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- Moldova at the Crossroads, Samuel Charap
and Yekaterina Chertova
- Obama's New 'Just Peace' Policy, Susan
Thistlethwaite
- Afghan Women Still Need U.S. Support,
Peter Juul
- The Obama Doctrine, Lawrence Korb
- Excessive Secrecy Undermining Obama's
Human Rights Achievements, Ken Gude
- The Triumph of Human Rights Norms,
William Schulz
- Help for Hondurans After Their Elections,
Stephanie Miller
- Russia's Climate Credit Surplus Could
Distort Copenhagen Efforts, Samuel Charap
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Samuel Charap and Yekaterina
Chertova, "Moldova at the Crossroads," Center for American Progress,
December 15, 2009
Support from the West clearly cannot solve Moldova's problems.
Political bickering and grandstanding, and the habits of cronyism,
corrupt rule, and weak governance must come to an end if the country is
to have any hope of escaping from its current state. The
parliament’s
failure to elect a president last week was an unfortunate development,
but it should be the cause for greater U.S. engagement, not neglect.
Click here to
read the full article.
Susan Thistlethwaite,
"Obama's New 'Just Peace' Policy," Washington Post On Faith, December 14, 2009
President Obama broke with traditional
Just War thinking in his Nobel prize acceptance speech,
and so far almost no one seems to have noticed. The president said that
the "old architecture" of thinking about war and peace is "buckling."
What is required now, argued the president, is to "think in new ways
about the notions of just war and the imperatives of just peace."
Click here to
read the full article.
Peter Juul, "Afghan Women Still Need U.S. Support,"
Center for American Progress, December 14, 2009
President Barack Obama’s December
announcement of his administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan
strategy review,
in which he detailed his decision to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to
Afghanistan, failed to mention the consequences of a failed U.S. effort
there for Afghan women and girls. This omission is in stark contrast to
the president’s announcement of his first strategy review
in March, where he cited “the denial of basic human rights to the
Afghan people—especially women and girls” as one of the
terrible
consequences of international withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Click here to
read the full article.
Lawrence Korb, "The
Obama Doctrine," National Journal, December 14, 2009
The Obama doctrine, which the President
laid out in his Oslo speech,
came as a surprise to many conservative supporters of the Bush National
Security Strategy, like Robert Kagan, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin,
who praised the speech. It should not have surprised them. In his
campaign, Obama made many of these points. For example, he said he
would withdraw our combat troops from Iraq (the dumb war, or the unjust
or unnecessary war, that did not have the support of the international
community), increase forces in Afghanistan (the just war that had been
legitimized by the UN and NATO and was supported by 40,000 troops from
other nations), and take military action against Al Qaeda and their
Taliban supporters in Pakistan’s frontier areas if Pakistan would
not.
Click here to
read the full article.
Ken Gude, "Excessive Secrecy Undermining Obama's Human
Rights Achievements," Center for American Progress, December 10, 2009
Unfortunately, since [its] positive
first actions, the Obama
administration has fallen into a disturbing trend of relying on similar
national security arguments the Bush administration used to deny public
access to information about detainee abuse. There are appropriate
instances to withhold information from the public based on national
security concerns. But the frequency and pattern of its use is
seemingly at odds with Obama’s stated positions and has caused
many of
the president’s early supporters to question his sincerity.
Click here to
read the full article.
William Schulz, "The Triumph of Human Rights Norms,"
Center for American Progress, December 10, 2009
Human Rights Day 2009—the 61st
anniversary of the adoption without
dissent by the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights—is an appropriate occasion on which to ask ourselves
whether all
the human rights declarations, treaties, covenants and conventions that
have been ratified since 1948 have truly made any difference in the
struggle for a more humane and rights-respecting world. Might the U.S.
State Department have been correct six decades ago when, shortly before
the vote on the Universal Declaration, it declared the document little
more than a “hortatory statement of aspiration”?
Click here to
read the full article.
Stephanie Miller, "Help for Hondurans After Their
Election," Center for American Progress, December 9, 2009
The Honduran people late last month
agreed that whatever the reasons
for holding a presidential election in one of the murkiest domestic and
international contexts possible they at least should cast their
ballots. With an overwhelming number of countries in the region and
around the world pledging to ignore results on the eve of the November
29 election due to the unresolved political conflict stemming from the
ouster of President Manuel Zelaya on June 28, the Honduran electorate
went to the polls and voted, albeit what percent of the electorate
voted remains unclear.
Click here to
read the full article.
Investors Business
Daily - Samuel Charap warns that Russian sales of surplus
carbon emission permits acquired during 1990's-era production peaks
could undermine the ongoing Copenhagen climate talks: "Having all of
those credits out there would allow other countries to purchase them
and then not reduce their emissions."
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