So if Barack Obama cavorts with terrorists (Bill Ayers) and John McCain runs around with lobbyists (Charles Keating), why bother vote -- since both candidates will bring Armageddon to the American Dream as we know it?

That is the feeling among a wide swath of the undecided electorate, who...

My living room, like many I imagine, fell silent after last Friday's presidential debate ticked to a close. The question on everyone's mind: Why had Obama not delivered the knock-out punch?

Here's my take, even though it pains me to say it: On foreign policy, Obama appears to have no...

Henry Kissinger is again front and center in the news. A few days after sharing the spotlight with Sarah Palin, he got not one but five shout-outs in the first of three presidential debates. At a Council on Foreign Relations discussion last week, the normally diplomatic Russian Foreign Minister...

Make no mistake: Sarah Palin is up to speed on the world beyond Alaska's shores. What takes most of us years to learn--from travel, from meeting folks with funny-sounding accents, from reading, you know, books--she gleaned in a few sit-downs with heads of state and Henry Kissinger. She now can...

By authorizing U.S. strikes against terrorists and Taliban rebels in Pakistan, President Bush has firmly embraced the Obama Doctrine. The Illinois senator laid out his views on the matter last fall, when he said he would authorize strikes--if supplied with actionable intelligence--against Pakistan if President Musharraf failed to rein in...

Can we please cut the nonsense?! This notion that Sarah Palin has national security experience and would be a fit commander in chief is laughable. That much was abundantly clear after she stuttered her way through a list of neo-con talking points on ABC News. If she does not...

Governors almost never come to the national stage with much foreign policy experience. But rarely has a vice presidential nominee generated so much concern abroad (or at home) as Sarah Palin, who only got her passport last year and probably couldn't finger Botswana on a map. Contrary to my liberal...

John McCain, like his predecessor, is a guy who likes to make gut decisions from first impressions and shoot from the hip. Of course, that is another way of saying he is an anti-intellectual's anti-intellectual--a perennial C student who does not like to deliberate over a stack of policy papers...

Obama delivered a mesmerizing speech last night. But his words did little to burnish his credentials to be commander in chief. In a 44-minute speech, foreign policy barely received a minute's worth of attention. Sure, he made the obligatory mention of his sagacity in not supporting the war in 2002...

Listen to Joseph Biden closely tonight. How will he discuss the U.S. stance against Russian neo-imperialism? He will predictably say how we must stand behind our Georgian allies and boost humanitarian aid there -- typical touchy-feely Democrat stuff. But will he frame what lies ahead for U.S.-Russian relations in the...

So Joseph Biden, unlike Obama, is supposed to be a foreign policy guru. But his previous position on the most pressing issue of the day -- the war in Iraq -- is disturbing, if not downright muddleheaded.

Biden has led the ivory-tower brigade in favor of breaking up Iraq...

Ok, so the Bush administration has botched its relations with Russia and its former satellites. No big news flash there. But let's not forget why: the war in Iraq.

Let me explain. I'm not buying the Obama line that Iraq has distracted us from our other foreign policy commitments....

We finally got him. Your children can now play freely in the streets again. We have nabbed, yes, Osama bin Laden's limo driver. Move over Hermann Göring and make room for Ahmad Hamdan.

As we all let out a sigh of collective relief, let us recap how we came to...

Nothing pleases me more than listening to the sage wisdom of McCain's chief ideologue and foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann. If you listen to him talk enough, your head may develop sore spots from scratching. I don't mind that he never passes up a chance to take a pot shot...

Dear Senator,
I teach an op-ed writing seminar and heard about your troubles landing your Op-Ed at the rag of those liberal rascals, the New York Times. May I offer you some suggestions?

First, you need a better lede. Why are you quoting Petraeus up top when you...

Barack Obama is on a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan and Iraq. He is not alone. UN diplomats, as I write this, are on a fact-finding mission to Djibouti to investigate its border scuffle with Eritrea. A South African delegation of human rights workers are on a fact-finding mission to the...

Yesterday was a bonanza of foreign policy speeches, denunciations, one-ups, flip-flops, macho chest-bumping, and anti-terrorist fist-bumps. The race to the White House, we were reminded, is really a race to be commander in chief, and our candidates have very different views on how they would conduct the wars in Afghanistan...

Who has greater foreign policy experience: Obama or McCain? Well, that's easy. Just count their frequent flyer miles, says McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann. Let's see, McCain has visited dozens of countries, many of them in Latin America: "He's been to the Amazon rain forest, he's been to...

For the love of cheap gas, shut up, already. Let's stop with this nonsense about us or the Israelis launching a preemptive strike against Iran. Every time Seymour Hersh fires up his typewriter -- warning the world that an invasion of Iran is imminent -- the price of oil inches...

If terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are for Obama, as Republicans like to allege, but a new terrorist attack on American soil would tip the scales toward McCain, as his advisor Charles Black maintains, then logically there will be no terrorist attack against U.S. targets before the November election....