Foreign Policy

When President Bush suggests, as he did yesterday, that the Cuban people should rise up against their despotic leader, he conveniently ignores the fact that U.S. policy toward Cuba has done little to spur a revolt. Decades of isolation - and his administration's toughening of the policy - haven't lessened Fidel Castro's hold on power or diminished the influence of his brother Raul, now serving as the de facto president since Mr. Castro took ill a year ago. Indeed, the only Cubans who have benefited from U.S. policy are the thousands of refugees who are given a free pass to live here.

Last month, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist signed a bill ordering his state to divest its pension fund from businesses that work with Iran's energy sector. The legislation, led by Adam Hasner, Republican majority leader of Florida's House of Representatives, passed unanimously in both chambers of the Legislature. Unfortunately, the state legislation is unconstitutional. Only new federal legislation can legally allow states to divest from Iran. In 1996, Massachusetts restricted state businesses from working with companies that dealt with Myanmar, formerly called Burma.

ROME -- Stung by a bruising foreign policy defeat, embattled Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned yesterday, his center-left government collapsing after just nine months in power. Prodi failed to win parliamentary endorsement of his decision to maintain Italian troops in Afghanistan, a loss attributed in part to desertions by members of his coalition who oppose continued cooperation with the U.S. military in Italy and abroad. Chants of "quit, quit!" filled the Italian Senate as opposition politicians in business suits jumped up and down and pumped their fists upon realizing Prodi had lost the vote.

JIM CLARK, 84 Confronted rights marchers Former Dallas County (Ala.) Sheriff Jim Clark, whose violent confrontations with voting rights marchers in Selma in 1965 shocked the nation and gave momentum to the civil rights movement, died Monday at an Elba, Ala., nursing home after years of declining health due to a stroke and heart surgery, Hayes Funeral Home officials said. Mr. Clark was voted out of office in 1966 in large measure because of opposition from newly registered black voters, but throughout his life he maintained he had done the right thing.

PHILADELPHIA -- While the White House has been focusing its foreign policy attention on Iraq, the rest of the world hasn't been standing still. China has been using a new approach to expand its influence and global appeal. This approach is one at which the United States once excelled but now does badly. Call it "soft power," a term coined more than a decade ago by Harvard's Joseph Nye to describe a country's ability to lead by example and get others to follow because they admire what you are. A new book called Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World looks at Beijing's increasing skill at using diplomacy, trade incentives, cultural and educational exchanges, and other techniques to build an image of a benign global leader.

Conventional wisdom says that the youth vote is fickle, that in a world of limited budgets, campaign managers are smart to direct resources elsewhere. But new trends in youth political engagement challenge this long-standing belief. And for presidential candidates seeking to exploit these new developments, the message of 2008 may well be, "It's the genocide, stupid." For the past three years, a stunning number of young people have been active at all levels of the democratic process for the sake of civilians in Darfur, Sudan.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton faced the stinging defeat of a prized foreign policy objective last night, as the Senate moved toward an agreement to delay voting on a nuclear test ban treaty indefinitely.Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott tentatively agreed to withdraw the treaty without a vote after Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, promised not to push for a ratification vote until after Clinton leaves office.The president's Democratic allies in the Senate are short of the two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, needed for passage of the treaty.

AFTER the collapse of the Soviet Union, China replaced Russia as the most important bilateral relationship in U.S. foreign policy.This is not a reward for niceness. Rather, it is recognition of China's immense population, great resources, dynamic economic growth, persistent military development, Communist power structure, territorial ambitions, thirst for oil and national pride.This relationship calls for careful dealing, patient dialogue and courteous attention from a strong base of U.S. interests and values.

WASHINGTON -- Seeking to beef up his foreign policy credentials, Texas Gov. George W. Bush portrayed himself yesterday as a committed internationalist whose administration would ration the use of U.S. military power abroad.In his first foreign policy address, the Republican front-runner sketched out a mainstream vision of the U.S. role in international affairs. He cautioned against the "drift" of an ad hoc foreign policy that moves "from crisis to crisis, like a cork in a current.""America must be involved in the world," Bush said, in a counter to isolationist sentiment in his own party.

DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. -- As he ambles through a deserted hotel lobby, the man the polls say will be the next president spies a solitary hotel worker."Hi. I'm George W.," he says, grabbing the first of many hundreds of hands he will shake by nightfall.It is very early on Election Day, one year before the nation's first presidential votes -- those cast at this very hotel -- will be announced with great fanfare in one of the enduring publicity stunts of American politics.Gov. George W. Bush has come to New Hampshire, after ducking two debates, to put on a dazzling display of one-on-one politicking across the northern part of the state.

The negotiations that led to former President Bill Clinton's secret mission to North Korea began when two U.S. journalists were seized by the isolated Stalinist state, and were spurred on by the administration's hope that they might lead to a resumption of gridlocked disarmament talks, according to people close to the process. The goal was a specific deal: If the United States showed respect by dispatching a high-level emissary to Pyongyang, the North would release journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were arrested along the border with China on March 17. "This has been an orchestrated diplomatic process, carefully calibrated in both capitals," said a person who has been close to the exchanges since they began.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Wednesday for a new "architecture of global cooperation" in a wide-ranging address aimed at raising her visibility as a chief voice of U.S. foreign policy. Outlining her view of global relationships, Clinton said the administration's goal is to enlist more partners, including individuals and groups, as well as governments, in solving world problems. "We will offer a place at the table to any nation, group or citizen willing to shoulder a fair share of the burden," she said, speaking to an audience of experts at the Council on Foreign Relations.

President Barack Obama is fast approaching completion of his first 100 days in office. He's run at a sprinter's pace, goaded by the urgent needs of an extraordinary economic crisis and the daunting issues of health care, strategic defense, budget and foreign policy. He made a few predictable rooky mistakes in choosing his team and discovered that achieving bipartisanship is going to be harder than he thought. But he deserves good grades for lifting the national mood at a time of crisis and energetically seeking answers to many of the nation's toughest problems.

Don't look now, but the U.S. is experiencing something unusual in its recent history: a moment of bipartisan consensus on foreign policy. Over the last month, President Barack Obama has launched initiatives in areas that were flash points of contention only a year ago: winding down the war in Iraq, escalating the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, negotiating with Iran, renewing efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and seeking...

During her confirmation hearings to be secretary of state, Hillary Clinton signaled a new direction for U.S. foreign policy, saying: "If half of the world's population remains vulnerable to economic, political, legal and social marginalization, our hope of advancing democracy and prosperity will remain in serious jeopardy." This month, the administration backed up those words with the nomination of Melanne Verveer, co-founder of Vital Voices Global Partnership, as global women's issues chief, an ambassador-level position.

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Asia this week, she will fundamentally and profoundly change the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy. The "Iraqification" of foreign policy under President George W. Bush permeated strategic thinking during the last eight years and undermined the United States' standing around the world. As the tides of power shift from the West to the East, the United States has been stuck in the sand. Mrs. Clinton's decision to go to Asia for her first overseas trip underscores the growing geopolitical significance of the region and a strong desire to rebalance American engagement.

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama introduced yesterday his national security team, made up of centrist Washington insiders, and promised an overhaul of foreign policy to give added emphasis to diplomacy and bring a "new dawn of American leadership." Appearing at a Chicago news conference with Secretary of State nominee Sen. Hillary Clinton and five others whom he plans to put on his team, Obama said his administration would restore U.S. standing in the world through alliance-building and international institutions, as well as by maintaining U.S. military power.

Cordell Hull was a veteran lawmaker with a worldwide reputation when Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him secretary of state in 1933, in part to win needed support from Hull's army of Democratic admirers. But the dignified Tennessean was never close to FDR. As time passed he was "muscled out by others in the administration," said Michael Hunt, a diplomatic historian at the University of North Carolina. Barack Obama's election as president has drawn other comparisons with Roosevelt, especially for the economic crisis he inherits.

Finally, blessedly, it's over. After the longest, most expensive campaign in American history, the voters have decided who will be the next Great Man to take the helm of our ship of state. Sen. Barack Obama has been swept into the presidency on a wave of contrasting yet complementary emotions. There is the positive enthusiasm generated by the 47-year-old's "transformational" identity, the idea millions of Americans have seized upon that here is a leader who reflects the multicultural, multiracial reality of present-day America, who seems thoughtful and careful and is a full generation younger than his opponent.

Misinformation adds to conflict with Iran The editorial "Two steps backward" (Sept. 29) is correct that Iran will be a foreign policy challenge going forward. But because of our profound ignorance and misperceptions about Iran, the challenge will be more difficult. Instead of the failed policy of the last 28 years of isolating Iran, a policy that has left us bereft of knowledge about that country, we should be moving quickly to open a U.S. Interest Section in Tehran staffed with our best Farsi-speaking diplomats.