David Ignatius's Blog, page 131

How to break Hamas’s stranglehold on Gaza

What goal is Israel pursuing in its latest war in Gaza? That has been a hard question to answer, as Israel expanded its war aims from seeking “quiet” from Hamas rocket attacks to closing tunnels to destroying rocket-launch sites in northern Gaza.

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The risk of tougher sanctions on Russia

Energy politics underlie the explosive Ukraine crisis, as Europeans weigh U.S. calls for tougher sanctions against the ability of Russia to disrupt gas supplies this winter.

The dilemma for European governments increased this week as the Obama administration announced strong new penalties against the Russian energy and financial sectors. Europe’s initial response was tepid, in a sign that many of its governments fear Moscow’s energy leverage more than U.S. displeasure.

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Will the Malaysian Airlines crash de-escalate the Ukraine crisis?

This is a hotline moment: When a civilian passenger plane is shot down over a war zone, leaders are forced to see — and hopefully, discuss — the unintended consequences of battle and the accidental risk of war. But, paradoxically, horrifying moments like this can also encourage government leaders to break from the status quo and its cycle of escalation — and think about ways to move back from the brink.

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Obama’s foreign policy inertia

When Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. says that the Islamic State that has taken root in Iraq and Syria poses a “deadly” threat and that he has “extreme, extreme concern” about its bomb-makers, that sounds like an emergency. Yet the Obama administration hasn’t settled on a coordinated, aggressive response that might prevent this inferno from spreading.

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Obama’s counterterrorism blueprint looks good, on paper

In President Obama’s sometimes maddeningly cautious foreign policy, you can see him struggling to answer what may be the hardest question of his presidency: How should the United States project power in a disorderly world without making the same mistakes it did in Iraq and Afghanistan?

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In Palestine, a slow-motion crisis we saw coming

What happens when hopes for a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict collapse? We have been watching the answer over the past month, as extremist killers drive events and Palestinian rocket attacks beget Israeli rockets in retaliation. The fact that it was so predictable makes it all the more horrifying.

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Rethinking Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points

As U.S. policymakers ponder the future shape of the Middle East, they should perhaps recall that the United States was opposed to the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, the famous “line in the sand” that is now said to be dissolving.

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Iran overplays its hand

With the sudden rise of the terrorist Islamic State , a little-noted aspect is that Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the supposed strategic genius of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, has blundered disastrously. By overreaching in Iraq and Syria and triggering a violent reaction, Iran now faces dangerous instability on its border for years to come.

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Holder grows in the job

Setting clear management guidelines may be the least glamorous part of being a Cabinet secretary, but by this measure, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has succeeded over the past year in communicating his law-enforcement priorities to the Justice Department.

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Shimon Peres, Israel’s dreamer and doer

At a farewell dinner for Israeli President Shimon Peres in Washington on Wednesday night, several of the American guests appeared to approach him with tears in their eyes. This emotional display was a sign of Peres’s personal impact on the U.S.-Israel relationship and the way his departure marks the passing of an era.

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