In publicizing the President’s State of the Union address, Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett announced that one of the achievements of which the administration was most proud in its first year in office was its action to repair “badly frayed global alliances” and “to restore America’s leadership in the world.” That leadership was not much in evidence in the President’s speech, which is only fitting, because it has been lacking in reality as well. The President name-checked the obvious foreign crises. Haiti, predictably, took pride of place, and here, at least, …
According to a Reuters report, French economy minister Christine Lagarde today applauded President Obama’s call for more regulation of the U.S. financial sector. “I am delighted that [the] president of the United States is following our lead,” she added. In a possibly related story, the Dow Jones yesterday dropped by 213 points, the largest one day drop since last October.
A new book has revealed sensational details about Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008, claiming that French President Nicolas Sarkozy bullied Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili into signing a vague and unenforceable ceasefire agreement, which eventually saw Russia illegally annex large parts of Georgia’s territory. Sarkozy is quoted as saying: “Where is Bush? Where are the Americans? They are not coming to save you. No Europeans are coming, either. You are alone. If you don’t sign, the Russian tanks will be here soon.” This is just another insight into the …
On October 30, the United States voted with the majority in the General Assembly to support U.N.-sponsored negotiations to regulate the conventional arms trade. The vote was 153-1, with the pariah state of Zimbabwe the lone hold out. More significantly, some of the world’s more ethically challenged arms traders – the states of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, India, Pakistan, and Cuba – abstained in the vote. U.S. support for the negotiations reversed the policy of the Bush Administration, but the U.S. agreed to participate only if the negotiations were conducted …
The tentative nuclear deal that the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) reportedly has reached with Iran has been widely hailed as a success for the Obama Administration’s engagement policy. For example, today a Washington Post article described the deal as “providing a major boost for the Obama administration as it seeks to engage the Islamic republic.” But a closer look at the negotiations gives strong reasons for concern. First of all, the focus on helping Iran to refuel its research reactor in Tehran …
Yesterday Iran, France, the US, and Russia held the first day of nuclear talks. The issue concerns what to with Iran’s stockpile enriched uranium, material that can reprocessed to fuel nuclear power plants or refined into nuclear weapons. The US wants Iran to ship the material abroad. The chief UN representative at the talks said they got off to a “good start.” According most reports, however, nothing substantive got done. In fact, the New York Times reported Iran negotiators started out threatening they first wanted new supplies of nuclear fuel. …
The Wall Street Journal reports: President Sarkozy in particular pushed hard [to reveal Tehran's secret facility Thursday]. He had been “frustrated” for months about Mr. Obama’s reluctance to confront Iran, a senior French government official told us, and saw an opportunity to change momentum. But the Administration told the French that it didn’t want to “spoil the image of success” for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N. and his homily calling for a world without nuclear weapons, according to the Paris daily Le Monde. So the Iran bombshell was pushed …
Since 2003, when negotiations began over Iran’s nuclear program, there has been no shortage of warnings, reports and punitive sanctions voiced, written or imposed by the international community. (A quick count shows at least three punitive European Union sanctions, four US sanctions, five U.N. resolutions, 20 IAEA reports, and an untold number of informal warnings.) Unfortunately, none have succeeded in slowing–much less stopping–Iran’s atomic ambitions, which many increasingly believe has a military dimension. But despite this track record, President Nicholas Sarkozy of France issued yet another ultimatum, stating: “Group of …
Tomorrow at 6:10 AM EST, President Barack Obama will deliver a keynote address at Cairo University. If past experience is any guide, he will continue apologizing for America’s “mistakes” and bend over backward trying to explain that the United States is not a threat to Islam. The President has already apologized for his country to nearly 3 billion people across Europe, the Muslim world, and the Americas. His top ten apologies include: 10. Apology for Guantanamo in Washington: “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority …
After furious diplomatic exchanges between the French and British governments, reports are emerging that Queen Elizabeth II — the only reigning monarch to have actively served in World War II — has finally been invited to commemorate the D-Day Landings in Normandy, France next week together with other heads of state, including Presidents Obama, Sarkozy and Prime Minister Brown. The late and somewhat begrudging invitation by the French Government should be delivered by President Sarkozy himself, together with an apology for the incredible lapse in judgment by the Quai d’Orsay. …
