Foreign policy

Periodically, and almost from the day he became a serious presidential candidate, editorialists, pundits, academics, and reporters have described Barack Obama’s foreign policy as a return to “realism.” Essayist and self-described realist Robert Kaplan, to take just one example, argues that this is something like a natural recalibration, a return to geographic and historical inevitabilities.

Asia’s democracies need to get their acts together to address a common danger from the region’s authoritarian/totalitarian powers. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan face rising challenges from China and/or North Korea. All have security arrangements with the United States to deter or confront those threats.

Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy reports:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will return to the State Department next week after three weeks of recovery from a stomach virus and a related concussion, The Cable has confirmed.

When Senator Barack Obama was running for president back in 2008, he accused the Bush administration, his opponent Senator John McCain, and their supporters of taking their eyes off the ball by fighting a war in Iraq and ignoring the “necessary war”—the war in Afghanistan. Well, four short years later, by Obama’s lights, Afghanistan is no longer the necessary war but a war to be ignored, a war to be “ended” regardless of the strategic consequences of doing so precipitously.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

Bill Kristol, with Mara Liasson, Ed Rollins, and Evan Bayh, yesterday on Fox News:

And here's the Internet-only aftershow:

North Korea plans to launch a satellite into orbit later this month, the rogue state announced today. 

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

The Foreign Policy Initiative is hosting its annual forum next week in Washington, D.C.:

In this footage from CNN, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appears to fall asleep during President Barack Obama's Burma speech:

For almost a year, America’s allies in the Middle East and Western Europe have believed it was only Obama’s reelection campaign that held the president back from employing more forceful means to topple Bashar al-Assad. After all, ending the bloodshed that has killed over 40,000 people has been the Obama administration’s stated objective since the American president demanded that the Syrian dictator step down in August 2011.

President Obama’s trip to Southeast Asia will take him to Thailand, Cambodia, and Burma. Relations with Thailand and Cambodia are relatively static, thanks to the former’s historic alliance with the U.S. and despite the latter’s terrible human rights record. Burma, on the other hand, is in the midst of change, with the beginnings of a potential transition to democracy.