Posted in Charles Hill, Diplomacy, Public Diplomacy, Terminology on Jun 3rd, 2009 Comments Off on Obama’s grand strategy
From Charles Hill If you put yourself in the position of, say, the political counsellor of the British Embassy in Washington and you were required to send in a pre-Obama-in-Cairo speech analysis, you could draw upon a close analysis of Obama’s words and those of his Middle East team over the past ten days to […]
Posted in Alan Dowty, Diplomacy, Iran, Israel, Palestinians on May 20th, 2009 Comments Off on Barack and Bibi: starting the clock
From Alan Dowty The meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu has triggered a stampede of soothsayers. Every aspect of their encounter is scrutinized for clues to their personal chemistry and, by extension, the future course of U.S.-Israeli relations. But these relations are rooted in forces more fundamental than personalities, intriguing as these two […]
Posted in Diplomacy, Israel, Robert O. Freedman on May 15th, 2009 Comments Off on Obama and Netanyahu: the agenda
From Robert O. Freedman As Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu prepares to meet U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday, there are a number of issues on the table for discussion, including questions about Netanyahu’s willingness to accept a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel’s building of settlements and settlement outposts on the West […]
Posted in Adam Garfinkle, Diplomacy, Iran, Michael Mandelbaum on May 11th, 2009 2 Comments »
From Michael Mandelbaum To engage or not to engage? That is the question hanging over American policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran—or at least it was the central question for the United States until the advent of the Obama administration, which appears to have settled on proceeding with engagement. That decision, however, raises another […]
Posted in Adam Garfinkle, Alan Dowty, Diplomacy, Israel, Josef Joffe, Mark N. Katz, Palestinians, Raymond Tanter, Robert O. Freedman, Robert Satloff, Syria, Tamara Cofman Wittes, Walter Reich on Nov 20th, 2008 Comments Off on A Middle East envoy?
From MESH Admin Over the past week, MESHNet, the closed-forum companion to MESH, conducted a poll of MESHNet members, asking them who would make the best Middle East envoy of the Obama administration (if it is decided to appoint one). The structure of the poll emulated an earlier poll administered to a panel of Israeli […]
Posted in David Schenker, Diplomacy, France, Israel, Syria on Jul 16th, 2008 1 Comment »
From David Schenker This is a great video. The scene: the end of the Bastille Day festivities following the Mediterranean Union meeting in France last weekend. Syrian President Bashar Asad and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stand just meters away. It’s an awkward moment.
Posted in Andrew Exum, Chuck Freilich, Diplomacy, Iran, Nuclear on Jul 1st, 2008 2 Comments »
From Chuck Freilich Thirty years ago, in his magnificent book on Perception and Misperception, Robert Jervis argued that people’s views are self-reinforcing. Once we believe something to be the case, we further develop an array of arguments to discount those pesky doubts that we may harbor and to fully convince ourselves that our initial position […]
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