Foreign Policy

Earlier this spring, Sen. Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley, invited a crew from the Christian Broadcasting Network into their Kentucky home for what turned into two full days of reality TV. In a half-hour special, "At Home With Rand Paul," the couple are seen bird-watching in the woods, going to McDonald's and, especially, talking about religion — their belief in traditional marriage and the senator's call for a "spiritual cleansing" in America....

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is taking a security, foreign policy and economic agenda to Northern Ireland for a meeting with heads of the leading industrial nations. He's looking for consensus on Syria while pushing for common ground on trade, economic growth and tax policies. Obama is set to depart Washington on Sunday night and arrive in Belfast on Monday, ahead of the Group of eight summit, and give a speech focused on Northern Ireland's reconciliation. Aides say the president...

When reporters are writing stories and don't yet have a necessary piece of information, they sometimes write "TK," meaning "to come. " I feel that way about Mitt Romney's foreign policy. Other than his support for Israel and rhetorical shots at Russia and China, it's a mystery what Romney thinks about major international issues and where he would take the country. Is Romney a neoconservative who has an idealistic vision of America transforming the world through military power and advocacy of democracy?

SYRIA Blast kills 7 in Homs; army seizes village A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car Saturday in the central Syrian city of Homs, tearing through an area largely populated by the regime's Alawite sect and killing seven people, a state-owned TV station reported. Meanwhile, army troops took control of a key village as the government presses its offensive to clear a path between the capital, Damascus, and its strongholds along the Mediterranean coast. With the help of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, President Bashar al-Assad's...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) criticized other legislators for ducking a confrontation with President Obama over Libya on Wednesday, saying Congress had become "not even a rubber stamp, but an irrelevancy" in matters of war. Paul made the comments in a speech Wednesday morning at the District campus of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. The freshman senator, a favorite of tea party groups, said he would try to derail a proposed resolution of support for the Libya military...

In 1953, an Army officer by the name of Irving Peress was promoted from captain to major. Peress was a leftist, possibly a communist, and word of his advancement in rank reached Sen. Joseph McCarthy in Washington. He asserted that the promotion proved the Army was "soft on communism," and he launched an investigation that transfixed the nation. Peress, by the way, was a mere dentist. He was the Susan Rice of his day. Rice, of course, is a much more substantial figure. She is the U.N. ambassador, a friend of Barack...

Like a caveman frozen in a glacier, Mitt Romney is a man trapped in time — from his archaic stance on women's rights to his belief in Herbert Hoover economics. And now it appears his foreign policy is stuck in the past, as well. This week, Romney is on a six-day, three-nation tour. The trip comes days after he promised in a speech on international affairs to usher in another "American century. " What does Romney's American century look like? His speech and his itinerary tell us volumes.

ARK OF THE LIBERTIES America and the World By Ted Widmer Hill and Wang. 355 pp. $25 "The United States stand at this moment at the summit of the world," Winston Churchill said in 1945. "I rejoice that this should be so. Let them act up to the level of their power and their responsibility, not for themselves but for others, for all men in all lands, and then a brighter day may dawn upon human history. " It's been a long time since American foreign policy has elicited that kind of hosanna from...

ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 4 -- Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is among several national security experts helping brief Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on foreign policy issues as she prepares to hit the campaign trail while cramming for a debate with her Democratic opponent, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), in less than a month, according to officials from Sen. John McCain 's campaign. Lieberman, who was the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee but is now an...

Let's face it: If the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips had failed, the foes of President Obama's foreign policy would have thrown the Book of Handy Jimmy Carter Epithets at him. Obama would have been called every name in that book: "feckless," "weak," "naive," "powerless," "irresolute," "supine" and "spineless. " We know this because all those words had been hurled at the president even before the Somali pirates grabbed Phillips. Two days before the rescue, John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under President George...

Deprived of a confirmation hearing on Susan E. Rice, congressional Republicans looking for a foreign policy fight may set their sights on Samantha Power, President Obama's nominee to replace Rice as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. During a long and outspoken career as a journalist, author and human rights activist, Power, 42, has provided extensive fodder for questions about her views on many U.S. foreign policy issues and the United Nations itself. In years past, she has written passionately...

PRESIDENTS AND not their aides are responsible for setting the course of U.S. foreign policy, and in the case of President Obama, that has been true arguably to a fault. It was Mr. Obama who insisted, over the objections of some advisers, that Israel's settlement construction should be the focus of his first-term Middle East peace initiative. It was he who decided that the surge of troops in Afghanistan should be accompanied by a fixed withdrawal date. And it was he who ...

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, 51, is the youngest candidate running for president of Iran. Saeed Jalili, who is 47, is the youngest. TEHRAN In Iran's first presidential debate of 2013 last week, candidate and Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf looked poised and prepared. While the other seven candidates were visibly flustered by the format, Ghalibaf regularly consulted a tablet that appeared to be an Apple...

Regarding the May 30 editorial " Counterterror contradiction ": The missing discussion continues to be: Why are we at war anyway? The United States, stepping in for the European powers after colonialism, started what the Pentagon has called the "long war" for control of the Middle East and North Africa. From Sept. 11, 2001, to the Boston Marathon bombings, we are under attack because we insist on choosing the governments of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the rest of the Islamic world, and hence are the violent...

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has injected itself into U.S. foreign policy making regarding Syria. It's not the first time lawmakers have moved to pressure a president to take a momentous step that could involve U.S. lives and treasure. As someone who worked for the panel in the late 1960s when it was chaired by Sen. J.W. Fulbright (D-Ark.), I participated in efforts to reshape Nixon administration policies related to the Vietnam War. I have enormous respect for the...

TEHRAN — Relief for Iran's ailing economy will be the top priority of Iranians on June 14, when they vote to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. Foreign policy, however, will take on extra significance in the election, as Iran struggles to undo the economic and diplomatic isolation of the past four years. Facing staggering unemployment and a high inflation rate, few of the candidates have offered more than a vague recipe for how they intend to revive the slumping economy.

Judging by the rhetoric coming out of the Obama and McCain campaigns this week, the United States is fated to endure another four years of bitter foreign policy partisanship, whoever wins this election. The rival nominees clashed on the proper approach to the war on terrorism; the way to handle the world's major trouble spots, including Iraq; and the approach America should take on everyone from Raúl Castro to the Iranian mullahs. If there is any hope of reconstructing what this country and the world desperately need -- an American national security...

With many economists now pointing to a looming recession, spending constraints are likely to further complicate the foreign policy options of the next U.S. president. So far, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are giving few signs as to how they would alter their priorities. McCain, in the first presidential debate, suggested a spending freeze on all but defense and entitlement programs. Obama said in an interview he might have to delay plans to double foreign assistance.

Regarding the May 3 front-page article " For Biden, dreams vs. reality ": Joe Biden would make a great president, but if Hillary Rodham Clinton runs, why should the country be deprived of his services? Mr. Biden should run again for vice president, for which there is no term limit. A Clinton administration would surely benefit from his substantial knowledge of foreign policy and Congress, and his presence on the ticket would provide reassuring continuity to the successes of the Obama administration.

Vali Nasr — dean of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins, a Middle East specialist and an acolyte of Richard Holbrooke — has always believed that the Middle East is the center of the world. He recently discovered to his dismay that the White House rather than the State Department generally decides foreign policy, that domestic politics often influence foreign affairs. Too bad he never spoke to some former secretaries of state, such as Warren Christopher or Colin...