Candidate Clinton has penned her contribution on foreign policy for the ongoing feature in Foreign Affairs on the foreign policies of the major presidential contenders.I haven't found much of value in the contributions thus far, and Senator Clinton's is no exception. Her world view essentially emphasizes "power and principle." I'm not entirely clear how that …
Tag: 2008 US presidential election
Abe’s better half in the FT
David Pilling talks with Abe Akie in this weekend's Lunch with the FT, an exchange that apparently took place back in April before the Abes traveled to Washington, DC.The interesting thing I find in Pilling's article is the little glimmers of a genuine personality that appear. While that is basically the point of Pilling's interview …
A cure for Japan’s fear of Democrats
While Asia has been largely absent from debates among Republican and Democratic candidates for their respective parties' presidential nominations — much to my chagrin — the Washington Post reports that John Hamre of CSIS organized a dinner for Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo to meet with the foreign policy advisers of a number of …
Bland, blander, blandest
CFR has compiled a brief rundown of where the presidential candidates from both parties stand on North Korea.There are few positions that stand out: for the most part Democrats repeat the charge from 2004 that President Bush is to blame for refusing to engage directly with North Korea in bilateral talks, Republicans generally holding back …
The hint of a worldview
Barack Obama has delivered his own "major foreign policy speech," at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. (Full text available here; NY Times article here.)This speech is not worth reading for its policy proposals, which are more or less standard Democratic boilerplate proposals. Rather, as Scott Paul writes at The Washington Note, this kind of …
The shape of months to come?
The Council on Foreign Relations links to a "major" foreign policy speech by former governor of Massachusetts and Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney, delivered at Texas A & M with former President George H.W. Bush in attendance.Numbers of times China mentioned?Zero.Number of times Asia mentioned?Zero.How a serious presidential candidate can deliver a foreign policy …
China in charge
The FT ran an article on Wednesday dissecting the process of releasing the frozen $25 million to North Korea. I was especially struck by this line:Several people familiar with the debate said Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary, agreed to overrule officials responsible for terrorism financing, who objected to the move, after Beijing warned that a failure …
"Nobody running in 2008 is qualified to be president"
So says The New Republic's John Judis, in an article that more or less sums up my take on the US presidential election that is still more than a year and a half away.Judis makes the case that foreign policy being the unique preserve of the presidency, the main criteria by which to evaluate presidential …
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Preserving American dynamism
As the 2008 US presidential election ramps up, it seems that the biggest looming question -- perhaps even bigger than Iraq -- is the question of how to preserve America's economic dynamism in the face of intense competition from the BRICs and others. Will the US economy and society be able to adapt successfully to …
Dissecting the second Armitage-Nye Report, part 1
Having read the new Armitage-Nye Report published by CSIS -- once again, available here -- I shall, as promised, provide more thorough commentary on its contents.As previously noted, the report is subtitled "Getting Asia Right Through 2020," with its purpose being to outline US Asia policy for the next two to three presidential administrations, regardless …
Continue reading Dissecting the second Armitage-Nye Report, part 1
Tobias S. Harris 