David Ignatius's Blog, page 140

Ignatius: Backstage brawl over a deal

If there’s a fog of war, there can also be a fog of peace — in which even the negotiators aren’t sure of the consequences of what they’ve done. Some of that murkiness surrounds the bargaining in Geneva to limit Iran’s nuclear program. There’s sharp disagreement among observers about the potential risks and benefits of this seeming breakthrough between Iran and the West after 34 years of hostility.

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Ignatius: Egypt looks for a path toward democracy

CAIRO

Bassem Youssef, Egypt’s popular television comedian, expresses the irreverent confidence this country will need to regain stability. On air, he mocks the autocratic tendencies of both the Muslim Brotherhood leaders and the army generals who toppled them from power.

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Ignatius: The stakes of an Iranian deal

BEIRUT

As Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt served a sumptuous dinner to a gathering of Lebanese notables here, the talk around the table was about who would fill the power vacuum in the region if America reaches a nuclear deal with Iran — and accelerates what’s seen as a U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East.

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Ignatius: In Egypt, a spring of discontent

MENOUFIA, Egypt

Ayear ago, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders in this region of the Nile Delta seemed confident that they owned the future. But then came the military coup on July 3 that toppled President Mohamed Morsi and killed hundreds of his supporters.

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Ignatius: A Fourth Amendment for foreigners?

Asad irony of Barack Obama’s presidency is that a man who wanted to repair U.S. relations abroad has instead had to cope with damaging new strains with allies, following Edward Snowden’s revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance overseas.

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Ignatius: Thinking about the shape of an Iran deal

As the Obama administration moves into a decisive stage of nuclear negotiations with Iran, officials are considering a two-step process that would begin with a freeze and modest rollback of Iranian enrichment of uranium, matched by a limited easing of U.S.-led economic sanctions on Tehran.

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Ignatius: More chatter than needed

Several years ago, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, a think tank for the intelligence community, launched the Good Judgment Project. The idea is to use forecasting competitions to test the factors that lead analysts to make good predictions.

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Ignatius: Pitfalls of a ‘realist’ Middle East strategy

Talleyrand, the celebrated French diplomat, is said to have offered this inscrutable advice about the use of military power: “One can do everything with bayonets except sit on them.” Perhaps that’s a starting point in thinking about President Obama’s new approach of what might be called “strategic humility” about American power in the turbulent Middle East.

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Ignatius: U.S. inattention to Libya breeds chaos

For a case study of why America’s influence has receded in the Middle East, consider the example of Libya. Some simple steps over the past two years might have limited the country’s descent toward anarchy. But Libya became so toxic after the Benghazi attack that the United States has been slow to provide help.

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Ignatius: James Clapper, on top of the secret empire

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence (DNI), is not your sleek, button-down spy chief. The 72-year-old retired Air Force general has a beatnik goatee, a tendency to speak in malapropisms and a cranky attitude that he sometimes sums up with the phrase “I’m too old for this [expletive]!”

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