings.
