Section: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (USA)
Obama’s ‘lead from behind’ security strategy will plague America for decades
Any administration’s national security strategy written for public consumption inevitably involves platitudes, vacuous rhetoric and self-congratulation. But the strategy announced last week for President Obama’s final two years in office sets new records in all these categories. As a sleep aid, it cannot be underestimated. Indeed,...
Why Minsk 2.0 is bound to fail
As negotiations between representatives of France, Germany, Ukraine, Russia and Russia’s proxies (aka the “separatists”) get underway in Minsk, the prospects for any fair and lasting peace accord are almost certainly nil.In Vladimir Putin’s “19th century” mentality, which so surprised and dismayed the US Secretary of State, one...
Who should pay for Ukraine?
In the colonies it was said of the English that Britannia did not so much rule the waves as it waived the rules. The same might be said of the International Monetary Fund as it readies itself for yet another outsize loan to Ukraine. To justify propping up a beleaguered Ukrainian economy, the IMF is egregiously bending its own rules on...
Breaking trust
This editorial will be published in the February 16 edition of The Weekly Standard.At what point do we—the institution and our nation—lose our soldiers’ trust? The trust that we will provide them the right resources—the training and equipment—to properly prepare them and lead them into harm’s way. Trust that we will appropriately take...
Facing up to Putin’s endgame
Less than a month after French President François Hollande mused that sanctions on Russia should be lifted (apparently reflecting the prevailing sentiment in much of the European Union), Russia has launched a new offensive through its proxies in Ukraine. Facing a full-blown crisis, with the Russian economy estimated to be contracting by at least...
The U-2 flies again: The Pentagon keeps the dragon lady
The Pentagon has released its budget request for 2016, and among the items being digested by the D.C.-based defense community is the reprieve of the storied U-2 spy plane. First built in 1955, the U-2 is, next to the B-52 bomber, the longest-lived airplane in the U.S. Air Force’s inventory. Today’s U-2s are dramatically modified from...
Goldman Sachs: ‘the geopolitical risk to oil supply has likely moved past its peak’
Goldman Sachs has a big, new report out on energy. It is a must read. Part of it fleshes out the bank’s theory that there is a “New Oil Order” where the balance of energy power is experiencing tectonic shifts with the US unwittingly at the center. Here is a bit of it:Finally, despite this knowledge of deepwater no longer being the marginal...
SOTU 2015: Experts comment on the president’s vision for foreign policy
At a World Affairs Council panel Wednesday night, four foreign policy experts graded President Obama’s State of the Union speech. According to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the speech failed to address “just how much the US role around the world is changing.” AEI’s Daniella Pletka noted that on the...
State of the Union symposium: What President Obama should say, and what he will say
Tomorrow, January 20th, is President Obama’s seventh State of the Union address. Observers will be watching closely as he lays out his agenda for his remaining time in office. We have gathered here the opinions of several AEI experts on what they think the president should cover in his speech, andwhat we might expect him to actually say....
Putin and Ukraine: Expect more brutal aggression from Russia’s desperate leader
The renewal of fighting this week over the Donetsk airport in Eastern Ukraine– an important symbolic target for Russian proxy fighters—should come as no surprise. The U.S. and Western Europe should expect even more extensive Russia-directed attacks.Why? Because of the choice Vladimir Putin made five years ago, confirmed on his reelection in 2012...
